The Volunteer

A volunteer plant showed up in a flower bed at work.  These are corporate flower beds with Stella D’Oro daylillies, dwarf yews, and well-trimmed flowering plum trees. I noticed what looked like the biggest dandelion seed puff I’d ever seen.

salsify

I had to look online to see what it was. Salsify.  A root vegetable that tasks somewhat likes oysters, supposedly.  I’m regularly reminded how much variety there is in our planet’s flora.

I don’t think this was planted intentionally — there are two plants in the bed — but they haven’t been pulled out by the corporate “gardeners.” Unlike a home gardener, maybe they don’t know it doesn’t belong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drug of Choice

chocolateIn Whole Foods today I noticed this item at the impulse-buy section of the checkout.  Interesting…  There’re options for Energy, Calm, and Sleep according to their website. Personally, I used to use chocolate for any feeling.

Nice to see that a company has figured out how to leverage the cultural power chocolate has to use it overtly like a drug.  Seeing the price, looks like some nice profits are in the offing, too.

It’s good product placement.  I have my moments of impatience in the checkout lane. (That’s an understatement.  I have totally lost it in the checkout lane quite a few times.) When I remember, and can avoid indulging myself, I do the Avatar Compassion Exercise.  Now if that could be just as habit forming.

Focus Out

Driving into my garage Friday after work, I caught my mind in the middle of a story.  Its favorite activity.  I reminded myself (verbally, out loud, again) that that was a world all encompassed within the eight inches between my ears.  I noticed my perspective shift to size that space compared to my garage, then my front yard, my street and on out.  Yet that interior world was so compelling and seductive, I almost slipped back into it.

geraniumsI started watering the pots of flowers on my front porch (90-degree temperatures require daily heavy watering).  I noticed the white geraniums and remembered an Avatar tool the intent of which is to intensify your attention on an object.  I put all of my attention on the flowers.  I noticed attributes of the flowers I hadn’t before:  the amount of buds, the bend of a stem, the browning flowers past bloom, the spicy smell, the curves of the leaves, the different stages of each bloom, and more.  Not only was I no longer in my head dancing with that story, but I couldn’t even remember what the story was.  Bliss…

This is such an easy practice tool to do in the summer.  There’s so much blooming and changing quickly.  I stopped the car on the way home from errands Saturday morning just to notice the grasses and flowers (weeds?) on the side of the road.  What a huge variety! What a joy it is to focus on everything around me and not my little idea of me.

 

 

Letting Go

Waunakee Wishing Tree

Wishing Tree – Waunakee

A couple of weeks ago, I stopped at the Waunakee Wishing Tree. (It has its own Facebook page, and the posts are better than most.)  I hung a wish on the tree.  It was a wish to stop doing something I have persisted in doing.

I truly do want to let go of that.  Yet I hold on.  AA has its aphorisms:  Let go and let God, Let go or be dragged (I like this one.).  I’ve felt like I asked the tree to handle it, but I won’t let go of it to let the tree handle it.  Remember Dorothy and the apple trees in the Wizard of Oz?

 

How the (my?) Mind Works

I get a kick out of noticing how my mind leaps and connects and storify-zes.  That’s its job. A lot of the time I can just observe it and be entertained by it.  Some times it whips a bag over my head and hoists me on to a ship headed out to”here there be dragons” territory in just an instant.  Maybe 60/40… maybe 70/30 on a good week.

This week on my walk and dropping off library books early in the morning, I noticed something shiny in the parking lot ahead of me.

fairy_wings

When I got right up on it I thought:

looks like a wing

has venation like insect wings

maybe fairy wings

a fairy lost a wing

if a fairy’s wings get knocked off they plastify without the fairy magic

then the wing got driven over by a laughing teenager with the music too loud

fairy wings grow back, but they’re grounded until then

 

See? Very Entertaining.  At some point I went back to breath meditation….

Like new UGG Boots

This has been a good week.  Which makes me think, what makes a good week v. a bad one?

A few nights ago, while meditating, I actually felt the transition to a story in my mind starting and decided not to go into a story.  I noticed it was a choice for my mind to go into a story or not.  Not noticing after, but deciding before the story started.  Amazing, and also not.  The best way I can describe it is seeing something off on the horizon and turning away from it.  It took no effort whatsoever.  Oh!  Another analogy would be feeling like I’m walking down a hallway, seeing a door, but choosing not to open it and go in.

Since that night it’s been relatively easy to stay present most of the time. Everything is easier when I’m present.  There is a lot more beauty.  A lot more cool things to appreciate. Like my socks today, the lilacs blooming, and awkward goslings tumbling around.

