Control your mind and remain undisturbed. That is the secret of Perfect Peace....

Stress originates in your mind. The secret to remaining calm is to control your mind and not let anything disturb you. 
This sounds simple, but it takes a lot of discipline to maintain control over your mind. This is another part of a warrior’s life that takes constant practice to perfect. 
Meditation is a vital part of maintaining a peaceful mind. Meditation calms your mind and gives you a sense of peace.

A technique that can use to maintain a calm mind, no matter what the circumstances are, is to do the best that you can do in every situation. 
If you have done all that you can possibly do, then that is all you can do. 

There is no need to get stressed out about any situation, because you know in your heart, that you have done everything in your power to take care of the problem. 
Thinking like this slows your mind down and gets to the very heart of the matter. 
You have done the best that you can do.

There is nothing else that you can do, so no matter what happens, you have done all that could be done. Once you have done your best, let the chips fall where they may. 

This do not mean that you don’t continue to act as the circumstances continue to change. You continue to do all that you can do, and 
don’t focus on what may happen, but 
just know that whatever happens, you will address it as it happens. 

Remain calm and think rationally. 

Don’t allow things to get inside your head.
Control your mind. 

Don’t allow your emotions to take over. 
Think rationally and maintain your calm, peaceful mind.

ps/smoh

So what is a love affair other than Yes meeting Yes?

I spend so much time talking to people about their relationships with others and all I see is that these always reflect their relationships with themselves. 

We'll never get along with others better than we get along with ourselves. 

We'll never love others more than we love ourselves. 

We'll never receive love from others more than we receive it from ourselves. 

If we only work on one relationship, let it be the one here at home.

In my experience, when I am sunbathing in the wonder of ME, head-swooningly and awe struckingly drooling at the magnificence of ME, that's when I am completely open, embracing, available to fully engage with other, all systems go, just a big YES YES YES!!!

When I'm having issues with ME, to that extent I am not here for relationship with anyone else. To the extent that I'm shutting down to something in ME or manipulating or dominating something in ME, to that extent will I inflict myself similarly on others.

I like this and I see how each relationship offers a mirror that helps me to work on my relationship with myself. 

When I see that every one's function is to point me back to Love, relationship becomes a true communion filled with grace and gratitude. 

Hi Mirror!!!

 "Love others as you love yourself" is less of a teaching and more of a statement of what is always true and happening.

I feel like I'm looking in a mirror if eye contact is maintained.

Aspects of self that love flows through freely...I love those parts of you, aspects of self that get frozen solid; I love those parts as well. so putting the love of your life in the delivery truck create them in the ethers  l...someone that loves you for who you are, that who you are is what they love and vice versa...then you got a best friend and playmate to dance with through it all. 

May as well throw in mutual attraction and all in its right timing (both available), and roughly similar philosophies about all this stuff.

The deepest hunger in one's heart for love has a compliment manifesting somewhere. 

Why not draw that compliment to oneself? 

That way we get to see that deepest hunger made manifest, and to assist us as yet another beacon "home."

I don't seeing hoping as any indication of lack, at least not the hoping I'm talking about. 

It's a benign hope that the love is being felt/received/getting through not so that I can get anything in return, not because I'm needing anything back or even recognition or to be seen. 

I've left all that behind, I'm so happy to say. I just hope that something is 'rubbing off', some stress is being relieved, and some self-love is being felt 'over there'. 

Because, although everyone is entitled to their own experience, and not only entitled but welcome to, I love it when I sense people are waking up their own magnificence.

Then we can play in the fields of how magnificent we are. 

Or, as good friend calls it, our awesomeness.

Let's all dance, 

let's all gather right now in the clouds, 

in the water, 

in the earth, 

in the bellies of horses hugging the canyon wall in a lightning storm let's all gather there and dance until the cows come home.... let's all dance.

Home is where the heart is... two hearts united also creates quite a wallop within those two hearts, and has such an expansive nature throughout the universe.
It’s all one after all. 

The time will come
When, with elation, 
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf.

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. 

Feast on your life.

ps/smoh

So true re fear-conditioning, distrust. And, then we have to learn to trust our natural trust all over again...!

Lying in bed the other night, waiting to sleep, while Murray was scratching my head suddenly I was aware that each breath my body was taking was absolutely delicious. 

I could not believe how giving life is, that each time my lungs ask for air, life bestows it. For nothing. For free. 

