Notebook

What a disappointment — the day’s mail finally arrived and none of it was worth keeping. Now, instead of enjoying a nice letter from someone or paging through a new publication, I am forced to go back to work. Well, not forced, really. No one is standing over me, telling me to work. And no one ever does. For years and years, the only person who has told me to work is me. But it’s usually not necessary. I do my work without being told. At the same time, my work doesn’t really feel like work, because I enjoy it so much. Still, after I have worked, I know I have worked, because I am as tired as if I had been digging ditches or pitching watermelons all day. Sometimes I am even so tired that I can’t sleep at night. Or I continue to work after I have fallen asleep, which results in all sorts of strange dreams. The next morning, I’m almost as tired as when I went to bed. It’s an odd way to live, but I have grown accustomed to it.

It has been years since I have slept the sleep of the dead. I remember reading how the great teacher of personal revolution, Jidhu Krishnamurti, described his own sleep. Having resolved the day’s thoughts and conflicts each in their turn as they had arisen, he drifted off into a dreamless state, where he remained for hours. Upon awakening, he felt as if he were slowly returning from a vast distance. He was also careful to eat properly and to exercise daily. This, combined with living a full, purposeful life, gave him his unbounded energy. Shortly before he died at the age of ninety-six, he said, “The manifestation is beginning to fade.” In other words, the spirit that had worked within him for so long was now preparing to depart.

He claimed that making the decision to live a life of awareness, and to live in the present and accept things as they are, was easy. There is no doubt in my mind that we make things harder for ourselves than they need to be. Difficulties come, and difficulties go. Sometimes they are present in great measure all our life. But it is our response that matters.

Still, there is conflict. I choose to work like a dog and to be angry. I choose to eat too much, or to eat foods I know don’t agree with me. I drink alcohol and coffee and don’t exercise like I should. I am not really excessive in any of these habits, but I seem to be plagued by an excessive personality. Or maybe it is my gift. Maybe I am made to swim upstream, rather than to float with the current. Or maybe I simply choose what is most familiar, because I am afraid of the unknown.

With any luck, I will write myself to the answer. If there is one. If there really needs to be.