Why is it?

When I stop to question, “why?” it is a fairly useless exercise.

Why does my friend have sinus cancer? Why are three very sweet women I know going through emotional crises because they have chosen to fall in love with men with addictive brain patterns? Why does life sometimes feel so crowded, frenetic, unruly and at other times so starkly lonely?

can you be the eye of the storm?

It is useless to question any of it while we spend our days. But mindlessness is not the answer either. There is such a thin line between taking responsibility for one’s actions, setting the goal to change and choosing to blame one’s self.
The hardest, most complex aspect of life for me is to be comfortable with not knowing.

Do I know where I will end up living? Do I Know how I will resolve my current very challenging circumstances? Do I have a plan for what I will become?

I look skyward and all of the balloons I once held in my hand have floated off into the stratosphere.
For months I stood beneath them and cried my heart out, yearning for the definitions of self as wife to Cameron, as Artist in Kelowna, as daughter to two individuals that are no longer alive. In just a few years I have stood by the bedside of three people I have loved and who were integral parts of my life. I have held their hands, been present to their spirits as they let go of this existence. Each passing left me feeling more unanchored.

sometimes stillness is transformation


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With no place to work and make art, with no people any longer in my life who held a shared history with me I felt denuded and thrown into a wilderness. That dark night of the soul lasted five months.
I continued to function during the day because I had to but the grief would come up and overwhelm me at night. When my first marriage broke up, I could call my mother. When my mother died, I could cry into my partner’s arms. I could talk about my mother and transfer my care and concern to my step-father. Again, when he was no longer alive I could seek comfort from the man who pledged to love me.
The most difficult part of losing those you love is that you have no place to put that part of yourself any longer. Never mind not having a soft place to fall, there is no place to fall. Unless, of course, you have a spiritual practice.

winter leading nowhere

And finally this is where the last three years have lead me. I stand where I am now. I see that all that I held on to that has defined me in the past is out of my hands, flying away, irretrievable.
Can I be comfortable with the waiting, with the emptiness or opening up? It is no longer a question of “why?”. Life has become a deeper mystery. The discipline is to just sit with it and let it happen. But meanwhile, I am looking around me to find a way to keep the love flowing from my heart.

self dissolving, transforming

To survive the craziness of this time in society, I believe we have to keep the love moving. Because absolute hell on earth is to go to the dark place of bitterness. The deepest pain we can put ourselves in is to refuse to be open. There is no way out of this contract we have signed. Why is there pain? What is the point of asking? Just kiss it better yourself if you have lost “the others”  and get on with it. What ever it is. And find places to give affection as you move through the day.

Why? How the heck would I know?

Which Way Up the Mountain?

Recent events where people I see as friends or care for have caused me pain through their comments or actions have served to further my practice and so I work my way through the sadness.

Try to stay calm

Try to stay calm

There are many ways to higher ground, we are taught. No one path is singularly correct. But what they all have in common is the pushing against gravity. Leaving the primrose path, walking at stressful angles, breaking a sweat. The difficulty with Buddhism is that it asks of you that you “Step back from yourself to have a clear mind.”

How much easier it is for me to react when those I would befriend goad me to reaction. How much easier it is for me to blame, to re-victimize myself than to observe both the mindset of the other and my own weak and needy responses. The habit of criticism. The habit of judgment. Those I have honed to a fine point.

Thoughts circle seduce

Thoughts circle seduce

Both personally and societally we are encouraged to think in competitive terms. “The Universe is like a pie and when anyone gets a slice… it is less for you.”.. we are taught.

Games on the internet help us to practice habits of anger, retribution and competitiveness. Television shows feed back to us that the world is a dark and dangerous place. We are schooled to believe that we are all trapped in a “big brother” house of existence and that there is always scheming.

Where I am emotionally and spiritually at this time is trying to forgive myself. Each time someone goads me, or lays out a competitive scenario, I see myself engaging and giving the script power through my reactions. I observe my attempts to be superior so that I don’t feel inferior. So much of my energy is wasted in Dukka. So much of my time is involved in going back over the past. I actually envision myself as a primitive being, raking over the coals of a dead fire looking for the shards of what I have lost in the blaze. Ruminating, rerunning the script, rewatching the video of someone unskilled attempting to create a surface out of me to project their own games. I comply. I am drawn in.

flowers are able to take us to another dimension of happiness

flowers are able to take us to another dimension of happiness

It is almost like the proverbial emotional elevator, only the elevator has an attendant wearing the beautifully vibrant white gloves… motioning aboard so that I can go up… and be elated or go down to depression. “We are now at the floor of poor me apparel, ” the operator tells me.

