Chewed Up Gourds

The little gourds that decorated my front step have frozen, and somebody is eating them. Or trying to eat them. I find them scattered five feet away from the places i put them, so i suppose a squirrel is trying to carry them off. But are they worth it? Is there any nourishment in a gourd? From the amount of crumbs lying around, it looks like they're not interested in the meat of the gourd.

What do we chew on that provides us no nourishment? Old wrongs? Old grudges? Resentments?

As Pema Chodron says, "Anger is like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die."

Grudges and resentments are useless. Really useless. All that (mental) energy to what end?

Take a lesson from the squirrels and forget those grudges. Forget those gourds.

I'm throwing the chewed up gourds into the compost.

Judgments

The difference between a weed and a flower is one of judgment. In the spring, i allow wild asters to grow in my flowerbeds because they add a white or lavender mist of color in the fall. When their flowers have finished blooming in October, i pull them out as if they are weeds.

What about those people we would like to pull out of our lives? Those weedy people whom we have a little grudge against, those weedy people who rub us the wrong way. It's all a matter of judgment--ours.

The fault lies not with "them," but within ourselves. Even then, we have already judged ourselves as having a fault, but since it's too ugly, we cast out our projection and land that fault on someone else.

The fall asters are not to blame. They are simply being their aster-ish selves.

Robin Reflection

This morning during meditation i heard a robin repeatedly throwing himself at the kitchen window. This happens every spring during mating season as the robin sees his reflection in the glass and tries to scare off the "other" bird.

People do this all the time, every day, but it's hidden under the psychological defense called "projection." We "see" ourselves--our actions, our behavior, our mental thoughts--in the outside world, and if we have not been acting wholesomely, we pin our own unease on the other person.

For instance, if i can't find the keys to my car, i often think Bill! and blame him for my missing keys. They are lost, and i'm sure I didn't lose them. Then i find them in my coat pocket.

One of my recent discoveries was a judgment i was laying at the feet of a couple who were pillars of the church i used to attend. What hypocrites! i used to think. I believed this thought for decades. Last week, i reexamined this thought and the situation that gave rise to it. In my mind's eye, i saw myself acting hypocritically--shaking their hands, passing the peace to them, and smiling while thinking They are such hypocrits. I was the one who was a hypocrit in that situation: I didn't want to shake their hands; I did not want to pass the peace to them; and my smile was forced. They were simply a mirror for my own internal thoughts and emotions.

Oh, it is way past time to let that old, old grudge sink into the love and peace that they were sending my way. It's time to send them some love and peace, even though they are both deceased. It's time to send that girl Cheryl some love for her innocence and her misguided projections. It's time to make amends to her.

Cleaning Up

As i mentioned yesterday, i have too much lead, one of the earth's elements, in my body. Really, due to our industrial society, we probably all have some sort of body burden--an excess of some element or other in our bodies.

Chelation is the method of removing heavy metals from the body. I'm using green clay, another earth element, to chelate the lead, to draw it out of the body.

Green clay looks like powdered wasabi; just add water and smear it onto the body. In this way, eventually, the body can be purified of the toxic elements.

Our minds, too, can be purified of toxins by practicing qualities of kindness, compassion, joy, generosity, and the cure-all, patience.

Choose your poison. I'm sure you already know your very familiar poisoner of the mind--a grudge, impatience, anger, wishy-washiness, greed.
Then choose the antidote. (Message me if you need some help with this.)

Let's clean up our act. Clean up our body, but even more importantly, clean up our mind.

Composting with Bears

Wednesday's bear got into my neighbors' compost. Diana had put out some burned granola on Tuesday, and when she looked the next day, the granola was gone, and everything in the black plastic composter had been mixed up. How's that for "turning" your compost? Have the bear do it for you!

Isn't this just what our minds do? Our minds are burning about someone or other. We try to set that infuriating issue/person aside. We want to throw our problem away like we throw away our trash. But the mind revisits that bear-of-a-problem when we don't have our defenses up. Like not having the lid on the black plastic composter. The bear revisits our mind and jumbles everything up.

