I’ve been having wild moods swings. I go from extreme moods to opposite extremes in the span of a few hours. My moods have become extremely sensitive to the slightest stimulus and it’s really hard to cope with. It is, however, helping me find the discipline to stop putting unnecessary credibility into moods and feelings. When you have strong feelings, they seem so real and they seem like all of reality. But when they go from extreme to opposite extreme within hours, you have to stop and question their reality.
If you’re caught up in the “reality” of your perspective, then mood swings are a roller-coaster ride and daily life is a nightmare. But if you’re investigating the essence of reality, then the mood swings just become a perspective and if you know it’s going to change soon, you don’t get so caught up in it. You just ride it out. I can’t trust my feelings here. They change too often. It rocks any sense of permanence or security in my feelings, and I can’t call them real or mine. Living like that is kind of uprooting. I kind of like it.
I think I’m changing in ways that I would have resisted a few months ago. Being in Japan is a great learning experience and it’s a lot healthier for me here than in the States. It’s rough here, but I know I could love it if I were with the right people or person. And I know I will love it after I go back.
I got a letter from Shiho and the sentiment it evoked manifested itself in the tune “My Girl” going through my head. I started writing a response, quoting the song, and while I was writing the letter, the song came on a television program I had on. It turns out that I had the line slightly, but significantly wrong. The actual line was better than what I thought it was.
Quite a coincidence, huh? What did Sachiko Murata call them in her book Tao of Islam? “Coincidences” are just as easily “qualitative analogies among created things.” And the analogies are of our similitude to god, the faces of god all around us, in us, and us, ourselves. Coincidences are only coincidence if we recognize them as such, and god is only what we recognize is god. God is manifested in coincidences.
In Richard Bach’s book, the concept is gravitation, not coincidence. All the things in our lives are in our lives because we gravitate towards what we recognize as important or special. Things in our lives have become a part of our lives because of what we projected of ourselves onto things outside of us, whether it be a person, hobby, or profession, etc. It’s the same process as recognizing god, and understanding that god is everything explains why there are no such things as coincidences as we understand them.
God is universal, there is no duality with god, and since god is everything, there is no duality period. There is no difference between god and me, and a table, and a pencil. Everything you can name is god, everything you can’t name is god. God is both the form and concept, the words in a sentence and what the sentence means. And, not or, the complete absence thereof.