The best I am able to do at this point in my development is practice. I practice observing myself.

I am pleased that I allow myself to feel the full sting when an event occurs which is sudden, surprising and upsetting. However, at least now I can see how all interactions are …interactions. Being happy and content is catching.

The energy is catching. So my desire to live more consciously and more fully is about coming back to self. The questions: “Who is thinking this thought”, “Who is living this moment” are powerful.

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symbols, icons to remind us to be peacefully loving

symbols, icons to remind us to be peacefully loving

What I big, fat capital I want….. I see myself grasping, attaching like a four year old running to every object in the room and picking it up. I want. I need. I must have. They don’t like me. What did I do wrong? Why can’t she treat me kindly. Why is life so unfair. Why do I have to suffer? I am an innocent..

Now I see with this amazingly highly honed practice of focusing on desire, self and ego, I am able to be justified. I am able to be righteous. I am able to go out into the competitive jungle, armed and ready for a thousand losses.

Practice is Perfect. What I am trying to teach who ever is writing this, who ever is thinking this, is that I am evolving.

My desire to control others, to be a “good” girl and not break rules, to be liked by everyone, is (I have come to realize) actually ego.

Wayne Dyer has said, “What other people think of me is not my business.” I love this statement. On my steep and faulty climb up the mountain… I use it as a stick to lean upon.

How does one protect self, act in a loving way toward self and still be compassionate? I hazard a guess that it is by realizing that the world of competition, envy and judgment is a created world. To remember that hurt people hurt people and that we are ALL hurt, helps with finding compassion. Even turned inward to oneself who is a perfectionist. I am where I am right now and it is one frickin big mountain. I can hear myself breathing.

Five Precepts

Buddhists are encouraged to follow five precepts,

These are the Five concepts.

  1. I will not hurt a person or animal that is alive.
  2. I will not take something if it was not given to me.
  3. I will not have sex in a way that is harmful.
  4. I will not lie or say things that hurt people.
  5. I will not take intoxicants, like alcohol or drugs

This is the path I am huffing up….so bloody steep. But practice is perfect.

What is Valuable? Kelowna fire!

When people flee their homes in the face of destructive fire, the wall of wind and flame attacking, what do they take? They take first that which is alive. The cat or dog that climbs into their laps and offers warmth, closeness and the trust of dependency. They gather their children, their loved ones and head for safety.

grand daughter's delight

grand daughter

And they take the past. As they open the door to the car, they take that which keeps the doorway to the past open. Currently, that can mean a computer with the scanned images of babies. For me, baby pictures of my mother, grandmother, my children and grandchildren. These are all a reminder that we share an experience of dependency, of realtive innocence. We all were once at the mercy of others.

It helps me to be forebearing of my forebearers. It helps me to remember my own callousness and love toward my babies. It helps to get perspective on the chain of hope and dysfunction which comprise our family history.

reaching us from the past

reaching us from the past

Actually, there are various http://pamelaannschoolofdance.com/class-schedule/fall-19-20-schedule-all-black-page-001/ best viagra online decree medicines, that are the component of our life, and majority from us need these by the advance of time. Before prescribing pamelaannschoolofdance.com cheap viagra no rx, your doctor will make sure that you will get the exact product delivered on time to your doorstep. So you should stick to your doctor’s advice for the recommended amount of pamelaannschoolofdance.com cialis generika maca to take. It reminds me again of how important it is to be cialis consultation identified and corrected in order to restore the erectile function. The scrapbook of drawings and report cards that I compiled of my children’s movement through childhood is valuable. These things are first.

Next, the question of living in a Kafkaesque world demands attention. Does anyone embrace the opportunity to deal with bureacracy? The passport, insurance policies, governmental forms are like garlic to keep the vampires of civil servants away. The sucking out of time, energy, money from our lives while we hold on the phone or stand in line is to be avoided at all cost.

