The Road and the Trails- Finding a Peaceful Path and OCPD

We all slip up. We start to fall into old habits again despite making a million changes, We build walls and bridges, setting a plan on a map. We hope to stick to the straight and narrow of living right.

But sometimes it seems that all the mental roadways we built with good intentions can seem to keep us walking straight.

I don't know about you, but in my journey, even the best road isn't good enought to always keep me on it. The wilderness just off where the pavement meets the dirt somehow seems more interesting.

I forget how the twigs and rocks hurt. I forget how easy it is to get lost without the clear roadsigns. I forget how dark it can be with no map to guide me.

Negative behaviors are always just off the road. And the tempation to obsess, or focus on the bad stuff, to resort to old coping mechanisms may always be there. Maybe you just want to yell, to cry, to hurt someone. You know its wrong. You should stay on the road. But some part of you knows that, at least that first step, getting off that boring and predictable pavement, feels so good.

So you give in. We all do it. Some religions call it sin, or attachment. But in meditation , when thoughts come at you, the instruction isn't to get mad or beat yourself up. Or to give up because inner peace is lost forever.

The instruction is to "Come back to your breath".

Come back to the road. The trails you make off that planned rought can be fun, wild and painfull. But the test isn't that you stay on the road without fail, perfectly good. No, the test is that you come back.

That is the true jouney. Coming back to yourself, coming back to your breath, coming back to the road - and putting one foot ahead of the other in the best direction.