Powerless

Powerlessness;

of all the words in the english language, this one may be the foulest. Powerless, the thought is repugnant to someone who wants to cut a wide swath through this world. Imagine having no more sway over what comes next than the leaf that is pulled off the tree and blown before the gale. The leaf is totally at the mercy of the wind, to be blown where the ceaselessly moving currents will have it. Maybe the leaf will leap over a wall or rooftop, and momentarily climb to great heights, or maybe it will be swept into the first storm drain with little fan fair.
Of all the possibilities available to things green, one thing is certain, last years leaves have made way for spring’s new growth.
But if the leaf could waste an enormous amount of time thinking about it’s fate, about it’s powerlessness over the winds of autumn, it might also occur to the leaf that it is powerless over every aspect of it’s life. It is powerless to deny the new growth of the tree when it calls next year’s leaf to come forward and sprout. It is powerless over the rising or setting of the sun that is it’s only source of energy, or the rains that fall or don’t as they will. And it is powerless over the change of season that will eventually claim it. Yet these powerless leaves have filled all the trees of the world and in turn provide you and I with breathable air, air that we are powerless to provide for ourselves. But the leaf doesn’t think this thing to death; it just does it. Like the sun, the rains and the seasons, when they are called forth, they just happen.

The zen masters have a saying:
the swan has no thought of casting its reflection upon the lake as it flies,
and the water in turn has no mind to retain it.

The hindus also have a saying:
ask the gods of spring how the flowers bloom, and they do not know

but powerlessness for me meant only crushing defeat. I was at the dropping off point. I was facing a crisis of my own making that could not be postponed or avoided. I claimed I had mastery over my obsessions, but in truth I feared to let go of them. In the end they were the only things that I truly gave a damn about. I would tell you that I loved my kids, and I did, but I put nothing in front of my obsession.
A wise man looked me in the eye and said that if you have mastery, then you don’t have a problem, just stop.
I suppose the look in my eyes said it all. I didn’t want to stop; I couldn’t stop. The idea of living without my obsession was a hollow prospect indeed, a future I did not want to face, but I couldn’t go on the way things were. The spiritual pain was just too great.
Total and complete failure was mine. That wise man smiled and said this is where you begin anew. This is where the promise of a life second to none began for all of us. I believe that prayers have power, and i’ve been told that the one that has the most power of them all is “thy will not mine be done” god has a sense of humor, god took what I thought was the worst day of my life, a day wrapped in what I took to be pure misery, and gave me the greatest gift I know. Myself.
God lifted that obsession out of me like a surgeon might lift a tumor out of a sick man’s body. God did for me what I could not do for myself. And it all began for me with my admission of powerlessness.

My first step on the road to good stuff
richard