It was during meditation on a recent morning that I realized that many mornings, I tend to wake up edgy and my mind is running through a long list of resentments – I have no money, a friend I cared about turned away from me, I should have handled my divorce differently, my parents didn’t treat me well, someone I trusted betrayed my trust, my publisher doesn’t care about me.  This is not really how I think normally, at least not consciously but at the beginning of the day, I seem to be working through a lot of slights, betrayals, resentments. “Hey,” I told Maria. “Every morning, I am tuning into the Resentment Channel.” I also have a “Fear” and an “Anger” Channel I sometimes tune into, and this has also presented itself clearly in my meditation work.

We live in a world of channels – hundreds on cable, more streaming in all the time on the Internet. We have channels outside of our heads, channels inside. Yesterday, I decided to change some channels. I turned to the love channel, and then the creative channel, and am opening a holiday channel. On these new channels, all opened up during my spiritual work, I can broaden, soften and enrich the programming inside of my head. I have been on the Resentment and Fear Channels all of my life, they have at times because my default channels.

Meditation is a mesmerizing thing. You see all kinds of thoughts and habits whizzing by like a speeding train, and if you work hard and go deep, you can drop some new ones in there. I think of my next book coming out, of my remarkable and wonderful wife, of my daughter’s growing list of accomplishments, of Simon’s bray, and Red’s focus, and Lenore’s great heart and the channel brightens and changes. This morning, I turned off the Fear and Resentment Channels. It is a little harder than using a switcher, but not that hard. The Resentment Channel is a waste of time. I am more excited all the time about my  new programming schedule.