Pure Poetry In Motion

The key to gaining and maintaining perspective at times like this, when the action is fast and the thoughts are bubbling volcanically, is to remind yourself, not morbidly but philosophically, though nevertheless viscerally, that you’re going to die. And while none of us knows what happens then, you do know what’s happening now, which is you’re alive, you’re breathing, you’re feeling, you’re thinking and you’re interacting with the external world, or at least your perception of it.

To waste a single precious moment of that stressing yourself out over details that have gone wrong or could go wrong, is merely daft, which doesn’t mean allowing yourself to be irresponsible or lazy about dealing with the details, it means training yourself to remember to enjoy the process regardless.

Rather than struggling with the details, dance with them.

Rather than assuming the universe has got it in for you, assume the universe will cause all knots to unravel and merely requires you to ease off a bit just as when attempting to get any physical knot to unravel.

At the moment of death, if the mind does a revue of your life, it would be a shame if all its memories were clouded by all the tension you’d surrounded the details of your existence with.

Everyone craves excellence even if they don’t admit it, however as soon as striving for excellence becomes the vain quest for perfection, drop it, there and then, on the spot.

Take a long, deep breath. Let your ribcage expand to the sides and your belly swell with the breath. Then flatten your belly and push all the air out – every last cubic millimetre.

Repeat this three times, which will take approximately 54 seconds, and in the subtle gaps which occur outside of linear time, at the top and bottom of the breath, between the inhalation and exhalation and vice versa, let yourself be aware of the ineffable presence informing your reality here behind the scenes, the presence you’ll meet and merge with on finally dropping the body and addressing it, not reverently but respectfully, say, ‘hello my friend,’ and be silent enough to hear it saying hello back.

A facile level of interaction you may think but in that hello, everything drops instantly into perspective – you see instantaneously that no detail however irksome is more important than life itself - nothing is more crucial than that bond you have with the ineffable presence you say hello to in the gaps, for that is your Tao and if anything remains after you drop your body, it’s that.

For ultimately when all the onion skins of illusory self are stripped away, that is who you are – the Tao, so hello my friend.

The moments of love you share with all the others in your life as you wend your way along the Great Thoroughfare, these others also being at the deepest level living expressions of that same Tao, comprise the actual currency which gives your life value, meaning and worth – all the rest of it, the levels of excellence you achieve or otherwise, is merely surface colouration.

Nonetheless, I wish your colouration to be as brightly and warmly hued as can be now,

Not only brightly and warmly hued but also sparkling and glittering with particles of light, which illuminate every thought, word and action and remind you that there’s absolutely nothing prosaic about you or your existence but to the contrary, that you are nothing less than pure poetry in motion.

I wish you such an unexpectedly wild, wonderful and wholesome day you want to throw it down on the kitchen table and make passionate love with it without caring whether any plates fall off and smash on the floor.