Listening to the Breeze

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.
-Rumi (https://www.poetryverse.com/foreign-poets/rumi-poems/dont-go-to-sleep)


Once again I ignored Rumi's wise suggestion to get up and hear what the breeze is saying.  I went back to sleep!  Only to awake  again and again, and to  ignore the breeze each time.

My sleep is disturbed again...I am trying to get a handle on this thing going on so I don't allow mind to drag me into the trenches like it so wants to do. I think if I were to awaken, gotten out of bed and come here at those times, the breeze would have told me:   We use the mind, the mind doesn't have to use us! I need to keep reminding myself of that.

My mind likes to analyze. It picks up everything that is going on around me even when I am not consciously aware of it doing so.  Then when I need to figure something out...it draws on all those snippets creating a picture or an analysis of a situation. When someone is giving me news or sharing their opinion about something I will pick up how they are standing, the tone  of their voice, the position of their arms, what they are saying and why they might be saying it...what have they got to personally gain from it or lose.  I won't be aware of what I stored  until afterward when I have to make some type of judgment about the situation or a decision. Then it comes back...creating a film reel projection in my head....especially in the middle of the night.

Sigh!  All that information is coming back to me now as I deal with accepting what I have been told by someone whose opinion I value and trust...someone whose diagnostic intuition is somewhat of a marvel. The relief I was feeling over the last few days is dissipating like the air from a balloon with a slow leak.  It is, I am afraid to admit, being replaced once again with worry.

Ego is saying, "See...you are not out of the woods.  You need to worry. Take the "not" out of your bucket list just in case." That worry, like a slow acting poison lingers in the back of my mind even when I rationalize and pull myself away from it. It awakes me at night with its chattering.

 I know that worry is a completely senseless emotion not serving anyone! I know that projecting into a future that never comes is not a way to live.  I know my mind is just a tool and though thinking is a natural process of this tool, I can rev it down! I know that nothing "out there" can harm what I truly am.

Whatever this is...it offers a wonderful learning opportunity to deal with worry once and for all.  It gives me a chance to practice pulling myself away from future and past to present, from thinking to Self, from attachment to what is fleeting, temporary and unpredictable to that which never changes. It is a stretch I know...lol...but that is what I want to be able to do.

Besides, the biggest part of me still doesn't believe this is anything to worry about even if others and ego does.  So I won't be putting away my "Not dying bucket list" any time soon.

It is all good!