SAIL ON, SILVERGIRL!Published on November 24, 2014
I am not waxing philosophical these day, which feels good, but thoughts still come anyway, like this one prompted by how much young people often suffer.
If you are fighting the wind and the storms of life and having a tough time, try resetting your sails. I am amazed at Americans and Westerners, in general, that it never occurs to us to adjust our tack, our angle to the winds. We just tough it out and often take a beating.
When I was fourteen years old, I raced sailboats on the Atlantic Ocean including the yearly races at Marblehead, Massachusetts, home of the world-famous Marblehead Nood Regatta and others. I sailed a small sailboat called the Yankee Dory, where I was the crew and John "Beans" Marino was the captain, a man in his twenties. Some days, there I would be, way out in the Atlantic, lost in the deep fog, and praying my skipper knew which way was back home.
Anyway, I learned to sail and there are few more useful analogies IMO than that of sailing, being able to adjust your craft to take the wind and get the most out of it. With no engine other than the winds of change, we can sail wherever we wish. It came as news to me that the mind had a set of controls that come with it by which we can adjust our inner sails, our attitude. Everyone back then that I knew (including me) seemed to think that the mind, just as it came out of the box, was good-to-go and was not adjustable. We seemed to have no controls. You just used it as it is.
Well, I know of few products that don't allow adjustments of some kind, and certainly the mind is not one of them. In fact, the mind is infinitely adjustable, but you have to know where the controls are, not to mention when and how to use them.
Now that I am older, as pointed out earlier, it is very clear to me that much of the suffering I see around me, especially in younger folks, is mostly unnecessary. You can have all the youthful energy in the world and still persist in ramming your head against the walls of time, instead of learning to sail and go where you wish to go.
That is what the incredible Tibetan mind-training practices are all about. I'm not in the mood for a long blog, so, as using the popular phrase, "I'm just saying…"