Russell is great – honest, funny and a darn good writer. I’ve gotten some good stuff from his blog over time. There was the time at the a.m yoga class where he kept track of all his thoughts and it was so funny – hey I think about my next meal during yoga too! Just when you think you’re unique you realize you’re so not.

Russell also introduced me to a quote from “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse that I love:

The world is not imperfect, or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect in every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people — eternal life….Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world ,and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it, and to be glad to belong to it.”

I love that – how often do I live according to some “imaginary vision of perfection”? Or maybe – when don’t I? How often can I completely let go of having an image of things being just so.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve worked on letting go of my inner control freak in lots of areas, but I still find myself having an expectation or at least a desire for things to be different. We all want to get our way right? I think, how much less stressful would my life be, if I practices being in agreement. If I practiced assent. Not in a victim-y way but in a “I trust that the right thing is going to happen” way. I think I could say ”all would be well with me’.