Pain V Pleasure

"According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the 'quivering of the pure heart' when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.  Then, we can sustain a presence in the midst of life's suffering, in the midst of life's fleeting impermanence.  We can open to the world - its ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows.  We begin to recognize that just as there is pain in our own lives, so there is pain in everyone else's life.  This is the birth of wise understanding.  Wise understanding sees that suffering is inevitable, that all things that are born . .  . and die.  This is the purpose of a spiritual discipline and of choosing a path with heart - to discover peace and connectedness in ourselves and to stop the war in us and around us."

In jarring juxtaposition this old axiom popped into my head right after I read the above: "Don't piss off an old person - the older we get the less 'Life in prison' is a deterrant."  Not sure what the connection is to the Buddhist text.

I worry sometimes about the fact I confuse happiness with joy.  I think happiness, deep down, is overrated because it means that I'm pleased when shit goes my way and pissed when it doesn't.  I think I can be joyful just being alive, good or bad, pleasant or painful.

Here's another one I like: "Live your life as if this day is your last but plan as if you're going to live forever."

The Plagues Again

Jack Kornfield speaketh: "When we step out of the battle, we see how each of us creates conflict.  We see our constant likes and dislikes, the fight to resist all that frightens us.  We see our own prejudice, greed, and territoriality.  All this is hard for us to look at, but it is really there.  Then underneath these ongoing battles, we see pervasive feelings of incompleteness and fear.  When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment.  This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.  To come into the present is to stop the war.  To come into the present means to experience whatever is here and now.  Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future, in regret, guilt, or shame about  the past.  When we come into the  present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding."

Whenver I start to perceive a creeping, oozing sense of smugness and pride about my own wisdom and experience and intellect I invariably run into some dude who can cut through the crap and make cogent observations like this above.

I repeated this phrase to a fellow A.A. this morning: "The good news about sobriety is that we get to feel everything again but the bad news about sobriety is that we get to feel everything again," then I ducked a right cross and this was from a woman I consider a dear friend.  Seriously, it's not easy, ever, to sit with pain and fear but it's downright miserable when we're at all new.  And the idea that we chase pleasure and flee from pain can be found in literally every spiritual movement ever created.

I must repeat once again one of my most beloved passages from the 12 & 12: "Until now our lives have largely been devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering."  I like that the phenomenon of suffering is labeled a "fact."  As in, we all have to/get to suffer at times.  

A Basic Primer on Touching Hot Metal Surfaces

Tradition Ten states that " . . . A.A. ought never be organized . . .  " and the 12 & 12 has a number of - in retrospect - pretty hilarious anecdotes about the shit that self-righteous but well-meaning alcoholics tried to pull early on in our history.  We often mean well or at least we try to hide self-serving motives under a patina of well-meaning motives.

There's a lot of text that sounds contradictory.  We are quick to point out that most A.A.s, once established, are willing to take advice, while emphasizing that those stubborn individuals who aren't quite as willing to take advice from self-righteous long-timers have every right to ignore advice but  still sit in a meeting.  And have you ever written or called our Central Office in New York?  Invariably there counsel is along the lines of " . . . the majority experience is this or that, but you, of course, are free to do whatever you want as long as A.A. as a whole isn't adversely affected . . . "

One of the recovery precepts that has really stuck with me is the idea that if an alcoholic doesn't follow our spiritual principles then any set-backs that may occur is because of this unwillingness to follow our Program as it's outlined in the Big Book and not a punishment meted out by A.A. itself.  The 12 & 12 says it better than I can: "His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalities inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles."  If someone tells you that a plate is hot and you touch it anyway and get burned don't get mad at the person who told you the plate was hot.  And don't get mad at the plate, either.  Sure as shit don't get mad at me for telling this long and barely interesting story.  If you need to get mad get mad at the laws of thermodynamics.  I'm not intimately familiar with them but one of them explains that hot shit burns skin, something like that. 

More from the Step: "So we of A.A. do obey spiritual principles, first because we must, and ultimately because we love the kind of life such obedience brings.  Great love and great suffering are A.A.'s disciplinarians; we need no others."

