Contemplation Station

Reading Richard Rohr's book "Everything Belongs." It calms me down. I'm especially un-calm lately, a product of having just gotten married, lost my business, broken up with my mother. It's a time of shifts, and shifts make me nervous and tired. So I'm sitting in this particular place, where decisions need to be made about life and work -- decisions that will affect the next few years -- and I'm trying to be less freaked out and more contemplative. Rohr writes:

This "I" fixation, the I that I think is me, is the one that will die when I die. This passing self of images and who I think I am is ephemeral and impermanent. It is revealed to be a creation of my mind, a mist or illusion. My novice master called it a cobweb. He would hold out his hand and blow a puff of air. He said, 'That's Richard.' Tomorrow it may be gone. (Everything Belongs [The Crossroad Publishing Company], p. 85)

It's going to take some more work to get comfortable with the notion that "I" am a puff of air. But that is the path to peace, I think.