July 12, 2020

Contributing to the Chaos while

Living – Life – Large

Dan Abernathy

July 12, 2020

Because of this massive disruption in the significance of freedom, for the first time in numerous years I was in Pinedale for the 2020 Green River Rendezvous. As strange as it was, with this choking cloud of despair in the shadows of the Wind River Range, it was also extremely enjoyable. Truly, “Shinin’ Times”

I was blissed with many conversations from many different people that I have not seen in some time. This made the “meeting on the Green,” a hugely enjoyable weekend.

As I have tired and desperately trying to remove myself from of the dominate topics that are out of balance and tearing this country apart. COVID 19, wearing or not wearing masks, politics, protesters, Life Matters and becoming a cashless society so Bill Gates can have his way, have become so redundant they have started to sound like the adults talking in a Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts cartoon.

I turned the conversations to more sincere personal questions leading with, “how are you doing?”

As I was caught up on their lives, they too, with questioning eyes asked me what I was up to now. My response grew into a consistent pattern of telling them that I am fantastically doing well. I have truly moved beyond the emotions of happiness and for the most part, I live a life filled with joy.

Happiness is an emotion, as are sadness and anger. Emotions are basically designed to be felt on a temporary basses. This is why the degree fluctuates with the emotions that are being felt.

Though I am a true believer of mindfulness, something that will help you find a way to joy, is to take the time to study the moment of each day that you feel happiness. What was the source and why did it fade away?

The more you think about these moments, the more you will search them out and return to them on a daily basis. These blissful moments of happiness can and should become the prominent and foremost elements of each day. This is finding joy, as joy is not an emotion. Joy is a state of being.

Find the awareness to recognize and know you are filling yourself up with the mistaken effects. When you are locked in that little world you’re in, the one you believe to be uncluttered and full of what’s needed. You use a lot of energy to inhabit where you are. At the end of each day you feel empty and confused of what it all means.

Then, in the morning when the Universe is knocking and wanting you to come out, you peer though the crack in the door where the light is creeping in. What can only be categorized with a type of fear, you turn and go back to all the paraphernalia you don’t know what is.

It’s feeding the control of the controllers and allowing them to slip into a permanent identity crises as the privilege is removed. Don’t believe the words when you are told you don’t want it. The auditor is regulating and directing the restraint to blend us together like the cell of a single heart telling us this is how we will hear the pulse of the future.

With your left hand you are lifted into flight by the wings of being as you trust yourself to believe. With you right hand you hold tightly to the lead weight of other peoples opinions and desires. Which hand are you willing to loose grip of?

Perhaps what is happening now is we have outgrown and outlived our broken systems. What we have been continuously told and directed to do, needs to be disconnected. So perhaps the world, thought it seems to be, is not really falling apart. It is just shedding its old dead skin.

Life is nothing short of a series of detours where the internal always will have greater strength then the external. With the true acceptance of this belief the reaction to circumstance is far more important then the circumstances themselves. Changing the perspective to these obstructions creates a blissful harmony within the person that you are.

I don’t want to play with the feelings of anyone. I wont ignore, downgrade or dismiss them. I will respect them with the attention that they require from me, but damn the frogs are loud tonight. - dbA