He Reminds me to seek Harmony

There is a story we read once, in which a Zen Master, or maybe Taoist Disciple, travelled with a cook who was neither useful in the kitchen nor comfortable in the company.  He was rude and short tempered and cross with all servants and noble alike.  Finally, the Master was asked why he kept such a horrendous man around him.  The Disciple smiled quietly and replied, “He is a constant reminder to behave in accordance with my chosen virtues.  His misery is evidence what happens when One does not live in Harmony.”

He reminds me to seek Harmony.  Happiness, as everyone knows, is a poor and transient goal.  But people want to be happy.  The love of money is, as everyone knows, the root of all evil, but people are still whores for the paperchase.  And they blame the system for their misery, as they stack bills on top of other bills for stuff they did not need.

Harmony is easiest to find in quiet.   Drop ballast.  Find out what is important to you and burn the rest from your life, if you want Harmony.   Continue til you find Harmony or burn everything out.  If you run out of things to burn, you must start on yourself, for this is the only place left to hide your problems.  Actually, you can just start with you, since a) you can’t really affect anything else with intentional honor until you handle your own shit.  And being honorable is a great pillow, my friend, whether below it is a helmet or goose down. And 2) your discord is the low hanging fruit, it is the high payoff work, it is the sharpening of the axe as Abe would recommend.  It is the Foundation

You can find Harmony in the Foxhole.  Most people just cling to their programmed idea of god, in their fear, it is an easy blanket under which to hide.  If they are lucky, they hold to it and find peace in their lives.  This was apparently not my Path.  I thought the 3rd step was the stupidest fucking thing I’d ever heard.

Let me explain.  The 3rd step is an AA protocol in which you, after admitting you fucked up, turn your life over to (and here they get slick as snail snot on brass belt buckles) ‘whatever your understanding of deity’ was.  This is how they got credit for being non-denominational, as they spoke the Lord’s Prayer from the New Testament.  It was very much reminiscent of the ‘non-denominational’ services which were just Protestant, but they had koolaid and cookies and better than a shit detail.  Sure, we’ll go to see the Chaplain.  He taught us about Uriah Heap, and Uriah Heap kept us alive, maybe.  It was a good story, and then we heard the Band, and sang about a Lady in Black which would not give us Horses.

This must mean there were better ways to vanquish foes.  We found, after many years, that the only way to vanquish your enemy is to make them a friend, and best to start with ourselves. Ghandi had some great quotes about the Shadow, but Jung and my Druid friends are more in to the idea of ‘no man left behind’.  Yeah, I’m down for soul retrieval or MIA missions.  I can still wear black and feel good about it, even though I don’t Walk that Range any more.

But to trust something you don’t understand is to hypnotize yourself.  This is stupid in battle or peace.  See, if I am flawed, it is a pretty good chance my idea of deity is flawed. My idea of America was flawed, because they lied and cherry picked how we got here, so I went out to kill for them.  So doing the same thing for a god would be dumb.

The healing goes at the same time, I have found.  My understanding of myself and the cosmic plan sort of went hand in hand.  I never had a chance to change the world.  It is harder, but better use of my time, to turn inward, like John sang about.