What are you pursuing today? Meditation for 4/17/14

Magnolia Plantation; Charleston SC

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"When we avoid facing our emotional pain and sorrow it ultimately robs us of joy and peace."  -  Anon

"The best way out is always through."  -  Robert Frost

     We feel sadness at the loss of friendships and opportunities.  We feel pain when we avoid coming to grips with our fears and anxieties.  We know sorrow when those close to us suffer or die.  Our society often teaches that these are trivial matters, that we need to "pick ourselves up by our bootstraps" and march on.  So we stuff our feelings and march on in our pursuit of happiness, which we are told lies just around the next corner in the form of a new purchase, a new accomplishment, a sexual affair, the right drug or whatever the latest gadget the purveyors are pushing is.

     Happiness is a false sense of well being based upon having experienced some equal or greater offsetting sadness or boredom.  The two are joined at the hip - the pursuit of happiness is equally the avoidance of sadness at all costs.  And when it is boiled down, sadness is most often risking or facing abandonment by others because we are deemed deficient or defective.  It is no pursuit - it is a death spiral into a meaningless life and depression.  Sooner or later no distraction is large or intense enough to divert us from the fact that we have no clue who we are or what we want.

     Serenity.  Peace.  Joy.  These things are states of being rather than emotions.  They arise from within as the result of eliminating those things that conflict us.  These things are not dependant upon circumstances - we can know serenity, peace and joy AT THE  SAME TIME we are feeling sadness and sorrow.  This will seem impossible to the conflicted one, who is sure that salvation lies in the right purchase, the right ritual, the right relationship - and on the madness goes.

     Through the millennia the wise ones who have gone before us tell us that only the proper inter-linking of self examination, prayer and meditation create an unshakable foundation for life.  These allow us to face things directly - and as we do we find our anxieties are always either unfounded or grossly exaggerated.  The only way out is through - and serenity is the goal, not happiness.  Perhaps today we can resolve one more internal conflict in our pursuit of it.  And before we know it, we will find we are at peace, regardless of our circumstance.

Today, may I do the work.

Happy Thursday !!
David

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