“We’re Riders on the Storm, but have been given a chance to come in out of the rain.”

“At first, drugs or booze turned us on; later they turned on us. We turned into the kind of person we didn't want to be; but we didn't really know how to change. Then, something happened. In recovery, we saw others whose lives had turned around. We got hope; we came to believe that our own lives could turn around. Today, God, help me to be open-minded and humble enough to believe that what has worked to change the lives of others will work to change mine.”

The goal of most conventional thinking is to preserve the ego. This is our unconscious habit, our default mode. Unconventional thinking, or dharma, however, aims to preserve the peaceful heart of tsewa (tenderness). This change requires conscious reasoning based on wisdom rather than habit. As Shantideva says, everything is habit, both positive & negative. Just as all habits are formed, they can also be “unformed”—deconstructed or dismantled. Letting go of bad habits and forming positive ones is a process.

Meditation for the Day “We may consider the material world as the clay, which the artist works with, to make of it something beautiful or ugly. We need not fear material things, which are neither good nor bad in the moral sense. There seems to be no active force for evil - outside of human beings themselves. Humans alone can have either evil intentions - resentments, malevolence, hate and revenge - or good intentions - love and good will. They can make something ugly or something beautiful out of the clay of their lives. Prayer for the Day I pray that I may make something good out of my life. I pray that I may be a good artisan of all the materials which I have been given to use.”