I see that it’s an anxious week for many people, so many of us have given our peace of mind over to the left and the right, to political cant and manipulation,  and the corporate media’s horrific, sports contest way of looking at the world.

I am grateful for my little radio show on Wednesdays, it is a peaceful respite from all the anger and argument stewing around us. It is impossible to escape dire predictions, arguments and warnings. We are good to one another there.

In my dog training, I have worked hard and specialized on the idea of calming training, a process of communicating with dogs through basic commands that calm the dogs and help them understand what is wanted and expected of them.

This grounding training – sit, come, stay, lie down – radically reduces a dog’s confusion and anxiety, (and ours)  as they know what it expected of them and how they can understand their role in the lives of humans and in their own lives. That is calming, that is grounding. That is what I need too.

We often fail to understand that dogs don’t speak our language and the torrent of words we throw at them is bewildering, even frightening.

In the past year or so – there is so much tension out there – I’ve begun to incorporate the idea of calming training into my own life, and perhaps into the lives of other people looking for ways to stay grounded in the midst of all of this tumult, division, and rancor.

I’m going to write about this a bit this week. I’m just not interested in hating people who are different from me, if other people want to that, that is a choice. Pain is inevitable, suffering is not.

Every day, I look inward, not outward. I do not give my hopes and peace of mind to political parties, to a “left” or a “right” or any single politician or ideology. I go inward, to what I call my lonely place in the middle of my heart.

I think for myself, I feel for myself, I don’t need pundits to tell me how to think.

In this place – my grounding place, my calming place – my worries and concerns, the drama of media and politics,  my successes and failures lose their power over me.

My love for this world – for Maria, the farm, the dogs, my friends, my writing, my photography, my blog, my mind –  all reside there, they are imprinted in this private and personal geography.

This is where the good in me lives, my love, my hopes, my soul.

There, in the lonely place, my love of this world, of my life, can bring me a compassionate understanding of life’s illusions, of what is really important and what is really not.

There, I see that my deepening concern for others must be motivated more by their needs than my own, that is the beginning of the path to selflessness.

I can care rather than ague or worry.

Day to day, I will continue to live my life to the fullest, but I will also remember to get up before dawn, as I did today, to go to my lonely place, my place of solitude and find my center.

On Wednesday morning, the earth will still be revolving around the sun, our lives will continue. Calming training  teaches me go inside of myself, and to never let my heart and emotions and soul fall again into the hands of others, as happened so often in my life.