It takes patience to sift through your soul and pull out the junk. Most of us don't bother with it very often, because the human soul is robust, and it can run even with quite a bit of junk scattered around in there. It's good at times, though, to go through it thoroughly and, at the very least, make a list of the work to be done.
I picture a swimming pool, olympic-sized, filled with sand. Scattered in this pool there are pebbles. You can only use your hands and feet. There's no hurry. Take as long as you'd like. Just try to get them all.
Some issues are subtle, and you can convince yourself to leave them, if you're not careful. ["This morning, when the tractor-trailer up on the freeway was engulfed in raging, orange flames, and black smoke was billowing thickly into the sky, you got angry at the young man standing and grinning at the entertainment of it,"] I say to myself. "Someone could have been hurt. It was a terrible thing, not a show for this moron. There's too much awful voyeurism in society," I reply. "I bet, if you asked that guy if it would have been better if the truck hadn't crashed, he'd probably say, 'No way! This is awesome!' What an ass!" I continue. ["So now you can read minds, I suppose. You have no idea what that guy was smiling about, and, even if he was absent-mindedly smiling while watching the fire, it's not necessarily an indictment of his whole character. You assume you understand him, and you judge him."] "Okay. Okay. You're right," I relent. It's a pebble in the sand, one of many. I can't quite reach it to take it out. It's still there. I've made note of it, though, and I'll work on it.
Hello, friends. How are you today?
Later. Love.