Pain and Suffering

"The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are.  Without understanding, we can easily become frightened by life's fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death.  Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be truly satisfying.  We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death, and loss, and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature."  Jack Kornfeld in a chapter entitled "Stopping the War."

"Until now, our lives had been largely devoted from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.  Escape via the bottle was always our solution.  Character-building via suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us."  Step 7 in a chapter entitled "Step 7."

I really like the use of the word "appeal."  I really like the word "plague."  I'm not crazy about the word "suffer" because there's too much slop in it that gives the whining alcoholic room to roam; otherwise why would we suffer so much over things that other people seem to handle in a mature and more normal fashion?  I do love the word "pain."  It's a good word.  Pain is inevitable.  Sorry, but pain is here to stay and whether the pain causes you to suffer is, to a large degree, up to you.

Here you go . . . 

Appeal:      To arouse a sympathetic response; the power to attract, interest, amuse or stimulate the mind or emotions.

Plague:       A contagious disease that spreads rapidly and kills many people; an unusually large number of insects or animals infesting a place and causing damage; a disastrous evil or affliction.

Pain:         A signal to your nervous system that something may be wrong, such as a prick, sting, burn, tingle or ache.

Suffer:       To submit to or be forced to endure which implies conscious endurance of pain or distress.

You can see how pain is inevitable but much suffering is optional, or at least to be expected as a normal part of life.   Quit yelling: "Why me?  Why me?" so much.  It's you because it's everyone.  You're not getting picked on

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

This is a new day where I can strive to renew.  This isn't yesterday and this isn't tomorrow.  One of those days is gone forever and one of those days may very well never arrive.  I have a purpose or I wouldn't be here.  Part of my mission today is to make every minute count.  If I'm just killing time, wasting time, then I'm only hurting myself, wasting something very precious.

As my life goes barrelling along at increasingly high velocity I can forget to be glad for all of the things that go right, for all my blessings, for the serendipity that is my life.  Good things are whizzing by but let one thing go sideways and then the counting starts.  Before my day is over I've got an exact count of all the times I've been put upon.  Anything out of order or not to my liking gets my attention while I blithely ignore all that goes well.  I find myself asking . . . what next?  How am I going to get screwed next?  And Jumpin' Jack Flash I'm running that ancient program that only responds to negative input.  My day goes better when I decide early on that if anything can go right, then it will.  This keeps me looking for order rather than disorder and I pay attention to whatever my mind's eye is focused on.  I can choose to see the good or I can choose to see the bad.  

Just Passing Through

"Letting go is a central theme of spiritual practice.  Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without fearing it, without holding and grasping.  Spiritual joy and wisdom do not come through possession but rather through our capacity to open, to love more fully, and to move and be free in life."  Jack Kornfeld

Here's a story about a spiritual seeker who traveled from California to London to meet a great rabbi.  He arrives at the address, a huge mansion in a fancy part of town, but when he's shown in to the master's study he's surprised to find a small room in the attic, the only furnishings a single bed, a desk, and lots of books.  "Where are all of your things, rabbi?" he asks.  "Well, where are all of your things?" he replies.  "But I'm only passing through," the seeker protests. "Well, so am I," says the master.

Most of us aren't going to commit to such an aesthetic lifestyle but the point is obvious: attachment to stuff isn't going to help much at some point.  Dead in the ground is dead in the ground.  I believe I'm a much loved person but in ten years very few people are going to be able to hork up my memory and after twenty-five years the list will have dwindled to almost nothing and in fifty years?  You think someone is going to be talking about me in twenty-five years?  Fuggetaboutit.

There's another story about a wealthy man who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.  He was told that he would die within six weeks unless he chose to undergo brain surgery, but the location of the tumor meant that he might lose all ability to speak, write, read, or understand language.  As you can imagine this was quite the decision to have to make.  

What would you do?  What would I do?  Could I contemplate a life where a passive appreciation of the natural world would be all that was left to me?  Sitting quietly and being?  Whew.  Would this be enough?  Whew.

