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🤨 within my power 🤨

Posted: Fri, Aug 13, 2021 06:22:13 AM

many things are out of my power, i accept that and live a life where that is true. there are some things thaat are certainly out of my power, who someone chooses to be, is one of those things. in my social media, there are lots of folks i barely know, lots of folks with whom i am well-acquainted and find a bit tiresome and of course many true friends and peers. i have recently come to a place where i am culling out those with whom i have no desire to see what i am up to. as a result, some of those who are part of my life are not part of my social media life, by my choice. i do not have the power to change them. i do not have the power, to change my relationship with them. i do have the power to lock them out of part of my life and i have chosen to do so. i may live in a glass house, so throwing a stone or three, is not what i am willing to do, today anyhow.
sitting here off of the Greece coast on my last day of my cruise, i am okay with the set of decisions i have made today about who is part of my life and who needs to see the censored, curated version of my life. it is weird that i may love someone, without conditions and still want to keep them out of most of my life. there once was a time not so long ago, where i would be pressured and shamed into doing stuff i am not comfortable doing. and that time was not all that long ago.
living in a manner that is true to myself is an alien idea and i am still trying to suss out the boundaries between taking care of myself and diving into self-obsession. one might think that by now, after sixty-four years of circling the sun, i would have arrived at that spot a long, long time ago. for me the reality that has become clear since owning my secret shame is like being dropped into a Greek city, and trying to figure out where i am and how to take care of myself, as all the signs are in a foreign language and written in an alphabet, i do not know. after a while i begin to sense the geography and what is being said to me, without quite getting it. as a result, i wlk around, amazed by what i have been missing and awe-struck by how long it has been going on.
over the course of the past week, i have been in places where time is measured in thousands of years, rather than decades or centuries. i have walked on stones that are worn down by pilgrims fulfilling their spiritual paths or peoples protecting their homes, often unsuccessfully, from the ravages of war, natural disasters or the march of progress. i get to be where they were and glimpse into their lives, based on what they left behind. this may be a strech, but on this side of my FIFTH STEP, i see my previous self as kin to the Minoans, who wrote in a language that has yet to be translated. learning to live outside of the comfortable lie and figuring out what i need to keep, has been driven home as i walked through history over the course of the last week. i know that just for today i will keep what i need to keep on the path i have chosen and allow myself the FREEDOM to figure out my next move.

∞ DT ∞


Another Look

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Tao Te Ching

☯ The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao ☯

The Tao Teh King, or The Tao and Its Characteristics
by Lao-Tse
Translated by James Legge

Book 1

1) The skilful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels or footsteps;
the skilful speaker says nothing that can be found fault with or blamed;
the skilful reckoner uses no tallies; the skilful closer needs no
bolts or bars, while to open what he has shut will be impossible;
the skilful binder uses no strings or knots, while to unloose what
he has bound will be impossible. In the same way the sage is always
skilful at saving men, and so he does not cast away any man; he is
always skilful at saving things, and so he does not cast away anything.
This is called 'Hiding the light of his procedure.'