Learning to Trust the self

To Trust the self is to trust someone who is kind and compassionate and wise.
Roshi told me that when we see these things in ourselves we trust ourselves.
I struggle with this. I wonder sometimes how long this will last.
This current focus of my life.
I want more than anything.
I want the practice to stick.

I have been practicing very hard for 6 months and this week the practice energy fell out from under me like a staged trap door. Since it felt so natural I said I would try to ease off for the week and see how it felt. I am sinking into a depression that I have felt coming for sometime. Doubt bubbling up in me. The  geological movements of habit energy in the tectonic plates of my past.

I know I must find a way to confront these forces and in some ways I'm glad they are showing themselves. Not just in some passing angst but in touching a truly deep place where I feel myself on the brink of vulnerable fears. When I struggle to share my heart I know it's because I am feeling wholeheartedly.

I hope to find the courage to stick this low spell out. I will try to remember my zealous self. My fanatic self who sat yaza and sat solid. I want to practice and I want to serve and I know that if I can see through this I will have confronted an old enemy not for the last but truly for the first time.

I hope to find a way to look at it without taking refuge without hiding. I made a vow to face myself and my fears in practice and now I have that chance. I feel grateful and yet worried at the same time. I hope I can see this through. It is my intention.

May the 3 jewels support me so that I may be of service.
Thank you for all who practice. For it is an expression of deepest faith.

Chasing The Sunset

Taking the plane from Denver to Portland
For over an hour at some godly highly thousands of feet up
we are chasing the sunset.
It appeared like the revealing of a long hidden dream
buried deep within my chest

except as I sit here and write
I say to myself
I don't have any dreams like that
and as soon as the words are thought I know them a lie
I do have one dream at least maybe more
to hold her hand and say I do
to hold her hand and hear it's a . . .
I don't know who she is
hell I don't even know who I am

and maybe that spot on my leg is a rotting cancer
they'll have to cut it off like they cut off my great uncles
his in a farming accident
mine caused by preserved food production
strangely similar circumstance
then who will love me with just one leg
the phantom limb a direct experience of something only psychically real
who will love me with no hair
with no job
with no dream
other than the one dreaming it

and then as the plane sinks
I get that same sinking feeling
like running into wall of water
of having your lungs filled with a lost cause
the sense that I will never find what I'm looking for
and knowing that I should be looking for an end to suffering
rather than a satisfaction of desires that are never sated

I know this and yet
my mind calls
maybe a raft guide
maybe a teacher
maybe a tour guide
maybe maybe maybe

a restless heart
a free spirit
imprisoned by its faradism
this old lure
love love love
has me always hooked
by flight from this to that
I pray I can find the strength
to just be still