Personal and Universal

I try to emphasize my own personal journey because the greatest lesson I've learned is that the universal must be wedded to the personal for me to be fulfilled in my spiritual life.  In this way, any awakening is a very personal matter that also affects all other creatures on earth.  Since I've been sober for so long I have a tendency to slip into Teacher mode or - better yet - Pedantic mode where I speak more from my head and less from my heart.  I think some of this makes sense because I don't have the relatable chaos going on in my life on a regular basis,  but when I can relate a personal experience where I show how the spiritual principles correctly applied have saved me much grief and or how a burst of self-will run riot runs riot can cause me much grief, then it's a story that is more likely to resonate.

No one is so destined to lose that he cannot turn the tide . . . if he wants to change.  Overcoming requires us to put our shoulder to the wheel in ways we could not have considered in our earlier times.  We're greatly influenced by our beliefs about ourselves and whether we are supposed to win or lose.  It's our indecisiveness that keeps wavering.  I've always liked to concept of "wanting to want to get sober."  Many are there who like the benefits of a sober life but don't want to do the work to accumulate those benefits.

"There is a certain amount of sameness in all our lives - a sameness that says no matter how different we are we can still identify with each other's daily problems and hopes and aspirations."  The Cherokees

The Ongoing Spiritual Quest

"I used spiritual practice to strive for states of clarity and light, for understanding and vision, and I initially taught this way.  Gradually, though, it became clear that for most of us this very striving itself increased our problems.  Where we tended to be judgemental, we became more judgemental of ourselves in our spiritual practice."  Jack Kornfield

I've been meditating for thirty years, more or less.  I've been talking about meditating for a hundred and thirty years, give or take.  Interestingly enough, I still don't really know what I'm doing.  I'm making an effort and that's the main thing.  Sometimes I feel like I'm getting somewhere but most of the time I'm just faking it.  When SuperK and I moved to Southern CA we got much easier access to the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.  In our travels there the structure and practices of Buddhism and Buddhist meditation were on full display.  It was really transformative for me.

I've always battled the urge - the elemental need - to be accomplishing something productive, and I don't really know what that means any more.  It's clear when you're working and you have tasks that you're required to complete and it's clear with some general things like exercising and cooking and gardening, tasks that are definitive.  If your daily routine is to run two miles then you run two miles and that's some excellent production.  But when the stuff I'm doing is only by choice then what's the measuring stick?  It can be frustrating for Strivers.  For instance, I'm reading the first section of Dante's Divine Comedy.  I think that's pretty impressive, to brag about myself a little, and it has been a lot more interesting than I would have guessed, but the problem for me is that if my routine life obligations get in the way or if something unexpected pops up during the course of my day and I miss a chapter I inevitably find myself finding fault with myself for not having "completed" this task.

This is where my meditation practice has been most beneficial - moderating my need to achieve with a realization that life can be - should be - simpler and more serendipitous.  I miss nice things by concentrating too much on tasks but if I don't apply the force of my mind on tasks then I don't accomplish those things that give me pleasure.  Have you ever painted a wall that needs painting?  I don't enjoy the painting part of the painting the wall but there is a satisfying sense of achievement looking at the nicely painted wall.  But to get this sense of well-being I have to motivate myself to do something that I find unsatisfying.

 I've shared the story of visiting a monastery when I was in Japan with SuperK and we had an interaction with a monk who was sitting behind a table of literature.  He had a huge smile on his face and was very complimentary about our visit, so naturally - a paranoid, suspicious big-city Westerner - I assumed he had a motive.  He did!  His motive was to be kind to two strangers!  THAT was his fucking motive!  He wasn't being productive - he was in the moment expressing kindness.  

See?  That can be hard for me.  I wanted to brush by the dude to continue on whatever I had on my productive agenda for the day.

Greasy Vans and the Patience of Job

I wrote not long ago about a meeting I attended where a few new people shared stories about how irritated and frustrated they were at the minor irritations and frustrations encountered in day to day living that - if they keep slogging away and trudging onward in their spiritual  growth - they won't find nearly as irritating and frustrating in the future.  My inclination is to point out how much time they're wasting, how much emotional energy they're expending, on matters that won't mean anything in short order.  You know: spouses trying our patience or car troubles or unpleasant customers, that sort of thing. but even then I try to be as kind as possible, realizing that alcoholics are experts at blowing mouse-sized problems into elephant-sized problems, and when you're new this is a lot easier to do.  Instead, I try to find an experience in my experiential repertoire that shows how lovely this peaceful progression is.  Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes real fucking slowly.

