Moving On

So the bardo is over. I am officially moved in to my new place. But I find it really strange the effect that the two week intermission has had on me. In my first week in my new house, I really feel as if I've come home from traveling. As if I've been immersed in a foreign country for a little while and the habits and objects and feelings I used to move through adeptly, have become strange and awkward - cumbersome in the new lack of familiarity.

When I was a kid I remember feeling like this when we came home after a vacation. The stillness of the house and the temporary unfamiliarity of a familiar environment used to entrance me for that first day back. As an adult, the feeling of disconnection upon return became stronger as I traveled to more foreign destinations and stayed away for months at a time.

When I travel I take my habits and experiences with me, but it's not always obvious how I fit in. How my habits and experiences fit in. So I tend to observe more.... to notice things...to recognize and learn things about myself based on my reactions to new experiences. But really it's the absence of the everyday routine that allows the time and space for insight.

When I come home I often resist the pull of the everyday routine. I resist the familiarity and the grooves in my environment where my habits fit perfectly. I know very well how my habits and experiences fit when I'm home. But they don't always mesh with the insight and perspective I gain when I'm detached.

There's a friction there. The clarity of insight coming up against the pull of familiarity, of habit.

I sometimes think "I know...but I don't know HOW." I understand what I'm doing that I want to change, but I can't understand how or what to do differently.

Essentially, karma and habit are the same thing. When we walk across a field, we choose a path. and the more we walk on it, the clearer the path is defined. The easier it is to recognize. The more comfortable it becomes. "I know where this leads, I know this one is safe."

But safe doesn't always get us where we want to go, it just keeps us from unfamiliar experiences. When we take a moment to look at the field from a new perspective we might see that our path is going in a circle. We repeat the same experiences over and over. We interact with people in the same way. We encounter the same problems, arguments and heartache.

From a different perspective it can be easy to see "I just need to stop walking in that circle."
But then, when we're in that field...the path is so clear, it's so familiar...it's a habit to walk on it. It's 'safe'. Even if the result is pain, it's familiar pain.

We walk the same path and expect a different outcome. Thinking change will come from outside or maybe we did it wrong the last time, but this time it'll work out. Or maybe if I walk in this circle long enough it will become a straight line.

But habit doesn't work that way, and neither does karma. If we want to change, we have to change our habits. We have to walk a new path.