**See the end for the readings fresh on my mind this afternoon.
Everything else can wait.
For each of us as individuals, everything else can wait.
Whether we are feeling stressed, purposeless, or bored….whether we are lonely, overweight, addicted, or over-worked….. Whether we are just waking up as young adults or whether we are in our later decades of life….. Whether we are energetic and healty, or suffering a chronic illness and pains….
Everything else can wait.
For whatever interpersonal challenge we find ourselves in, everything else can wait.
Whether we have an unhappy spouse, a child prone to outbursts, a loved one who needs our care, or a major disagreement on principle….
Everything else can wait.
For whichever divided society we find ourselves in, everything else can wait.
Whether we believe the “other side” is to blame….whether or not we think science can help us…whether we’ve been made to fear a loss of power or privilege…whether we are fighting at every turn for basic recognition of our humanity…
Everything else can wait.
And for humanity as a whole. Everything else can wait.
As long as we primarily focus our senses outward, we will only compound our information about the external world. As long as we believe in the infallibility of our thoughts and opinions, we will be held hostage to the outside forces that formed in us those thoughts and opinions. The exponential increase in external information is not saving us.
Our clinging to our thoughts and beliefs is actually destroying us, internally and externally.
Our individual suffering and disease is so often a manifestation of the global, the societal, the familial, the interpersonal. We wish for and work for solutions that are global, societal, and interpersonal. And that we should continue.
However, all of this work is only half of the battle. It exists in the outward material realm of thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and ideas.
It is urgent that we address the other half.
And that half is the internal, right-brain intelligence, present moment brilliance that is our human birthright.
Everything else can wait.
What exactly is this most urgent work?
A consistent, committed, disciplined practice of a system of healing and self-realization.
Not another way to exercise. Not another playlist. Not adherence to another belief system. Not another instant shopping cart. Not a diluted stretching class. Not another quick fix. Not another credential. Not another pill to soothe us (or to “reduce risk”). Not a cooler group of friends. Not a shiny new significant other. Not the latest app or smart phone.
What exactly do we need to do?
We must develop our internal focus, strengthen our internal information processing, develop the networks of the insides that have waiting there, dormant.
We must power up our right brain intelligence that experiences the present moment, develops wisdom, knows stillness, and sees the false promises of power.
We must practice and train these faculties on a regular basis, if we want to save ourselves from ourselves.
We must seek out and find masters of these practices so that we can emulate and develop our own self-discipline.
For the mind is weak – until it is not – and the left-brain external-material future-past emotionally-reactive world is overflowing with distractions forever and ever amen.
We must wake up our other half. On the daily. Or as regularly as we can possibly manage! All excuses be d@*d!
I mean to say: all excuses be blessed and then ignored.
Until we do so, we will continue in ignorance on our self-destructive path – overflowing our material lives, gorging our bodies, destroying the planet faster than ever, over-pressuring our blood vessels, inflaming our precious soft tissues, imprisoned by our beliefs and emotions, slow-poisoning ourselves to escape it all, obsessed with individual differences and identities, and driving humanity to misery and self-annihilation.
Signing off on this glorious summery October day. We have the tools right here.
Ann
October 6, 2024
**Nexus (2024, Yuval Noah Harari, see also 2011 Sapiens), Whole Brain Living (2023, Jill Bolte Taylor), The Message (2024, Ta-Nehisi Coates), Silent Spring (1962, Rachel Carson), The Master and His Emissary (2009, Iain McGilchrist), Drugs for Life (2012, Joseph Dumit), On Learning To Heal: Or, What Medicine Doesn’t Know (2012, Ed Cohen), Alone Together (2012, Sherry Turkle). And things always on my mind include anything by my lineage great-uncle Paramahansa Yogananda, the many essays of Wendell Berry, & anything by my teacher Gil Hedley.