Daily Meditation: Saturday, January 31, 1998

The desire to free yourself is a good thing, provided you …

01/31/1998

The desire to free yourself is a good thing, provided you can do it without endangering yourself or others. Imagine that you have a house you no longer want because it is too small and inconvenient, and because you feel restricted there. Before you leave it, you must find or build yourself a new, more habitable one, otherwise you will be exposed to the elements. In the same way, before you detach from something that displeases or limits you, you must attach yourself to something new, something of better quality. This attachment is the construction of a new house, in other words a new way of thinking and acting. Then you can leave the old house, that is to say free yourself from what is disagreeable and tiresome. If, on the contrary, you detach yourself before attaching to something else you risk having to latch on to the first thing that comes along, which may be even worse. Do not detach before you have attached yourself. Do not demolish before you have built something better.