I remember a scene in a Rainbow Rowell novel (I’ll have to paraphrase or spend considerable time looking it up to get it perfect, and I don’t want to do that).  In the scene, the characters had bonded over time in the college dining hall making cutting comments about the others there. After Christmas, one snarked about some girls wearing their newly gifted UGG boots.  The other said that she wanted to live in a world where getting new UGG boots for Christmas was still awesome. (That’s the way I remember the scene.)

I’ve spent most of life working to sound cynical and worldly (cool?), but only achieving sarcastic and mean.  The irony is being present is truly cool and when I’m present I’m beyond caring.

socks

my cool socks today

Middle of the Night Ah-ha

Two days with not enough sleep.  I’ve been slogging my way through recognition that my mind’s critical voice is my dad’s and the fear that came up that if I let go of that he would not love me (he’s dead, but that doesn’t matter, does it?).  That fear was truly kicking my butt.

When I couldn’t sleep last night, I figured what the heck, let’s dig in.  I did a rundown with Byron Katie’s The Work.  It’s easy to do by yourself and in the dark. The “Turn it around” step is what does it. It took a few passes with some good insights at each level.  At the end I got up to write down the ah-ha (messy because I didn’t turn on the lights) so I could use it here.  It was about one a.m.

midnight ah-ha

Translation:  I am really angry at myself.  Family is the first, best reflection we have of our “self” or identities.  They are the first place we look to see our shortcomings and assets reflected.  I thought I was hurt by my dad’s critical voice.  I thought I was angry at my sister for what she hasn’t done. Turns out I was angry at myself for what I think I haven’t accomplished.  All stuff  I’ve been afraid to do.   The fear showed up as anger. It was all about me.

Really, how could it ever be about anyone else?  To my ego-mind no one else really exists — only I do and my needs.

It’s funny and tragic – seeing that legacy of “not good enough” passed through families like an auto-immune disease — in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  I had never thought of my dad as being self-critical, but for that voice to come out, he must have been.  He must have had expectations of himself to accomplish, to be, to have…. Since I don’t believe there’s a heaven or that he’s “listening,” but I am.  It was late, but I had the loving, compassionate conversation with myself.

I’m Blaming This Notion On Pirate Paul (Saul of Tarsus)

dandelions

This is the season to weed here in Wisconsin.  Every day I dig out dandelions by hand because I refuse to use poison.  It’s not so bad, though.  A few minutes every day (sometimes both morning and evening) will keep the flower beds free of weeds and give the flowers a chance to take hold. It seems like the most practical solution:  do about ten minutes of yard work a day and it looks good.  Not too strenuous, not overwhelming, no reason to swallow anti-inflammatory meds.

So, why can’t I accept a daily meditation and spiritual practice as easily?

Because I want the instant fix.  I still want the lightning bolt that knocks me off of my horse on the road to Damascus.  This is the story that colors my (and many others’) idea of spiritual change.  It’s the idea that once we get the ah-ha, we’re done.  My mind conveniently leaves out that Paul didn’t become a nice guy (there’s plenty of evidence in his own words to show he was a bigot and misogynist).

So, I am back to weeding.  Even though it’s been raining off and on today, I’ve dug up some dandelions and used my walking meditations as mantras while I was weeding.

No lightning, though.

 

 

 

 

Stoke of Insight

I’m reading “My Stroke of Insight” by Jill Bolte Taylor.  For some reason I’m struggling to get through it.  I think my mind is refusing the concepts.

One line is both poignant and poetic.  “And I must say, there was both freedom and challenge for me in recognizing that our perception of the external world, and our relationship to it, is a product of our neurological circuitry.  For all those years of my life, I really had been a figment of my own imagination.” [emphasis mine]

in spite of my thoughts

I experienced a minor epiphany this week:  my thoughts may never change.  I  must learn to act in spite of my thoughts.

I imagine no one else has the mean, nasty, misanthropic thoughts I have.  This is probably not true, but it doesn’t stop me from working to eliminate the thoughts.  I have a lot of tools I use to stop malicious thoughts and shift.

tinman

a neighbor’s bird feeders –  including The Tin Man

However, some thoughts come so quickly I can’t stop them.  I notice what I just thought and begin judging myself.  Basically, I think, “That woman is an idiot.” “Oh, crap, why can’t I just be nice?”

I realized that my self-judgment implies that the first thought/judgment is true.  Huh.

So, that reflex thought may never stop.  Or it may someday.  I don’t know that, but I do know I can act from love even if I can’t always think from love.