The Power of Process

This morning, reading from Dan Millman’s book "The Life You Were Born To Live", I realised the importance of taking things step-by-step. So much of my life I have been impatient, wishing for things to happen instantly.
Want to run a marathon? Do it next week. Uh oh. First I have to train. Do some preparation. This marathon called life teaches me that with every goal I have there is a process, a series of steps towards achieving it. I am not cinderella. The fairy godmother doesn’t appear and wave her magic wand. The ball gown is stitched together piece by piece over many laboured hours of loving work. I am learning to be patient with myself and in doing so, patient with others.
And in my haste to reach an end goal, this skipping over the process has led me to a life lacking commitment. So often when things have not worked out as expected: work, relationships, home, I have decided “this is not for me” and set off in search of some other holy grail. A life of rolling around like a smooth stone falling wheresoever the river takes me, I find I am without roots, without relationship and without a clear direction, goal or purpose.
But there is inner work as well as the outer manifestations. So I skipped a few steps on the path of career, home and relationship. There have been many obstacles on the path of achieving inner peace and calm. And now, in this time of reflection I am contemplating a way of building stability in the outer world based on the strength and calmness of a solid inner foundation.
Today rain cleanses the air, the ground. The power of moving water washes away all in it's wake that doesn't need to be there, just as tears clear debris from the path of the soul.

mail goggles

well, this is so pertinent, having just got off skype, talking to my dear friend paul. ahhh, relationships. the stuff the world is made of, in all it's splendour and brilliant colours. the folk at google have come up with a little gadget that aims to intercept human nature at it's most vulnerable. how often do you click the "send" button a nanosecond before you realise that you don't want to send that email. mail goggles is a way of automatically asking yourself "are you sure?" in that moment when you forget to do it.
i like it, but can't help feeling that perhaps this is one of those things that a google engineer thought of at 3am when maybe he'd have been better to wait until the morning and the cold sober light of day.
quite serendipitous, as part of our skype conversation made mention of the phenomenum of beer goggles. and paul explained how this could be stretched to take in the concept of hormonal goggles. that's when the conversation started to get interesting (off topic for this blog ;-)

into the abyss . . .

. . . this - from the recent permablitz newsletter - reflects a little of how i am feeling today.

Five simple steps to dealing with the modern world: 1. Find the abyss. 2. Approach the abyss. 3. Stare into the abyss. (Firmly, but compassionately.) 4. Hold the abyss. And gently caress the abyss. (Don't take advantage of the abyss's vulnerability at this point.) 5. Feed the abyss soup. Lots of soup, obviously, it being an abyss. The abyss will be tame now, but take it out of the house regularly to experience the wondrousness and fantasticality that is Life. Like, for the sake of example, a most exciting permablitz event...

My personal abyss feeds on a diet of chocolate coconut butter, and definitely doesn't get out enough.