"All we care about is getting the outside clean. Each day we walk forth with clean clothes, clean hair, clean teeth, but with a mind stuffed with worthless anxieties, dull resentments, stale outlooks, toxic prejudices, and an endless array of shabby self-images. We haven't even bothered to sweep out the mental junk we picked up yesterday, not to speak of the debris we have been hauling around for a lifetime."

Hugh Prather
The Little Book of Letting Go


At night I take a painfully hot bath to soak away the ache of exercise and while I do, I read books on buddhism.  What good is getting the outside into amazing shape if the inside is decayed.

Here is my prayer or mantra or whatever the fuck you want to call something I repeat in order to remember that I am not perfect or when I stray from the path of freedom and emptiness. When all I need is a little finesse to get back on the path I repeat, "Awakened heart, awakened mind".  Breath in on the first phrase, out on the last.

Exercise is the perfect form of meditation.  Especially if you pick something that you like that also  takes focus.  It empties your mind of everything. You don't even realize it.  Sweeping out the junk is so amazing.  It has left me with plenty of room for laughter.

For the record, I always like to keep my outside as shitty and cluttered as my inside feels, it's like an osmosis thing.