austin_tycho | (no subject)

This seems to be flipping on some lights for many people:

Season of Death

Also, from a wise woman I know:
Breathing is the fundamental unit of risk, the atom of inner courage that leads us into authentic living. With each breath we practice opening, taking in and releasing. Literally, the teacher is under our nose. When anxious, we simply have to remember to breathe.

So often we make a commitment to change our ways, but stall in the face of old reflexes as new situations arise. When I am gripped by fear or anxiety, my reflex is to hold on, speed up or remove myself. Yet I know when I feel the reflex to hold on, that is the moment I need to let go. When I feel the impulse to run – it is the opportunity to face myself. Taking a deep meditative breath, precisely at this moment, can break the anxious momentum and put my psyche in neutral. From here, I might just be able to step in another direction.

I am sure I am stating the obvious when I say there is a difference between dealing with the anxiety of external physical danger and inner moments of emotional chaos. Fear of love and truth and facing Deity, fear of change and the unknown. I am referring to the times when we all grip tightly to what we know, even when we hurt ourselves in the process.

Dropping all I carry, all my preconceptions, my interior lists of ways I think I’ve failed and the ways I think I’ve been wronged – all the secret burdens I work at maintaining – dropping all regret and expectation lets my mentality die. Dropping all I have constructed as imperative in my life allows me to be born again into the simplicity of spirit that arises from unencumbered being.

It seems overwhelming to imagine changing my entire life. Where do I begin? How do I take down walls that took 48 years to erect? Breath by breath. Dropping all I carry instant by instant. Trusting that what is within me that has done the carrying – if freed – will carry me.

A meditation to consider:

• Sit by yourself, alone in a safe place, and think of the last situation that made you anxious.
• Ask yourself: What specifically make you uncomfortable? In tensing, what did you cling to in your mind?
• Place both your discomfort and your clinging before you now.
• In this safe place, touch what scared you. It can’t hurt you now.
• In this safe place, drop what your mind clung to. It can’t help you now.
• Repeat this several times while breathing slowly and deeply.
• Breathe. Feel in details what rises in you without the discomfort or the clinging.
• Breathe. This is Deity in you. Bow to it.

And to cleanse the palate, a joke my dad sent me.
Seeing Eye Dogs

Two women were out for a Saturday stroll. One had a Doberman and the other, a Chihuahua. As they walked down the street, the one with the Doberman said to her friend, "Let's go over to that bar for a drink."

The lady with the Chihuahua said, "We can't go in there. We've got dogs with us."

The one with the Doberman said, "Just watch, and do as I do."

They walked over to the bar and the one with the Doberman put on a pair of dark glasses and started to walk in. The bouncer at the door said, "Sorry, lady, no pets allowed."

The woman with the Doberman said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog."

The bouncer said, "a Doberman?"

The woman said, "Yes, they're using them now. They're very good."

The bouncer said, "OK, come on in."

The lady with the Chihuahua thought that convincing him that a Chihuahua was a seeing-eye dog may be a bit more difficult, but thought, "What the hell," so she put on her dark glasses and started to walk in.

Once again the bouncer said, "Sorry, lady, no pets allowed."

The woman said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog."

The bouncer said, "A Chihuahua? You've got to be kidding?"

The woman with the Chihuahua said, "A Chihuahua? They gave me a fucking Chihuahua?!"