The Immaculate Perception

The obsession you have with doing, with perfection, with criticism is chewing you up. Perhaps you were called Mary Poppins in school and are always correcting everything. Nothing ever seems to be good enough. When was the last time that you let the tears fall like sweet alchemy from your gentle eyes? When was the last time you felt relaxed?

The days seem to go by either hum drum or manically obsessed with a long list of unrealistically high standards that get longer and longer with every passing breath-sometimes forgetting to breathe and washing your hands with careful strokes repetitively as you mentally check off every task yet to be completed with a typical nervousness that is innate in you.

Someone calls you to see how you’ve been, to catch up on things and once again you feel the tear between the love you want so desperately to merge into and the job that needs to be done. The fear of coming up short-of imperfection violently shakes your mind like a mental plague and urges to stay busy, to keep doing, to be productive.

Everything in your so-called “outer reality” seems to reflect this tumultuous battle. You can almost hear the orders and the commands to keep moving like a military man blasting your ears out and pressing against your temple like a priest. The way out is clear. The way out is obvious. The smell of lavender and chamomile flowers burst like an orgasm in the crevices of your inner being where anxiety live.

To feel that wet and open and divinely fluid as holy water, as the drop of neurosis becomes surrender and the rigid body becomes mutable water. Every voice, now a child in need of a deeper love, the kind of love that comes home early to find roses on the table, a pack of cards, a candle lit. And the intelligence of the body is music and moves without the urge to punish oneself. These are the times for a good swim.