I was waiting at a crosswalk preparing to cross a busy street a few days ago.  If you've never been to Southern California you may not be familiar with our busy streets here.  Apparently no road has ever been built that has fewer than ninety lanes.  It's not unusual for an intersection to have three left turn lanes - three! - and for the walk signs to allow you thirty seconds to cross the street - thirty! - while you experience a mild sense of panic watching the counter approach zero while you're still crossing the street, the brisk pace you think you're maintaining apparently not as brisk as you think.  In other words you don't not cross a street against the light, even if there are no cars approaching.  They can materialize out of nowhere.  

Anyway, An old, beater van pulls up next to me in the right lane - one of those lanes that permit you to continue forward or to turn right so unless the car is using a turn signal you are sort of in the dark.  There's a lot of shit piled up on the dashboard and I can see through the greasy windowshield that the driver is texting, so when the light changes and the little strolling man glyph pops up on the crosswalk sign across the street, I don't budge an inch, trying to peer through the murk to catch the driver's eye.  My sole aim is to not get run over.  This was SoCal pedestrian survival mode and not any kind of testosterone-fueled challenge to the driver.  Apperently the ne'er-do-well driving interpreted this as aggressive judgment on my part so he rolled down his window and shouted something at me along the lines of "slow" or "stupid" or some other "S" word.  Frankly, it takes about an hour to get across one of these super-roads so I had no interest in stopping mid-walk to argue with him or explain myself.  Even more frankly, it bothered me not a bit.  In fact, I recall giggling a little.  It is now in my DNA to slough off the impatience that once impelled me into an argument or an obscene gesture.  I was in no way, shape, or form bothered by this grease-ball and I'm just joking when I use that word: who knows what kind of tough life this man is enduring?  Pretty tough from the shape of his vehicle.

This is how I absorbed the message of Right Living when I was getting sober.  Show me what you did and not what I should do.

Reasons. Not Excuses.

We seldom do anything with great joy.  Most of us are animated only when it serves a purpose and not because of a genuine enthusiasm.  We're too full  of ifs and oughts to find reasons to rejoice.  Sometimes a change can jar us into an awareness of life, and that life is intended to be much simpler than what we make it out to be.  If only we can move out of fear and be able to enjoy life minute by minute.

I have no friends from college or any places of employment pre-recovery.  That's a solid twelve years.  That's a long period of time to develop some relationships and it's an amazing fact that I was not able to develop any at all.  I was busy for much of this time but not that busy.  I'm out of the Excuses business and into the Reasons business and the reason is this: I was drinking and using.  By myself much of the time and when I was with people I was still by myself, more or less, the goal always being to get away from these people so I could drink and use.  While I admit to being a liar and an embellisher and exaggerator I am not making this up.

Flight S.O.B.'s Unite!

Cherokee wisdom for today: "Lovely or unlovely, nothing stays the same.  It cannot.  It grows into something newer and better, or it gives why where it is.  Life is a living, moving force at every moment.  We would not have that change - but to live happily we must change.  We cannot allow ourselves to crystallize until we are inflexible.  There is too much to shatter us if we cannot bend.  To enjoy the present moment is to have the innate knowledge that the next one and the next can be even better."

The only constant in life is change.  I gotta adapt or it'll kill me.

I maintain - again - that One Day At A Time is a good basis for living well.  Right here - Right now.  If I had to base my existence on one concept it would be the imperative to be present.  Not in the future where terrible things are happening to me or in the past reliving the terrible things I did.

I am still obsessed with the workings of the human mind.  Maybe this is a type of control obsession.  Maybe this is because the human mind is such a weird-ass, unpredictable beast, making choices for reasons that of which we are blissfully unaware and running the show more than we'd like to admit.  If you think I'm making this up I suggest meditation.  THEN you'll see who's running the show.  Spoiler: it's not the You that you think you are.  It's this force that is darting and veering and screaming into the night.

