Direct contact

     “Our spiritual work is to live more fully in the present. The first given of life, the fact of impermanence, means that everything in our lives will keep changing. Joseph Campbell says: ‘Hell is being stuck in ego,’ stuck trying to control things so that they stay the same. By practice and grace, we can awaken into a new consciousness. The ever-present and ineradicable opportunity to change is a reason never to give up on ourselves or others. Then even hell is impermanent.

     As long as we are feuding with life’s rules, we will fear the direct contact with reality that is the essence of true growth. We will find mindfulness difficult because it insists on full presence in the moment as it is. We may enlist many outs to protect ourselves: money, sex, alcohol, coffee, food, smoking, drugs, and, of course, the ceaseless movements of our frantic mind itself with all its hopes and fears. When we look deeply into our fears, we see that, at base, every fear is a fear of not having control.” 
         Richo D. “The five things we cannot change … and the happiness we find by embracing them.” Shambhala, Boston, 2005. 

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