Losing the Urge

I feel contented.


I am a lizard that has found the right amount of light and shade on the smooth rock.

The lizard loses the drive to find heat, or find coolness when it has found the right balance.

It is still.

It loses the ambition to find what it needs--and ultimately to become happier, more successful, and in a better place.

In my contentment, I feel I have lost a piece of myself. This it the piece that yearns, that cries out, and the fire keeps the fire inside me blazing. My roaring fire that crackled and blew sparks has now transformed into a flame on a single candle.


I hold this candle as a sign of devotion for the landscape of a life I have created: My job tutoring English, my love for the exchange of ideas, my loving partner, my poetry, my morning routine at the coffee shop, riding my bicycle, Hanuman chalisas at the temple. All of these things in my life have tamed the inner fire.

My question is: Where am I going if I have no inner fire to drive me?

Isn't it the urge, the cry out to God, the impulse to bicycle across town really more sacred than the act itself?

Isn't the act in the mind more powerful than the physical act?

If I have no drive, are the roots of my tree cut off?

Will I continue to grow and progress? Or is progression just a compulsive American need?

Maybe what I'm experiencing is the circular motion of inbreath, outbreath, or the cycle of high tide and low tide.

Isn't the low tide in our lives just as meaningful as the high tide? perhaps we are only taught to talk about the exciting times in our lifes, about the challenges and overcoming obstacles, about the victories and busy schedules.

This is the low tide in my life and I am going to talk about it in the next few blogs.....

more to come later.

mandy