I listened to a podcast that explored time and time management.  One of the central premises is that the people who struggle the most in this arena are those with too little time to get everything accomplished and - oddly enough - people with too much time on their hands.  The psychologist involved suggested keeping a journal where one logs personal activity separated into half hour increments.  I thought: "Why not?"  I'm one of those people with a lot of free time and I'm often surprised at the end of the day how much I accomplish and - more irritating - how much I don't get done.  It seems to me there's usually enough time to do all of my stuff even accounting for time-consuming chores - like grocery shopping and car repairs and house cleaning - as well as serendipitous interruptions - like a neighbor stopping by to chat or a phone call from an irritating member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Here's my take after a week or two of doing this: I am a fidgety, fidgety son of a bitch.  I have trouble staying on task for a half hour at a time with the result that it's not unusual to look at a segment, see a thing listed that should take fifteen minutes, and realize I don't know what I did the rest of the time.  Can you see why sitting still on a twelve hour flight is roughly equivalent to a root canal with no anesthesia?  Part of this, I think, is due to the fact that I have an overactive imagination and my mind is always flitting here and there, and part of it is because I'm unfocused.

Go Home and Come Back

"Jealousy is never hidden. It is totally ignorant of the fact that we have to go within ourselves for things that lift or lower us.  What belongs to each of us has nothing to do with anyone else.  To be jealous is to be miserable.  If we can't hold our own we can go home and get ready and come back.  But to have animosity toward everyone who threatens cannot cultivate good in anything."

My Buddy Chivas

Life gets lifey sometimes.

If you keep doing what you've been doing you'll keep getting what you've been getting.

Tolerant:  Showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with; a willingness to accept the belief, habits, feelings, or behaviors of another group, culture, etc. as legitimate even if they differ from one's own.  (Ed. Note: Funny how the word 'willingness' keeps popping up . . .  )

From the text of Tradition Three: "Our Foundation office asked each group to send in its list of 'protective' regulations.  The total list was a mile long.  If all those rules had been in effect everywhere, nobody could have possibly joined A.A. . . "

Here are a few phrases that pop up after that surprising and hilarious sentence: "pretty intolerant;" "After all, isn't fear the true basis of intolerance?"  "Could we then foresee that troublesome people were to become our principal teachers of patience and tolerance?"

When I ask people who have gone out why they picked up a drink again, what their mind set was, what happened, the reasons are mundane, insignificant, and boring.  Lazy and self-serving reasons.  The reasons are so shitty that they're actually excuses and not reasons.  No one - I repeat: no one - has ever told me that a relative just died in a car accident or that they recently learned they were diagnosed with some horrible, fatal disease.  They just drink.  They want to drink, they're not spiritually fit, they're not plugged in, and they just drink.  One young guy who had accumulated about ninety days was at a gathering, saw a bottle of Chivas Regal, and poured himself a drink.  "Seemed like a good idea," he told me.

That's his new nickname.  Chivas.  "Good morning, Chivas, good to see you!"  I can be such an asshole.

I told a Chicago guy once that I liked to party.  He said that I was drinking, not partying.  I mentioned to another Chicago guy that I didn't know why I kept relapsing.  He said that I wasn't relapsing, I was continuing to drink, that you had to actually quit drinking in the first place to relapse.

Irritating, these Chicago guys.

But a lot of irritating guys listened patiently when I talked - if by "talking" you mean "spewing nonsense" - and planted good ideas in my head, ideas that I took and used to build a good life.  They never told me what I had to do - they told me what they did and how it worked out for them, the implication being that I could try it out or not or I could try something totally different, that the idea was to try things different than the ones I was currently using which clearly weren't working out very well.

The Anvils of Experience

"There is no organization which more jealously guards the individual's right to think, talk, and act as he wishes.  No A.A. can compel another to do anything.  Nobody can be punished or expelled.  The A.A. member has to conform to the principles of recovery.  His life actually depends upon obedience to spiritual principles.  He learns that the clamor of desires and ambitions within him must be silenced whenever these could damage the group.  It becomes plain that the  group must survive or the individual will not."  They add the phrase "anvils of experience."  Isn't that a great phrase?  

