Today's Seaweed

Slightly to the left of the "Easy Does It" plaque was one that read "One Day At A Time."  This, too, made little sense to a guy who was trying to take life by storm, in big two or three day gulps.  I had things to do tomorrow, I had yesterday's messes to clean up; I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the day that I was actually living in. This is ironic because it's the only day that I can influence and it's the only day that my Higher Power is going to help me navigate.  If I choose to future trip or wallow in the past then I am firmly on my own.  I get no help for those two days.  Zero Help.  Those days are not in my portfolio.

If you have one foot in tomorrow and one foot in yesterday then you're tinkling all over today.

It's my belief that a central tenet of every religion and spiritual pursuit with any validity at all is focusing on the present.  When I'm in the minute then I'm OK.  I'm fed and watered, and I have a warm, dry, safe place to sleep - those are my needs.  Everything else is a Want.  I'm blessed with a profusion of nice things that I get to enjoy but I can really only lay a righteous claim to food, water, and shelter, and a tenuous claim at that.

Meditation is my attempt to really get in the moment, to really live one day at a time.  Half the time I feel like I'm sitting in a car with the accelerator pushed to the floor and the emergency brake engaged - I gotta GO, I gotta MOVE - but if I hang in there my blood pressure drops, my heart rate slows, and I calm down.  I don't get it but it happens.  Don't take my word for it, either.  Give it a shot.  It really does work

I watched a documentary last night about a couple of retreat masters who took a 10 day class in Vipassana meditation to a maximum security prison in Alabama.  You could see the effects on some of these men after they completed the course - they looked different physically.  It made me appreciate my nice easy chair and my nice, quiet room this morning.