Surrender to a Cold Flow

It seems to get hotter every morning at the moment, as summer takes bite before the rainy season begins. My streaming cold feels out of place in such extreme heat and the hot air teases the lining of my now hypersensitive nose, bringing still more sneezes and a rush of clear liquid the supply of which appears infinite! Discomfort and minor irritation aside, I apply my new practice on accepting everything to alleviate my sense of suffering and instead take it for what it is, part of a gradual process of cleansing and renewing to allow me to flourish once more.

It is not easy to accept these discomforts for what they are but once I do so I am less stressed and upset by them as they pass by soon enough, some things faster than others. Long ago, I learnt not to fight a cold with medicine and to surrender to it to allow it to run its course. In so doing, it ended sooner - recovery was thus facilitated by this casual, trusting approach to minor illness. Medicines sometimes made me feel better but they usually prolong the illness and also they prevented the body shedding whatever it felt it needed to shed that had it ignite the dormant illness within. After all, illness comes when we resist something or have something to remove that we have taken into our body through trauma or emotional distress. With illness our body communicates the acts and omissions that bring it pain. If we listen, we learn and move on.

So with this in mind, tissues galore piling up in my waste bin, I am starting yet another hot day in this week I began so well by choosing calm. For the most part that chosen state has prevailed, allowing me to rest and recover. When fears, doubts and anxieties flutter by, once I see them for what they are they pass on, disinterested in this erstwhile victim they had targeted, leaving me just to be – peaceful, tame, unquestioning.

That last one is interesting: as many of us humans do, I seek to understand and know through many questions that set me on a path first of discovery and then control. So, when I simply make myself aware of what is but not question what I may or may not become (or if I stop when I notice I have started to question), I leave myself with no need to rack my brains and challenge everything, to be annoyed, resentful or frustrated. Instead, I savour the moment, sometimes just the very nothingness of an unused mind and wait until my feelings point the way to the next thing to be, do or have, to observe with curiosity but not to question. This then is the secret to much of inner peace – let go; do not question or challenge but be contented with whatever you have and wherever you are, for surely other things will follow when the time is right and resistance just delays their arrival still further.

So I am here, mug of tea nearly finished, pleased once more to have reached peaceful acceptance through my writing this stream of thoughts that come unprovoked, though welcome. This regular mental exercise is building a powerful muscle, peace through acceptance, and in time I will expand my ability to regenerate peace at will, on noticing the state that is less than peaceful and its probable cause, freeing me once more from a prison of anxieties and suffering, limiting my once questioning mind to curiosity, an observer of myself from a short distance rather than a drowning child without hope.