Oh, just thoughts.

I'm reading a great book right now and like only great books can, it has transported me to a place of deeper examination of my life. I just had a nice little nap/dream/thought thinking time and one thing I thought was, I'm proud of myself for the spiritual work that I've done so far in my life. It's nothing to write up in a magazine or anything, but I've examined a lot of feelings and desires and I've given great thought to practice, attachment, rules, religion, love, Love, purpose, and consciousness. I've thought a lot about regret, and about expectation, and about presentness. And I'm really glad. The lady who my parents took me to as an infant so that she could tell them about my soul and my life said that she thought I would be some sort of healer, or guide, or something, but she said it in a way that makes me think she knew I would just like thinking about emotional and spiritual healing. In my own life and in the lives of those I know. As in, not a profession, but a deep and abiding readiness to listen to anyone who also wants to examine these things. I'd like to say that as a teacher I sort of have made it my profession, but honestly, I do a lot more disciplining than I do listening and/or guiding. Every day I come home feeling sorry about that. I am going to try harder to make time for listening to these kids and asking them good questions about their thoughts and their feelings.

Why is it that I feel guilty when I write about me? On one hand, it's indicative of a person who doesn't stop to consider others or actively search out the greater human experience. I could be writing about what other people are going through. On the other hand, what I've been given is me. What we've been given is ourselves. It is through ourselves that we learn what our place in the universe is, what we're supposed to do with all this stuff, how we relate to it all and them all. If an unexamined life isn't worth living, then we should feel more than o.k. about examining our lives. I guess I feel somewhere in between those two hands. Totally comfortable with examining my thoughts, but not exactly guilt-free about writing about them.

One thing I thought about during my dream nap was: how do we reconcile the knowledge that all things are fleeting? I look across the living room at this person that I love, knowing that the nature of loving him means I will lose him, some day, and that it's silly to worry about when or how, because attachment yada yada. Does that make love less important? Or even more important? Consequently, when I'm in the middle of a bout of unhappiness, and feeling lonely (I'm going to conjure up a certain time period here, let's say Fall of 2003, or 1995 in its entirety) it's just as important to remember that this is fleeting, too, that it's all just for now, whether it's good or bad that we're talking about. Oh, wait, I think I've blogged this before. [checking...] here it is.