Here and There, This and That

While I was meditating this morning I was distracted from my concentration on the mechanics of breathing by stuff such as this: 

A couple of television shows I'm watching.  It's interesting how compelling video images can be, how deeply they can stick in my mind, how invested in the lives of fictional individuals I can become.

Future travel plans I have.  This is constant and on-going, my fascination on being somewhere else, doing something new and different.  Among my many, many, many blessings is that I have the time and finances to travel, important to me because it is one of my most consistent and enjoyable interests.

The mechanics of interacting with this new guy who asked me to sponsor him.  I am quickly reminded at how impatient I can be with new people.  He spends an inordinate amount of time wallowing in the consequences of his mistakes while at the same time trying to deflect the responsibility of these mistakes - his mistakes, done by him and him alone - onto other people, places, and things.  It's amazing how sorry for ourselves we can feel and how stuck in one place we can be.  Half the time I just want to shout in his ear: "This is you!  This is all you!  Quit rehashing what happened - which is your fault - and do this next right thing!"  I don't tell him what this next right thing is, of course, because I don't know what the next right thing is for him, but when I make simple suggestions that he might explore he doesn't do them anyway.  I get it.  I didn't listen to anyone when I was getting sober.  I did it my way.  He'll figure out a path to sanity, or he won't, all by himself.  Most of my Ah-Hah moments materialize long after what this guy or that gal shared nudged me into action.  At the time my usual response was to dig in my heels and refuse to budge.

Jack Kornfield is now talking about the connection between what I can do to expand my inner consciousness and how that then translates to my outer life.  The whole idea in growing spiritually is so that I can live a more satisfactory life in the real, carnal, concrete world.  It makes me think about that class of alcoholics in A.A. who go to one or two or three meetings every day, long after they've gotten some measure of sobriety.  I'm not criticizing these folks - I'm trying not to criticize them, I'm pretending not to criticize them - but this is not my path.  While I went to meetings daily for a good while early on I no longer do this.  I've got worldly shit to do today.

"Expanding our spiritual practice is actually a process of expanding our heart, of widening our  circle of insight and compassion to gradually include the whole of our life.  This is possible when we recognize that where we are is our temple, that just here in the life we are leading we can bring our practice alive."