So I think, sometimes, that the spiritual challenge, the life challenge, the daily challenge, is to hang onto myself. Every day, I am learning to find what one friend calls the quiet place inside, and go there. It is my place, out of reach of the anger, frustration and confrontation that sometimes seems to swirl inside and out.  One person posted on my Facebook page today that we have lost our humanity and society is breaking down.

I know some people feel that way.

I do not.

I  find love and humanity and society everywhere, and I look for it and am open to it, and I do not accept that the news is the reality of life in our world. For me, it is not. I have worked hard to live in a different world and to look at in a different way. So does my wife. That is a choice. People are drawn to drama, conflict and disintegration. I’m not really sure why, except that fear is crippling and destructive, and  it is addictive and profitable. I believe the very definition of awakening is to not accept that bleak and fearful view as reality, and look for a different truth. I find beauty and connection everywhere, where real people live real lives every day, even as that idea is continuously challenged or discarded.

Sometimes, like everyone else,  I worry about things. Money, health, life, death,  my family, civility and all of the things we are told almost hourly are urgent and important things for us to worry about and prepare to lose. The notion of a world losing its humanity and society is popular. I hear it everywhere I go. I do not believe it, and I do not accept it. Instead,  I am learning to go to the quiet place inside of me, and I hang onto myself. I am not giving myself over to that other world as I did for so many years, and at great cost. The real terror for me is not I will lose my pension and health care and mortgage. The real fear for me is that I will succumb to this gray view of the world, a vision created in large part by immoral and hollow or angry people who make a lot of money from frightening and angering people. The world I live in has its own problems and troubles and surprises, but it is also a place of love, connection, creativity and affirmation.

I have not lost my humanity and my world is not breaking apart. I am hanging onto myself.