Losing Beautifully and Winning it All.

Gray skies moving in again. It always seems that there come these few days in August that herald the Fall. Then it forgets itself and goes back to the business of Summer for awhile. But you know you've been warned. Something's passing again. It seems like that's what we have; things passing. They just come and go and we live in it.

Since my mind is clearer than it has been for awhile, I start to notice how my weather works. Most of the time for most of us, moving through a constant recycling of events, it's hard to get up on the hillside and watch the scurry apart from it. If we can, it often comes as a surprise, what we were doing, how we kept repeating ourselves, as if we thought doing the same thing would somehow turn out different this time.

As many ways as I have tried to get a handle on it, it always brings me back to the same place. I can only go so far with the tools I have. My tools are sufficient to see me through the day to day but never enough to lift me out of who I am. The past doesn't seem to taste all that good unless we change the way it happened in our minds. The same way we like to make ourselves look better on the wrong end of an argument. But everybody loses no matter who seems to win.

Life always comes back to loss. And I'm thinking that maybe losing is a beautiful thing. It could be that losing beautifully, with the kind of grace that hides itself in the process, is the highest art form of all. You wouldn't lack for material. You'd never run out of inspiration.

Your parents move and you have to go with them. Things happen to them and you are in no position to help. You're just there to be affected by it. It has something to do with preparing yourself for a lifetime of loss. Your parents break up, your parents die. Your dog dies, your girlfriend breaks up with you. You betray your friends, they betray you. All these things break your mortal heart and you keep coming back for more. Meanwhile you get harder and older and more complicated. The game structure requires it.

You keep needing more. Maybe the wanting validates you. I am what I want. And the flame hollows you out from inside. You wanted this, now you don't want it anymore, now you want that; let's face it, you don't know what you want. You just want something. It could be that the thing we want isn't to be had in the ordinary process of what's available. And it might be that this is the point. It might be that the moment you accept the fact that you will lose everything, in that moment you win.

You could work on not wanting anything but the hunger comes and it wants something, anything, something...you have to feed it. It will harrass you, try to scare you ...it can bug you and torment you...

...but, if every time the hunger came, this often undefined hunger that grabs the closest repeated pattern ...if you took that hunger and gave it the picture of something you really did want, something that would make it possible to enjoy the other things you do, must do, the simple acts of life... maybe everything would change because of it.

It could be said that we want freedom more than anything. This freedom is a freedom of being. It is the real freedom that all the definitions of freedom are based on; living in a free society, the freedom to move about, to have choices, to participate in the selection of your leaders, to express your religious convictions.

This freedom only comes when you hunger for the one thing within that is always free. Some call it God, some call it Truth or Self-Realization. But the only freedom from hunger comes when you narrow that hunger to the thing that frees you from all the hungers you have created to mask your need of the one thing that terrifies you the most;...real freedom. If you took all your hunger and reminded yourself of what you were really hungry for every time you felt it, it would come quickly. The eternal magnetisms of life demand and insure it.

The whole game of life is based on breaking you down to the point where you can accept the truth. If you can't win any way, why not lose beautifully? ...And win the very thing you have been denied in all of the false blinds you were deceived by.

All of the grief, all the tears, all the fear and the shouting and whining and arguing, the resentment and confusion, have done nothing to improve your lot. They have simply contributed to the greater store of themselves which gets you repeating them.

Once you are prepared to lose everything you become free. Once you know that nothing you can do will keep you here or maintain a single thing that you love, you have eternity in your grasp. It's so foreign. It sounds too simple. It smacks of defeat. It yawns like a horrible mouth of darkness; the unknown. I suppose it comes back to the simple faith of children. After all, you're not better off now are you?

Trust broken all down the line, on both sides of it...makes for a hard accepting. But really, where did you put your trust? In every situation, something more than ourselves is watching, even reading these words. Understanding... /huge peal of thunder just now, made me jump...funny. Funny I can say these things and then start at the thunder.