There are those whose plunge into chaos elicits the desire to take as many objects as they can. Interestingly enough it is these very people, whose gift is accumulation, who will replace every item within months. Things are like a nest for some. We stuff them around us much like a child who has toys and a plethora of pillows on all sides as a wall of defense against the world.

As my husband points out, in ancient Sumeria people worried about giving enough grain to the king. There have always been worries and grief around valuables.

The most important thing to do during a crisis that means loss is to focus. Save those things which remind us why we are here. Save the symbols of love because they help us to remember. Remember to be compassionate and to love.

Are We All In Synch or in Sink?

Dropping the yogurt out of the mini-frige that we now use, I was thinking. First of all the mini-fridge was our response to our big refigerator dying. We had one upstairs for lazy use. Now it is downstairs as the principle unit. We also purchased a small freezer. It was our individual response to a sudden economic downturn in our household.

Reading the New York Times I see that the direction that people are heading is to get rid of their large refridgerators and purchase the 1/2 size with a freezer unit separate. Drinks are made refreshing in a cooler kept operational with bottles of frozen water.

Once again, we are not alone in our paths in the universe.

Whenever I paint the walls a new, inspiring color, I discover that two or three years later it is the “in” designer color.

I will have an idea for clothing design and several years later I will see it via internet designers videos.
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The issue of time or busyness is also a group delusion. What if I wasn’t so busy that I don’t have time to sit and read with a nice cup of tea at hand? What if I believe that life is too much, too fast and I am making the choices to take on too many goals, too many projects to accomplish in a given time?

What do I get out of these decision: adrenaline, a sense of importance, distraction from what I am truly feeling, a sense of competitiveness with others, avoidance of the conditions that we call boredom, avoidance of intimacy and connectedness to others, a sense that I am accomplishing something. It is ultimately an avoidance of realization that all I am and all I have will change and end. The sense of racing through time is ultimately a way to avoid time.

In so many ways I am directly and subtly tied to the physics of world culture. As I dropped my yogurt because my fridge is too full, because I did not take the time to place objects carefully on the shelf, because I had purchased two yogurts due to lack of concentration, I had a moment of clarity. About business and being greedy for things and experiences.

Am I in a state of equinamity? Most definitely not. However, I do “get it” when I drop the yogurt on the floor. There is hope.

Economic Downturns, Looking Backward and Dream Life

I was intending to recapitulate my journal from last year’s journey. The trip through time will continue. But for now I have much to think about…out loud. Recently, I reconnected with some amazing people from my past on facebook and it has given me energy to think about my future with enthusiasm.

We hear the drone of disappointment and defeat all around us. The media is like a fun house of dark glassed mirrors reflecting back not reality but the reflection of a reflection. We are being lead to the ship’s hold of despair where we are, it seems, supposed to just lie down, close the lid and wait until the economic ship reaches some fantasy shoreline. The promised land of future delights will be discovered. “This is your captain speaking.”

I have some difficulty believing what the media tries to create as reality, more difficulty remaining passive and docile when politicians sing to us and the most difficulty of all believing that the limitations we put upon ourselves are anything more than waking dreams.

eyes explore vibrancy

eyes explore vibrancy

Always, there is a door in the wall. It is not a fact that when one door closes you have to climb out of that tiny, sky-high window from the 1950’s that seems to be in every action flick. The wall has a door. Just move around a bit and let the light change over the surface.

So while I had intended to look over my shoulder at the past year, I have been swept up into gazing back over 25 years ago.
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What my former students have taught me is that the gift of obsession, the passion for exploring the creative and intellectual skills can make a life. It is a life that is surprising, energizing and ingenious.

I have never been a fan of the ploddingly circling around a pole. The repetition of a job, job, job. Day in and day out knowing exactly what each hour is scheduled to bring is soul killing.

My hope is that during this economic downturn we all “grab the wire” and get ourselves hooked up to a greater source of energy. No Not red bull.

Lying down and enslaving ourselves to the dream life will not bring resolution to either the economic downturn nor will it create the synergy that is needed to revitalize our society.

Get up and dance!

Liberals, Coalitions heating up for Winter

Birken Forest statue of Buddha

Birken Forest statue of Buddha

One of the warmest winters ever according to my sister-in-law from Denver. It is 65 degrees and no snow. Here the delphinium thought they would give it another try and almost made a blue triumph when they were frozen in their tracks.

