If I was a road, I would lead to happiness.
The other night, after meditating at the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, my neighbor Steve Hart said to me that he is not a noun, he is a verb.
So many people think of themselves as a person. What we really are, Steve said, is a process.
Even though we have great discussions at the Zen Center after an hour of meditation, some of the greatest discussions Steve and I have had occur in the car on the way to or on the way back. We are very relaxed, speak directly from the heart and honestly to one other, as all great communication naturally does.
“Think about it,” Steve said. “Describe a dandelion to me.”
I talked about a green stem with a yellow flower that becomes a white ball of puff and then disperses to the wind. I didn’t mention the seed or the chaff that’s left before and after.
I am my ashes. I am my embryo. I am my process, and my process is happiness.
If I could lead everyone I know in only one direction, it would be to happiness.
Years ago, I wrote a book about how to heal depression without drugs.
This was the beginning of me pointing the way, even though I had been on my own road many years already.
This is the direction I am pointing and where I am leading when I talk about fitness, nutrition or natural healing.
I think six-pack abs look great on a guy, a little odd on a woman, but I get the general idea that people want to LOOK good. I want to empower everybody I know to FEEL good, and this is a process. This is not a destination.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”
Even though Jesus Christ was a man who walked the earth, there is a part of Him who recognized that He, too, is a process.
As I go through my own life, which like everybody else’s life has its ups and downs, I realize that despite my occasional turmoil and even extreme stresses I am actually getting happier and happier.
Whether this has anything to do with my regular juicing, my ongoing meditation, my yoga or qi gong practice, walking, praying, writing, loving my clients, serving as I am guided to serve, I can’t quite put my finger on any one variable.
If I was a mathematician, in other words, I would not be able to give you the exact formula.
Healing is this way exactly.
Everybody wants a direct road from A to B. Most of the time it ends up being a sometimes scenic, sometimes dramatic, often arduous and surprising journey.
As we age, as we mature, the process deepens.
It becomes easier somehow to hold the harder poses longer, to be patient.
The angel of patience is knitting. I am a knitter. When the going gets rough, I turn to my knitting. I have been known to get half way through a shawl and then rip the whole thing apart, rolling up the yarns I weave, as many as seven at a time, and starting over from the beginning.
If you are unwell in mind, body or spirit, somehow you have missed the signposts.
Maybe you misunderstood the directions.
I am the road to happiness. This is my way, my direction, my intentional outcome.
