My Actions Are My Only True Belongings – Thich Nhat Hanh
We are meeting in our meditation for all life on earth and in the Friday Earth Send. We are pouring gratitude into this Circle — recalling all the good conditions, positive surprises, developments and securities that are already ours. May everything that we are grateful for grow strong and flourish!
We are setting the tone for coexistence, harmony and solution orientation.
Some observations about what is happening outside are reminders of what we can untangle on the micro plane. Other observations are reminders of how little we truly know about the world. We are not the experts on everything; we are the experts (or aim to become experts) on our own turf, in our own radius of influence. Once we accept that some negativity is caused by the incomplete use of our own power, we return to ourselves and make an inventory of the things that we can alter and advance.
It is key to be proactive about it, select a time for it and go through with it. For example, if your next best step is a meeting, make an appointment; if your next best step are repairs, make an appointment; if your next best step is a clean-up, make an appointment; if your next best step is information about a topic, make an appointment with the people who can educate you and provide information and literature, and do visit the library.
Make the next best step. It is key that you cut through whatever excuses you allowed to pile up in the past and act on the nudges that life is sending you.
It is easy to remain a spectator or a “judge of events” that upset us, but it is not fulfilling, and in the long run, we begin to identify with, or contrast ourselves, with people we can not control and often do not even like.
Our lifetime is finite. There are dreams to manifest, knacks to practise, flow and gratitude to be had — all that can unfold (only) when we put the focus back on ourselves.
Let me offer a counterintuitive log to illustrate my point better:
In the last decade, I have been confronted with situations that I loathed, and after processing them, I loathed them more. The ol’ question of “Why me?” had to be revamped to “When is the best time for me to detach? How can I become a keener detector for red flags? How do I remove myself from situations that are not meant for me?”
In my teens, when I could have honed some of these skills, I got ill for a while. I imagined that everyone was having fun, while I had to stay in bed. I could not fathom that peers were learning how to avoid bad neighbourhoods and predators, too. I insisted on my self-centred view of how much fun everyone had but me.
The recent indigestible events necessitated that I deal with what I had missed at a time in the past and re-parent myself and revisit that subpersonality who thought that everyone had a ball and that I was wasting away.
I am exaggerating for effect: I want to communicate that not every aspect of ourselves is equally seasoned and equally percipient.
Over time, we learn that what seemed like a disaster for three seconds was an opportunity to cultivate some useful traits and a shortcut to a life that fits like a glove.
In the last weeks I kept hearing versions of the stunning and hilarious wrap-up about how our needs and our wants can exist so far apart that they will not fuse… The scenarios made me laugh, but I wondered afterwards, “What if? What if needs and wants could meet? How would they meet, in what place, and when? Can I prod this fusion of needs and wants — if not for me, then for others, and if not for others, then for me?”
I have a bit of history with prodding fusions. That is why I ask such questions.
Those stories about wants and needs have broadcast to me that our wants can masquerade as our needs, but our needs rarely disguise themselves as wants.
We have the capacity to tune into our needs. Of course, we also have the capacity to tune out our needs. What is it going to be? What do you want to learn?
If a physician decided to be his own doctor, or his own pharmacist, for all his health issues, he would be declared ludicrous and unreliable. What makes a doctor trustworthy is that he leads by example and takes another expert’s counsel when he tries to solve his personal challenges — even though he has amassed the knowledge that help a great number of people.
In the same way, we have to accept the limits of our know-how and find the team or the person who can counsel us and offer a cure, strategies that boost our immune system and activate the process of self-healing or strategies that enable us to outgrow irritants that hold us back.
The tendency to resign to incongruous outcomes or to things as they “have always been” can be challenged, you see.
In this spirit, I hope you will take something from my sharing and claim your time to develop your gifts and projects and find the confidence to turn your back on random frustrations faster. The elegant way of learning is through mentors.
May this Friday soothe and smoothe you out and shed a light on what qualities you will grow this year.
Blessings and love and itadakimasu.
10 February 2023
Nanda Jurela 