To illuminate the way out...

A good acupuncturing and a very interesting dharma talk at my doctor's, yesterday.

Points with powerfully poetic names, which clearly were specifically aimed at dispelling the darkness... Great Deficiency. Long Strength.

He said that people like me, chronic (gleefully chronic) over-achievers, do not do well with having to lie down and do nothing. And especially for people of my particular disposition, my mental/emotional/spiritual composition... "I can't" is something we absolutely hate, especially if it's not an "I don't want to," or a time- or geographically-imposed "can't," but an "I, myself, from the bottom of my being, am unable to..." The land of "I can't" is just plain hell.

But he also stressed to me (in almost these very words) that the way out is through. The road to enlightenment carries us through lands that we want least to traverse... and yet, travel them we must. Traverse them we must. And in traversing them, only then can we go beyond them. As the Heart of Wisdom sutra says, "Gone, gone beyond, gone beyond gone."

And his prescription was, of all things... find the humor.

You folks know how easy that usually is for me, but it has been very hard over the past couple of weeks to find the humor in anything, much less my condition.

But that's his prescription... find the humor.

So, apparently, the way out is through, but to illuminate the way out...

Find the humor. Find the reason to laugh... and laugh.

Well, it worked for Norman Cousins... And, like all my favorite prescriptions...

No side effects! Except... actual, completely real, happiness.

And a big smile.

Who couldn't use that?