Wow. I just noticed it has been nine days since my last post. Sometimes I overdo it and entries come several times a week, or every day. Other times, like now, time sweeps by and I neglect to write anything. Part of the issue is that I have acquired the new blog on PsychCentral, which takes time of its own. Also, I’ve been traveling. Right now I’m near Washington, DC, at the second of three acupuncture training seminars. So I’ve been concentrating on studying and not on writing. Good excuses, but I don’t want to neglect WillSpirit, which has helped me heal even if it didn’t exactly take off in the way I’d hoped upon its launch.

Today’s short entry should perhaps be about unexpected consequences. Would I have found the courage to enter acupuncture training if I hadn’t had this site as a sounding board? Would I have been granted the newer and more noticeable blog without WillSpirit? Would I have discovered the (seemingly) profound spiritual insights of the past year? I wonder. So even if the blog never became a ‘platform’ for a larger writing project, which was my secret mission upon starting, it has been immensely valuable. Less food for the ego, I suppose, and more food for the soul.

I can accept that. I can accept a lot of things that used to be hard for me. I can accept the damage to my body that psychiatric medications caused. I can accept my tightened financial circumstances. I can accept the loss of my career and the giving up of my beautiful San Francisco house (a peace with my fate that has taken ten years). Acceptance is something first taught me, largely, by an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy practitioner. (Who, if he is reading this, should know how much difference he made.) It has been furthered by my foray into Buddhism. It seems to be the key to happiness, a key that we are simply not given to value in this culture.

One way to accept is to look for the benefits in every occurrence. As the saying goes, “it is an ill wind that blows no good.” Some of my most devastating losses have taught me my most essential lessons. By recognizing that, I realize that they are not actually losses at all, but exchanges. The currency of ego and materialism is exchanged for that of soul and wisdom. A fair bargain, in this case; the bargain is less than fair in others. Either way, we almost always gain something even if we lose everything.

We often hear of unexpected consequences in a negative context: “we drilled for oil and unexpectedly ruined the Gulf of Mexico coastline,” but they go the other way, too. For instance: “I thought all my losses sucked, but now I see they helped me find delight in life where there was once only sorrow.”

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