Driving the engine of your life
No matter how good your life gets there’ll always be something missing – if it’s not in one area, it’ll be in another – for aside from infinitesimally short moments when everything appears to be in perfect balance, an illusion in any case, everything is in a state of perpetual flux.
Accepting this inevitable flux-induced state of existential imperfection is essential to begin the process of establishing peace of mind.
The dynamic aspect of mind seeks perfection, even while the static aspect knows it’s futile, while yet another deeper aspect - the witness-bearer - recognises this internal conflict between the two is actually crucial for providing the requisite friction to drive the engine of your life and that to attempt to resolve it with the mind is like removing the pistons from your engine and will only bring your momentum to a halt.
The art is to identify with this ‘third’ part or layer of mind and from its vantage point (located in the dead centre of the brain equidistant between the ears), attend to providing for an adequate supply and circulation of lubrication in the engine to ensure a smooth ride.
This is facilitated simply enough within the body, providing you can remember to keep doing it, by relaxing everything as you sit there in the driving seat and breathing slowly, evenly and mindfully throughout, no matter how bumpy or dangerous you perceive the road to be at the time.
As you drive along, you listen to the internal conflict between the two, as if listening in a compassionately detached mode to a debate on the car radio.
Your main focus, however, is on enjoying the driving, by relaxing and allowing the breath to flow freely from moment to moment, accepting and appreciating that the dynamic perfection-seeking aspect serves to provide you with a sense of direction, while the static, knowing-seeking-perfection-is-futile aspect provides you with a sense of having sufficient ballast to stop you losing control of the vehicle and going off the road altogether.
As for the destination, you simply choose it to be the full flowering of you, your creative expression, your life and your destiny, in whatever form that wants to manifest. You then enter that in your satellite navigation system and let the road lead you there, desisting as much as possible from wasting energy questioning the route till you arrive.
Not that you ever do arrive, for in reality, the best you can hope for is the occasional pleasant sojourn at the odd pit-stop – the journey is in fact the destination and vice versa – and it goes on and on, at least till you die and probably forever in one form or another, so sit back and enjoy the ride (ultimately to the other side).
May your reality open into ever greater and more congenial vistas at every turn today and tonight.
Love, Doc