Athens is in flaming dismay with the fighting on the streets. Afghanistan hits the news again with more explosive deaths. O.J. finally is put away in prison. Images of people carelessly cut down in Toronto…the good.

Back in Ottawa we are watching the machinations of the conservative government attempting to secure a foothold on the face of government while citizens are worried and distracted. It is excellent adherence to tactics that Machiavelli laid out. Distract and attack.

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Where are the stimulous packages for the economy, where is the husbandry of the environmental issues, where is the concern for protecting and guiding citizenry through a tough time when they need health care, pensions, and programs to bolster them up during a crisis. Oh, I guess the government only just noticed that there is an economic crisis.

At a time when much seems to  be breaking loose from its holding point, individuals need more than ever to be like the elephant swimming a turbulent river, neither being swept away nor trying to stand firmly on the bottom which is impossible in shifting silt. Meditation practice and a refusal to be caught up in the delusional world become not only important on an individual level but begin to act as a steadying influence on those around you, on the economy and most importantly in the ability to rebuild another form of social structure which will grow out of the falling away of those things which are not currently working. Such as our party political system which is not serving us cake and funny hats.

We are in a period of change. Let us think about how this can actually make our lives better and more meaningful.

Tuesday All Day

Detail from building in Paris

Once again, Tuesday. Intentions are always fresh and dewy on Monday. Early lion catches the snakes. This week I will carry out all of my plans. Like lifting off in a plane, no matter how over cast the end of the last week was, no matter how much rain fell on the weekend, there will be sunlit clouds this week.

How difficult it is to stay in the seat. Thoughts are always to a future point in time, the destination or falling back down to earth in the darkness and pain of the past.

One of the most difficult things is to really see and experience the contact with others. My practice lately is to follow what Mr. Tolle suggests and to go into the inner body. I have also realized that I look AT a person’s eyes but not into them. In the last couple of months, I am able to look into the gaze of others. Not looking for what they can do for me, what harm they can do to me, what justification they can offer me. Just looking.
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I am a master, a black belt, a consumately trained member of my family and my society. The years of discipline that I have put into ignoring my body, turning off my emotions, relating to others as if they were objects and not fragile, delicate beings, the impatience that I have practiced is awe inspiring. As Pema Chondra has observed in a rough paraphrase, if an individual can train themselves so well, it is excellent news. Now just use that skill and dedication to train for new goals.

The focus on art is a focus on spirit. The exploration of media and energy is an exploration of the inter-connectedness of self and universe. The path inward is a path outward. To be patient and not drive the process is so easy in my art. I ask for this same ease and self-care in the art of living.

Tuesday is a new day. All day.

Placement in the World

Buddha blessing our home

Living in the head

I think my mind is me

but all the heads,

Like Easter Island

enlargements of a self

facing outward

from a deforested land

largelips curled over words of the wind

blow back into flattened features.

We are erected by the culture

long lost to us

the history of DNA carved into stone

We think we are alone.

The eyes cannot turn

to see others

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visionless

lining our peripheries.

We are ungrounded of the ground.

The questions of Why, by whom and how

Are not asked nor resolved.

So much of my life has been a life of mind. Either living in my mind or in fear or mentally tumbling into the future. Like cleaning the next room and not the one I am in. Living with lists moving from item to item feeling only good when something is crossed off. For that thirty seconds there is relief until the flood of anxiety, fear and fury return to spur me on to do more. Each item on the list lifted up and off the agenda but the next floods in to take its place.

My eye travelling across the landscape of vision seeks imperfections. Weeds here, dust motes there, a picture not aligned, a splotch of sandwich on the corner of a mouth, a part in the hair which has departed from the line, one toenail longer than the rest, fluff on the inside of a sweater.

Like a spider, I move out into my day from morning’s support on one side to evening’s cessation on the other to weave busy lines and fill them in. If anything tears or destroys my vision, I will repair it after a period of grief, illness, sulking or laying in the dark cave of recovery.

It is a curse and a cure. It has kept me alive and almost killed me. It has kept me passionate and exhausted. It has created attention and deprived me of friendship. It has incited admiration, adulation, fear and envy in others.

