I have always had a strong interest in the viscera of spiritual practice and some pieces of wisdom I have on standby seem to reflect this -
Smile while you still have teeth
And something I was only able to articulate (somewhat) artfully in full only recently -
Don't like how you appear to the world?
Then change it by changing what it depends on:
Only after stripping away the layers of flesh can we start to polish bone
This fascination with the darkness and how it comes into play in everyday life looks to have served me well - it seems to make me different to the rank and file yogurt fanciers that appear too uptight to even pass wind. Everyone needs to pass wind from time to time. It is one of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's go-to topics to bring people at ease and prove that he is as human as the rest of us - or like the rest of us: just happening to be in human form for the moment.
People, even in spiritual traditions seem soo intent on proving themselves that they get in the way of any good they are able to do. There is no shame in practicing a skill until you master it, no matter how simple. Perhaps this is why most courses in meditation and mindful thinking start with the breath, something no one has really thought about until they must and even then it is still a thing that may be trained and practiced.
People who think of themselves as great often have to tell themselves that story. If the story stops, they stop believing they have to fight off rising feeling of them being terrible. They suddenly have to face who they really are: someone capable of nasty things and someone who has to live with what they have already done.
Only beings of pure light aren't afraid of the darkness - and that's because they take their own light with them. It looks like the rest of us still have some dark lessons to learn ...
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