Fog

Today the skies are grey and there is a promise of sunshine later. The temperature is 58 degrees fahrenheit. Today is Thursday.

The whole world seems to be living in a state of fog. There is no clarity on any front, except in my garden where Guanyin stands solid, surrounded by calla lillies, daffodils, and purple iris buds about to burst open. The rest is a bit of a mess.

Oh, there's also a great conversation between Gabor Mate and Yanis Varoufakis, sharing their experiences with social disasters - one as a doctor who deals with stress and the other who speaks from the lens of political economy who once served as a minister of finance for his country, Greece. Both have voices that are calming, clear, and outside the mainstream thought in their respective fields. Both identify so clearly the challenges and the remedies that need to be taken up in order to avoid more movement toward self-destruction. In the end, they are willing but dedicated failures. Here's the link if you happen to have 47 minutes of life to spare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU1ZarHa7O0

Sitting with both joy and sorrow is a skill. First, things seem very foggy and nothing is easily understood. Then, one or the other - joy or sorrow - comes through and you find that your energy shifts in the direction of that source. It can be great - if joy enters first. In that space, there is a lot of hope, a lot of energy to both share with others (as in birthdays, celebrations of achievements, and reunions) and then some of that energy can be kept for yourself (as in cleaning the bathroom, doing laundry and enjoying the folding, and watering your plants). But when sorrow comes first, things are very different.

In sorrow, the energy dissipates. There is not enough to even move out of bed or a favorite sitting spot. Everything looks grim. Nothing seems to work, and things get lost, plants appear wilted, sometimes news penetrates into a part of the consciousness that simply deepens the sadness and feeling of helplessness about the conditions we must face in today's world: random violence (0r sometimes targeted violence for reasons that have nothing to do with anything other than identity), theft (as in the youth seen on security video strolling into an apple store and sweeping up all the devices then jerking the cords to break them free and stuff them in his pocket - with all the others simply watching helplessly), or the fact of the growing unhoused population in downtown. Sorrow.

Having the ability to hold both - joy and sorrow - is a survival skill these days. So taking up the opportunities to practice how to do this is really vital. The basic practice is accessible only through the body - it's posture, and breath. What are we able to keep in our awareness about ourselves in this regard? Sounds silly, but if those aspects of our being can be developed, the theory goes that the foggy mind will clear, the body will move with greater ease through these times when both joy and sorrow need to be embraced.