Dear Friends,

Happy July, I think. Is it summer? Is it July?

While everything appears to be upside down and topsy-turvy in the apparent world, it is essential to stay close to the only “real” world there is, your inner world. Stay in touch with your sweet selves.

Remember, wherever you place your attention, you build an altar. Enjoy the July E Letter.

Much love,

Gopita

A Necessary Dissonance

A confused mind is a violent mind.
This is one of the many profound statements said by Byron Katie, originator of the Work, a radical way to question our minds.
How are we to handle the cognitive dissonance, the certain remnants of mental illness we will surely endure, if not develop, from this strange and dissociated time we are calling the pandemic?

So, go crazy
I do not think we are supposed to “handle” it. I think we are all supposed to go a little crazy; to have mental and emotional breakdowns. Perhaps a full- blown psychotic break for some.
We have no precedent. We have no defined event: a wildfire, a building being hit by a plane, a hurricane, a flood. We are enduring something which comes and goes, as New York calms down, an Arizona flares up. To say things are upside--down would be to minimize what is apparently happening.

A necessary dissonance

I wonder if a free-floating anxiety, an awareness of a new hypervigilance, a burgeoning PTSD, should not be unexpected. I wonder if the tenderness and mercy one would show to a small child in pain should not be mindfully extended to our sweet selves.

The way out is the way in.
For me, the more time I spend in meditation, contemplation, and service, the better I am and the more pristine the world around me.
As I question what I believe, I see the contradiction in my inner world and my outer behavior when I am unkind, discourteous, dishonest, or lack the integrity I have garnered in the last 40 years of spiritual practice.
Going ‘crazy,’ in my mind, is recognizing the insanity of the apparent world, and while acknowledging this, seeking comfort and the restraint of untoward behavior by turning inward to the only place I can find serenity, the altar of the Self, the place where I can find consistency and balm for a confused and violent mind.