Perseverance

Well, I saw "Julie and Julia" the other day on SKY and was inspired to continue to blog despite the silence from you, my audience.
The topic for today is Daily Awareness. I've been caught out a bit lately with buying into some messages that my pernicious wilful ego puts out - it just won't give up! So I give the messages credence and next thing you know I feel down, I don't sleep well, I'm lonely, I'm starting to think of down-scaling my hopes and dreams. I puzzle over this new state of things, trying to work out what's wrong, and how it can be fixed. Do I need to move? Start a new job? Meet someone? Buy more things? What is it that needs changing?
Then I go to see my brother one day and I feel a connection and have a real conversation and I walk off a couple of hours later feeling stimulated and cheerful.
So this is a wakeup call for me. I already knew that the thoughts of not being enough, of being inadequate, of being ridiculous, stupid, not nice-looking, of falling behind, missing out, being side-lined, never 'making it' - all these thoughts I knew already weren't true. But because this realization about these thoughts was relatively new, it needed care and attention. Just like a young plant. It's above the ground and green and growing but it needed more water and sunlight and protection from the wind than an adult plant did.
I need to keep a look-out, in short. This is a bit of work but isn't it glorious work? Self-realization is clear and clean when it's allowed to be there.
As Sailor Bob said, "What's wrong with right now?"
If anything's wrong, I firmly believe it's because we're conceiving it thus. Death itself, if trusted and embraced, is not 'wrong'. It may require some adjustments - but it's a part of our journey. And there will be lots of little deaths before that - both ego-based and just in the natural order, as one moment moves into another, as the material scene in front of us constantly changes, even as I sit here fixed on my chair at my computer. There are new sounds coming in from outside, new conversations starting up around me. It's also like balancing on a big log in a river. I have to keep looking at my feet and the direction of the wind and the water. Fortunately at night I go to sleep and let the Self take over!