The anvils of experience.  Bill came up with some great phrases.

Hope and Love

You can be loving all the time.  This is your choice.  You may not have a reason to love, but you can love because to love makes you so happy.  Love in action only produces happiness.  Love will give you inner peace.  It will change your perception of everything.  Suffering?  It makes you feel safe because you know it so well.  But there is really no reason to suffer.  The only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer.  If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find."  Toltecs, baby, Toltecs.  These guys had some serious shit going  on.

My little walk through the Toltec book is coming to an end.  The author is concluding with a couple of prayers and this is his intro to the prayer itself: "Please take a moment to close your eyes, open your heart, and feel all the  love that comes from your heart.  I want you to join me in your mind and in your heart, to feel a very strong connection of love."

Our neighbor has a rescue dog that was plucked from the mean streets of Mexico.  This dog is the happiest dog in the history of the universe.  The name she was given in the rescue kennel was Hope and a more appropriate name I cannot imagine.  Her tail is in constant motion and she is overjoyed - thrilled! - to see anyone and everyone.  It looks like she is meeting everyone for the first time or that the person approaching is her best friend in the world, someone she hasn't seen in forever.

I fancy myself a dog person.  I usually lower myself to the dog's level - often plopping my ass right down on the pavement - and I whisper sweet nothings into their ears.  Dogs know love and they really respond to this.  I'm acquainted with a number of these animals who react enthusiastically as soon as they pick up my scent.  But Hope?  This dog thinks I'm god.  I also give her a mini carrot which she receives as if it were choice filet mignon so this might have something to do with her affection but - seriously - she loses her shit when she sees me.  It's one of the highlights of my day to see this dog.  It's a perfect manifestation of love in my eyes.

The World Doesn't Want to Wait

 "Each effort makes the next time a little easier until there is maximum strength or full growth.  Some things challenge our very existence.  It is the nature of things.  But every effort we make weakens the challenge.  If we will not give up, but move and rest, move and rest, the breakthrough comes."

It is the nature of things.  Damn, I love that concept.  There are so many variations.  It is what it is.  There is no explanation that is going to satisfy the human inclination to be frustrated at misery and pain and death.  The good news is that we get to feel everything and the bad news is that we get to feel everything.

It reminds me of the young woman who found herself in a work situation - still bartending, can't imagine how miserable it would be to have to go to an establishment that sells alcohol while you're trying to tame the almost uncontrollable urge to drink alcohol - where she had to deal with a belligerant and drunken patron.  She was clearly upset the following day, recounting for the meeting how the incident ignited a strong urge to drink which, thankfully, she fought through.  I spoke with her briefly after the meeting and passed along the bromide that because she successfully overrode the urge to drink she is much stronger and the next time she'll be able to override the urge to drink more easily.  I don't know her life circumstances well enough to suggest she find another job.  Her family may really need the money and she may have to put up with a job that involves drinking for a while.

"The world doesn't want to wait.  The fast dollar, the quick thrill, the big wind.  It all falls down.  The best idea of all is when we want to do something and do it well we shouldn't let the world know.  We should keep our heads down, our mouths shut, and everything else in high gear."

Peace V Stress

Stress:  The body's reaction to a perceived threat or challenge, and this can be described as a mental tension or worry.  (Ed. Note: I like the inclusion of the qualifier perceived in the definition.  I must also add that stress can be a very important reaction to something that does indeed need to be avoided or addressed.  Stress impels us to action and sometimes action is what is needed.  My problem is that I tend to manufacture stress, to see a threat or challenge where none exists.)

Peace:  Freedom from disturbance; tranquility.  (Ed. Note:  Normally I look at several sources to aggregate my definitions but this one nailed it on the first try.)

Peace like a river.  Think it, feel it, see it flow in smooth currents that will not toss the smallest boat.  Stress can raise the blood pressure.  It can make our ears roar and our hearts race with panic.  Stop, and say: "Peace.  Be still."  This has always worked to calm the storms.  Some people need stress to feel they are competing successfully.  Instead of quietly doing good work, the need to wrestle with imaginary competitors or hidden foes.  Stress is holding rigid opinions, but peace is a river with the power to make energy enough to heal a body.