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Many things to consider for homework but this chose me. :)

I shared a little sieve story about containment and space and 'stuff' which has become a bit of a visualization due to my feeling 'inconvenienced' by a few situations and people and knowing that it isn't about those people but my own proportions... the way 'I' am relating to 'them' as 'other'. And also relating *to* ---> ordinary mind/time. 

Resting in openness. It has felt to me that I can do nothing other than sit and allow space to take care of the stuff which isn't the inconveniences exactly, but thoughts and the way of thinking about those.

It isn't enough to say 'don't label because it doesn't make logical sense to and that's wrong.' I mean, who cares about getting it 'right'. Right may mean avoiding or gaining something, sure, but I mean...  as I write this my grandfather feels rejected by me because I set limits he doesn't understand, about his encroaching on my time.

I could write a novel about ways in which behaviors of people are technically wrong and how it is insane not to set limits. But when I sit with it, love says I better call before going out of town. I 'feel' very inconvenienced by obligations just like this one, and want off the hook... definitely off the phone. I want to set everything up so that I am unhindered for 'spiritual' things. Which is just materialism.

So my feeling of unrest and preoccupation is coming from not taking responsibility, whether it seems fair for me to 'have to' or not. Somewhere a picture popped into my meditations a week or so ago, of reaching back into emptiness and reaching forward into emptiness... memories as presentations of emptiness and dreams as presentations of emptiness. 

Last night in place of an empty log at pab, I happened upon the following:

'One went to the door of the Beloved and
knocked. A voice asked, 'Who is there?
He answered, 'It is I.'

The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.'
The door was shut.

After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'
The man said, 'It is Thee'
The door was opened for him.

Rumi