happiness is a tyrant
It has been my experience that the most fertile soil of my life was the shit. The parts of life that I raged against and dreamed of escaping. The trash, the refuse, the parts I wanted to throw out so I could get back to strength, peace, certainty, happiness and joy.
I like to garden. Here's how I "make" fertile soil:
1) compost - which is nothing more than putting all the rotting organic trash in a pile and letting it turn into soil. It does this pretty much without any help from me. The only part I play is knowing what to put in and what not to put in - and what I put in is DEAD material, rotten vegetable matter, leaves and such. It's a great metaphor for life. Just toss in your trash, your dead material and the stuff you absolutely can't stomach. Toss in the trash that life hands you and let it do it's work.
Voila! Fertile soil.
2) Manure - aka shit. On our little hobby farm, we shovel it and add it to the compost pile. Again, we don't really have to do anything, just collect it and shovel it in. Another great metaphor - take all the crap you create, all your filth that you are ashamed of and:
Voila! Fertile soil.
I'm not saying anything profound here or anything we all don't already know. And yet, we are continually fighting and struggling to avoid the shit and get back to the "good" stuff. We are looking for a way to avoid the darkness and get back to the light. We are drinking and taking pills, and playing games, and going from one person to the next, and distracting ourselves with countless hours of Netflix in an attempt to avoid the struggle, forget the struggle, drown out the struggle and get back to the ease. We are obsessed with happiness. But happiness is a tyrant and a gaping maw that will never be satisfied. It's so much more peaceful to just shovel the shit and work the soil.
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