Fall Off Your Chair Laughing

Sometimes, what can you say?

You look around you and it’s a beautiful day.

Yet something inside is niggling.

Can you locate it in your body?

Perhaps in your liver.

Maybe your spleen.

Search with your mind.

Can you find the spot whence issues forth this uneasy feeling that something isn’t right?

The inclination is to pin it on something out there – something in the external world that needs fixing – a relationship, a situation, a dynamic, a conundrum – but no matter how much external fixing you do, everything in the world of the world is in flux and will never remain fixed permanently.

So it’s obviously not there, the source of this peace you seek.

It’s here, right here, where you sit and breathe.

And the key to unlocking it, lies in the physical source of that niggle.

So trace where it is and put your awareness there.

Then with all the self-command you can muster, say, ‘Reeeeeeeeee-lax!’, just like that with that implausibly elongated ,’e’ and as the ‘…lax’ escapes your lips, as the last of the breath leaves your lungs, just before allowing them to refill, feel yourself fully and utterly let go – everywhere and especially in the source of the niggle.

Then do it again.

Once is never enough.

Three times may do it but if you had three hours, you’d have a total internal evolutionary revolution.

You’ll notice the niggle wanting to come straight back. Like anyone it doesn’t want to lose its job, even if it was a bit of a bogus position for a niggle to hold.

Thank it and assure it you’ll find it more useful work to do for you. For once dissipated it will re-circulate as pure energy.

In this lies the key to the peace and enlightenment you seek, assuming you do seek it and if not, do because otherwise you’re wasting your time.

An old Tibetan master once said the same to young Barefoot when he was about 20 – unless you devote yourself fully to the spiritual path, young Barefoot, you’re wasting your time. It took me a while to get to be in full agreement with him but I have to say that old Tibetan mater was right on the button.

That was fun, wasn’t it?

Fun is the way to peace and enlightenment – not frivolity, though there’s nothing wrong with that at the appropriate moment – but fun that arises from playing like child with the Tao, at the deepest level of your being.

May you have so much fun playing like a child with the Tao of today and tonight, it’s all you can do not to fall off your chair laughing.

With love, Doc