Perhaps the best thing I have heard of late, while exploring the idea of metta sutta or loving kindness even unto self, is to realize that the self has a balance of cycles. It is just important to stand back far enough to see it.

Life might not be balanced hour unto the hour. The balance may be over a week or a month or a year. There is a pattern.

All each of us can do is gently try to teach outself, entice ourselves, reward ourselves to move from the place of compulsion into a place of compassion. Oh, and let the weeds growing under the flowers be. There are part of the landscape. Enjoy the shimmer of the rain on all of the leaves.


Ross Freake, Stan Chung and weeding my web site, Dharma practice

There is so much impacting in my life. Tasks, objects that I have collected, ambitions, old habits of drama that I wish were old habits of Dharma practice. After another visit to emergency and a night with pain killers dripping into my veins after four tries to insert the IV, I am again in recovery mode.

The residual scaring from my cancer surgery seems to be the cause. Just as it is the residual scarring from my childhood that leaves me feeling alone, embattled, frantic and constantly trying to control life. What a futile and pathetic waste of energy. The ability to begin with self and give oneself a strong physical basis for all action, is a spiritual practice.

I keep likening my body to a horse. “I want to get it under me,” I sob into the felted paper tray I am given in the hospital to vomit into for five hours, ” I want to ride with my body in ease.” But I keep returning to debilitating states of exhaustion and recovery.

As I was pruning back the stubborn thorn tree that I mistakenly thought was a good idea because it presented itself as a rose bush, I reflected on the process. I tried to dig it out but the roots were too wide and deep. Lacking the physical strength and the place to stand to leverage the amazingly lethal plant out of my garden, I have adapted the strategy of pruning. First I prune for others. I cut back the razor thorned branches where they will tear at strollers and senior citizens walking past my fence. Next I prune for the other roses. I cut back where a more benigh, less exotic rose bush was planted.

As it loses strength, I am now able to prune it back for me. Cutting the weakening branches in this third year of work, I can begin to see that there is space to plant the giant Lupines that I love. The deep blues and purples harken back to another, gentler time when tall stems of flowers stood in an English garden or Victorian settings. It is a time and a style that holds my heart.

So like the rose bush, I have to learn to be patient with myself and my habits. Congratulating myself for every minor pruning for every small change.
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This morning, I was victorious. Insteady of cleaning the house and weeding the spam of 50 chances to gamble from the comments on my web site, I drug my screaming ego out the door and went for a walk. Only 30 minutes, I promised the ego that clung to the threshold of the doorway. I dug my fingers off of the molding and out I went.

The trees in the early morning light were luminous and transformed my spirit. I met a silly cat that followed my progress up “her” alley by sticking her head through the square holes in the lattice spaces one after another monitoring my walk. An old dog, blind in one eye was glad to see me… however he saw me.

Then when I got home, I pruned that gothic rose bush, weeded my web site and fed my blog.

I am so grateful that the media carries columns by Ross Freake and Stan Chung. These two spiritual practitioners provide the public with a gentle call. The chance to awaken and observe self is now in the popular media. It is a sign.

We need nurturance, pruning and the ability to weed out from our lives…well you know what is growing in your own garden. If you don’t, stop running and walk around for a look.Ego, repetition and frustration

Judgment and Lightness

Peace Rose

Yesterday, I picked a beautiful purple rose that has only perfume no thorns about its being. My practice is to go out on my bike to work, carrying a rose. The first person who remarks on the rose peeking out of my purse is the owner.

As I was riding, I saw a young woman wearing very short shorts with cuffs. My mind began, “Those shorts are extremely short. That is strange to see in Kelowna. I wish I had young legs and looked that good. What is she doing showing herself off like that. BlahBlahBlah.” As I passed her, the rose fell out on the ground. She spoke to me in a clear, sweet voice and said, “Pardon, you have drop something.” She was from Quebec. I yelled over my shoulder, “Thank you. The rose is yours.”
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What an amazing experience to go from having my mind chattering along in its anxious, jealous, negative manner and then feeling light, free and really, really good about myself and life. I could feel the weight lifting. Oh, I thought to myself, that is what Pema Chondra, Thich Nah Han and others are trying to show me.

It just feels better to be generous in spirit than to be jealous. It is ultimately good medicine.