5.28.17 A lot of things settle down

As we grow older, a lot of things settle down. That doesn't mean hard things don't come up, come into day-to-day life. It doesn't mean lacking for significant or grave changes, to study and learn to adapt to. But what we sometimes notice, in between all the activity of daily life, is a new awareness of connection to the cosmos.

     What we also notice is a growing capacity to delineate our own set of filters and assumptions with which we approach life, with whatever the cosmos is, on its own.

     In fact, it slowly becomes so evident, our own "baggage". 
     Walking outside our home, or washing dishes, or driving to the grocery store, or lifting weights, or learning to be patient falling sleep, or sitting mindfully with difficulties, in order to help them compost.
     The more we become aware of the parameters of our own stuff, much like a horsehair shirt, the more we can finally see.
We find ourselves finally feeling the weight of the horsehair shirt.
     We can touch the edge of the sleeves, feel it shifting around as we go about our days.
     It's almost as if we could draw it, or see the notes of the song that this set of our own predilections and assumptions and self-limiting convictions forms into.
     So that, if we can't shed these things, at least we can live mindfully with them, and at least, finally, have some modicum of awareness.
     At least at this age, intermittently, we are aware of how the vantage point of our lives land the world around us is skewed by these accumulations.
     So that, in all of these moments in life, when we suddenly find ourselves listening and aware of the breathing living existence of the cosmos, sometimes find ourselves yearning.
     To learn how to compassionately digest the crap that weighs us down, so that we can simply be with the enormity of the beingness of the cosmos.