That my lungs empty themselves so many times each day, even as I lay sleeping, each time absolutely counting on life to refill them. 

What an act of faith this body is. It doesn't check first each time to see if there is more air before it lets go of what it has, it just lets go and trusts that the next breath will come.

Life seems to run on trust necessarily. 
It trusts itself implicitly.

Distrust is learned, drilled into us by well-meaning humans, intent upon protecting us. They taught us that only through distrust could we survive.

Ha!
They could not have been more mistaken.

ps/smoh

Therein lies the challenge: discover the truth within each of the stories, and kiss the dross good-bye.

It's not for nothing that we keep telling ourselves the same stories over and over and over again. Without that constant re-inflation they would quickly run out of air. 
They're lousy with pinholes. Hold them up to the light and you can see how very thin they are. 
Like tissue paper. 
Like Swiss cheese. 
The gauziest veils of fantasy.

They're gasping for air. 
They're on their last shaky legs. 

Now is the time for mercy, for release. Cut off life support. 
Take no heroic measures. 

Read them their last rites, thank them, bless them, and release them back to Heaven from whence they came. Let them float upwards in a hail of blown kisses.

"Thank you. Please forgive me. I love you. You're free to go. I no longer need you."

ps/smoh

Fear speaks so reasonably....

The thought arose as I was typing that 

"Bring it!!" 

Being alive with all that excitement, all that crazy YES energy feels like unrestrained exploration into the unknown a knowing and wilful leap into cluelessness and mystery such gratitude for this gift of being me. 

I love this one so much and yet I fear it. 

This is what all the fear has been about in the first place I think, the ones who claim to be fearless are often largely mechanical. 

The fear is buried so deep we are not aware of it.

I'm being lived. I know, another interpretation, and so, not really the truth. But the truth is an elusive and some interpretations more than others just feel helpful sometimes in bringing me back to trusting trust. 

See that raven up there with the glassy eye, clutching his heart in his beak? 

That means something to me, illustrates an experience of what it feels like, sometimes, this being lived. 

And sometimes this writing illustrates it too but not to be taken too seriously either by me or by you if you're reading this. 

Well, taking it seriously is okay too, as long as the taking seriously is not taken seriously.

It's a beautiful morning here, so crisp and clear. And I'm hauling a load of crap to the dump - literally - later on. This life that is living me is taking me to the dump on a beautiful crystal clear day. I'm so grateful. Honestly...dump runs are a very deep motion, God's way of celebrating impermanency.

The world is opening as quickly as I am. The aperture of definition of self, other, and circumstance is of less and less interest. 

I prefer a life of a wide-open variety, with no past and no future, and just now now now now and now.  

Joy plays best in open fields.

Wanting nothing

Everything

I the sun

At the centre of

The universe

Each adorable spinning planet arranged so perfectly

So hot and bright

Those even all these tears of gratitude

For the mercy

Cannot extinguish.

ps/smoh

Don't hide! Come out, come out, wherever you are....

don't hide the voice. stretch it over the shape of worlds.

don't hide the movement. stretch it over the shape of bone dust.

don't hide the fear. stretch it over the shape of graves.

don't hide the anger. stretch it over the shape of the echoing bomb blasts.

don't hide the cocks, vaginas, ass holes and slimy longing. stretch it over the narrowness of visions.

don't hide the pennies. stretch it over the roads.

don't hide food from food. stretch it over the camp ground.

don't hide the waiting, boredom, frustration, disappointment, regret, and tantrums. stretch it over the shape of the tragedy face.

don't hide the making fun of. stretch it over the superiorities and surprises.

don't hide anything.

come out. come out. lose all the games. drop all the marbles and points.

no one is going to love us for anything.

don't hide.

stretch.

Always remember:

The thieves of Peace are thieves in an empty house
Because only imagination suffers.
You are That which remains untouched.

Peace always is,
Find and reject the imaginary rejecter of this Peace.

The I- thought is the thief of Freedom, and inquiry is the best way to destroy it and its tendencies.
You don't have to look at the tendencies;

The only way to get rid of them is Freedom,
And inquiry is the best way to Freedom,
So always stay toward the Self.

This is the abandonment of painful conditioning.

Abandon the notion
 " I am bound", 
and always face Self.

Namaste

ps/smoh

NB
Hatred is the result of ignorance combined with self-loathing.