I am tainted and plagued by my own mind's workings. I realise it and every day I struggle to clean my mind, thus making my life easier.

There is one simple truth I understood, and I believe that also makes a quote of someone with far more celebrity and wits than me: there is nothing good or bad, thinking makes it so. I will refer again to the previous post with the 5 agregates. Since our mind is trained to run from or embrace something or someone that we like or dislike, we are never free to spend our lives in peaceful calm. Well, unlss your life makes it that way that EVERYTHING coming your way is actually "pleasant". And if it is, you become greedy. You want more of it. You get attached to it and will want that it never stops, or disappears. Thus not being the nature of things in this reality, where everything transforms permanently and everything is bound to ephemerity, this which we think "pleasant" now will lead to suffering later.

The only possible refuge from the workings of misery, wether now or later, is to permanently see things as they really are and be objective. Ecuanimity. Accept change and walk with it. If the waves are shifting underneath you and the high tide is coming, will you not be engulfed by the water if you refuse to change your position and adapt to them every second? So will us if we are determined to see ourselves, an object or person as unchangeable every day. The Chinese (I believe) have a wise proverb saying that if you look at a river, every second you see something different, because the water that is flowing is always a new one every moment. Such is truth about people too.

So again, our pleasures, as our miseries are coming from the inner workings of our mind. It is not only the change, but also what we make of it. If you had someone dear that treated you well one day, then for some reason the next day the person is grumpy and says something that diminishes you just because he or she is in a bad mood, your mind interprets it as "Oh, he doesn't like me anymore. But why, what did I do?" The change has nothing to do with you, your presence, your absence, your actions, but wth the inner workings of that person's mind and how he let the chain of action-reaction act. It might even be something as simple as he slept in a bad position and his mind, not being trained to observe the chain, went straight to the reaction. "I am uncomfortable - I don't like it - I am frustrated - must express frustration " and you go around hurting someone else. (Seriously, how often have you done it? I know I'm doing it, and when I actually think about what I have done, I can barely believe that I can be in such little control of my mind that it spills like this... around me and ruins the day for someone else). How many, just how many times a day do we do this sort of thing, jumping straight to reactions, when we are not even aware of what srtarted them? The only possible way to break this chain is to hold back the reaction.

It is the same with "love" and the other forms of love. "Ohhhh I am inlove with this person!" why? "Because she is beautiful/ because she makes me feel so great, like I have no flaw/ because she is nice". If it is beauty, we become attached to it, greedily wanna posess it and call it "ours", or let people see it in association with "us", thus letting us bask in the feeling of infatuation. So is it that person that makes us "happy" or our own infatuation? If she makes you fel great, by praising you and your deeds, then your ego is flaming. "Ohhhh I feel so good and appreciated!" Is it this person that makes you happy or is it she's boosting your ego? If she is nice, then you get attached to it. You want her to be nice every day, and if she one day stops being nice because of well, life, so she is in a bad mood, then you're like "Oh she is not nice anymore. I don't like her anymore". Is this love? Is any of this love? This is why the purest form of "love" is simply and naturally altruistic action. Ideally towards everyone, and particularly with someone you want to spend your time with and raise babies. Or whatever floats your boat. But someone who will remind you of these things when you forget them. Someone who's truly your friend and means you well. Someone you are not looking at, but with whom you're looking towards the same end.

I really didn't plan on writing about romance, it must be Valentine's spells working... or something! :P

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