Leaving Your Burdens Down By The River Jan. 23, 2022

Recently, I was speaking with some friends about that hardest of emotional tasks, overcoming anger, bitterness, grievance over having been wronged. We were talking about tools, or skills. It made me think about the tools I have used. As I said at the time, by my age of 76, most of us have had a dose of the most common emotional travails, heartbreak, abandonment, rejection, disappointment, betrayal and so on, from all the usual sources, work, family, romance. It reminded me of a Buddhist tale:

Three monks were on a pilgramage. Their order forbade talking or touching especially touching women. The three monks approached a fast running but shallow river and began to wade across. Halfway, they encountered a frail, ancient woman with a bundle of firewood on her back. She couldn't go any farther. She was stuck. One of the monks bowed before her and said, "Climb on my back and I will carry you across." Gratefully, the old woman wrapped her arms around his neck and he ferried her and her firewood to the other side of the river. He put her down and joined his brotehrs on their way. After hours in silence, one monk couldn't contain it any longer and he cried out, "You broke your vows and talked to and touched a woman!" The other monkreplied, "Are you still carrying her? I left her back by the river!"

So, to me, the question is, how can you leave your burdens back at the river, the river of flowing time and flowing life. There are many tools in my toolbox for that task. There are the words of wisdom saved from peope I admired, such as this one from my mother: "Bitterness is a poison; it corrodes the vessel that carries it." And I alsways refer back to Winston Churchill; "Be Calm and Carry on." Then of course there are the many Buddhist tales and words of wisdom I have gathered over the years such as the reminder from Baba Ram Dass to "Be Here Now!" That one is emblazoned across the ftont of my mind like a neon sign and I use it almost daily to spare myself getting stuck in the bog of ongoing imagined arguments, painful memories, painful knowledge.

The tool that I have used most reliably throughout my life both as a tool box and a tool has been creative journaling and writing in general. Last year, I wrote a book called TRUE ROMANCE about the three most sigificant romances of my life, all of which ended in disappointment and painful sorrow, but one of which also gave me the greatest gift of my life, my daughter. Writing that book was a way for me to exorcise the demons of disappointment, to get my story down on paper once and for all and then close the book.

Every day in working on the always energetic dementors of past suffering or unresolved conflict, I turn to my creative journal. For fifty years this trusty friend has helped me resolve issues and settle scores and to express my feelings through prose, poetry, drawings, and pasted clippings with good advice on them. This might not work for everyone but in my 20's I decided to adopt this habit and it has worked wonders for me, incuding the recently adopted and scientifically approved habit of the daily gratitudes! Today, I am grateful for my tools and my toolbox. I am grateful to have friends. I am grateful to live in America, in my little house in my little town, with my peaceful animal companions! I am grateful to be alive and well. They say doing the gratitudes can change your brain and I believe it!

Happy Trails - through both the outer world and the inner world.

Jo Ann As always, the comments feature on my blog is polluted and destroyed by robo spam, so if you want to reach me use my e-mail

wrightj45@yahoo.com