By Degrees

By degrees:

it doesn’t feel right to call it self improvement, most especially as there’s little real improvement and any sense of self is seen through as a temporary assignment to a role well played. So there’s no one present that actually needs to be improved — and yet everything has changed, life seems just a bit easier by degrees, lighter somehow, as if unburdened of a weight I never knew was being carried.

and of course, things are much the same as always.

so let’s call it self-surrender, or even better…

simply letting go.

again, my life is easier by degrees, perhaps barely registered on a scale of self improvement. My issues are still present, some large and others reduced to seldom being noticed. Honestly, I couldn’t really say what’s better or how things have exactly changed for better. There’s just no measurement here, my actions aren’t given towards a goal of judgement, not even in regard to the benefits I might have been initially seeking when I began their practice. Meditation is an example, started decades ago in the hope that at the very least I would be a more efficient, happier person, and at best, ultimately, I would be enlightened. Maybe some of that has been realized, I’m certainly happier, and it wouldn’t take much to be more efficient than I was back then, being a heavy drinker and lost in the fantasy…