If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. - Abraham Maslow
When we can take a long view of our problems, we can sometimes see that we're using inappropriate tools to try to solve them. What's necessary for us to do is to move away, to detach. That may show us a whole new context into which our problem fits, and in which it may not even be a problem.
Detachment is hard to achieve when we're deeply hooked into a situation. When we send ourselves drastic messages like "now or never!" we're pressing our noses right up against the problem - a position in which it's difficult to maintain a balanced view. To stop and say, "If not now, then perhaps some other time," unhooks us and lets us remember that life is richer and more varied than we thought when we were hooked.
Crisis thinking can be like a hammer - it flattens everything. This can be our way of trying to control the outcome of our individual struggle. But when we remember that we make up only small parts of one grand and beautiful design. We can surrender our problems to it.
To be a competent worker, I will seek out the tools that are best suited to my task.
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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~Dr. Seuss
I really like that quote and that post, I'm confused if these are from the daily meditations or where?
I have been wrapped up completely in some problems and I've found that, well it's hard to explain, but someone told me right after I relapsed 5 years ago that when I get really obsessed and focused on something, that whatever it is is, in fact, not the thing that I should be focused on. And that is true, because the only thing that gets me that obsessed and focused on something is when I feel out of control, and am trying to assert control in situations where I have none. And the obsession gets worse and worse and worse, and the only way to get my peace of mind back is to surrender control, to detach, to somehow just get the heck away from the problem if I can or if I can't to remain in a 'constant state of prayer' or meditation somehow. Otherwise I can get enmeshed in some really, really unhealthy stuff with other humans that just spirals down further and further in to sickness. (I only describe it so graphically because I've recently been there. Recognizing I am in obsession and letting go is something that I am not talented at, probably in part because my background, my childhood, required obsession and I am realizing that it was a normal state for me and detachment is in fact quite foreign.