If we are truly going to compost our grudge or our garbage, we have to practice a lot of patience. We have to treat ourselves (and the other person) with kindness.

A Fed Bear is a Dead Bear

While i was at meditation group this morning at the neighbor's house, a bear ambled through the woods near our house.

Another neighbor who was out for her morning walk managed to take a couple of photos with her mobile phone.

I have no doubt that the bear was checking the ground underneath our birdfeeder. We only put a handful of sunflower seeds out at a time on our second-story deck, but i see the birds flicking seeds here and there. I know some wind up on the ground underneath the deck.

A fed bear is a dead bear. This means i have to stop feeding the birds. Whether my sweetie also stops feeding the birds is another question.

How do we subtly "feed" the bear of a problem in our lives? We tell ourselves stories about that other person who rubs us the wrong way, and then we believe the story we have told ourselves. It's time to stop. Stop telling our self that story. That bear of a problem person exists only in our minds. And it's really time to stop. Just stop. Stop feeding the bear.

Beech Leaves Let Go

Last year's beech leaves are finally falling off beech trees today. Pushed out, i suppose, by new green leaves, rightly curled into pointy buds.

How long do we hold on to old grudges, old traumas? We hold on, hold on, hold on. Eventually our mind lets go. In retrospect, we wonder: What was that about?

While we are holding on, our minds and bodies hold tension--perhaps an unrecognized tension because we are so used to it.

New growth happens when we finally let go.

The Merry Little Breezes Rake Leaves

The Merry Little Breezes were raking leaves yesterday--back and forth, back and forth across the lawn. Oh, how i wanted to clean up this flowerbed or that, but the old, tan beech leaves blew in and blew across. Raking was useless.

We rake memories over in our mind. Useless. We rake our grudges back and forth, forth and back, across our minds. Useless. We rake our worries through our minds. Useless.

Sit and wait till the wind dies down. Sit and wait till the Merry Little Breezes go to bed. Notice the calm mind. Useful.

Slippery Oak Leaves

Going for a walk in the woods is a bit slippery in November. Those beautiful rust-red oak leaves fall to earth at the very end of October, and then paths become slick with these tough, shiny leaves. Walking uphill or downhill (and we do have hills here in New England) feels a bit hazardous. It's always good to have the walking poles for balance, even for a short, easy walk.

What are the slick and slippery places in our lives? The places where we lose our balance?

For me, it's my grudge-list. Once i get started down that slippery slope, i feel very off-center.

We regain our balance with a moment of mindfulness. Oh, these thoughts are not really beneficial--to me or to the other person. A moment of mindfulness is enough, followed by another moment of mindfulness Hmm. So that's how begrudging feels in my body. Contracted, tense, tight. This thought is a moment of suffering.

We might then take the next step and antidote these resentful, irritating thoughts with some self-compassion. May i be kind to myself. Or May i accept myself as i am. Or May i treat myself as i would treat my best friend.

I'm not begrudging those darn slippery oak leaves, which are covering the body of Mother Earth for her long winter sleep.

A Hard Nut to Crack

My 93-year-old neighbor Esther has a butternut tree in her front yard. Butternut is also called "white walnut" (as opposed to "black walnut.")

This year must have been a mast year for the nuts, because Esther said she had thousands of butternuts littering her yard. She filled dozens of containers, and finally gave them away to Martin, who filled the bed of his truck with Esther's butternut harvest.

Martin rakes the nuts onto a concrete pad, covers them with metal roofing, and then runs over them with his tractor to crack the fragrant green shells. Then he shovels that mess into a cement mixer, using a lot of water to wash them all clean. Butternuts are hard nuts to crack.

We ourselves can be a hard nut to crack, especially when we get going on one of our favorite grudges. How do we loosen the shell when we've hardened our heart against someone? Sometimes, life will grind us up until there's nothing left for us to do but let go. Let be.

But more often, we just keep grinding away on our grudge. "He shouldn't have...." "That's not fair." "She should...."

We wash that grudge clean in the water of loving-kindness. Simply rinse your mind with your favorite phrase. "May i feel safe." "May i have ease of well-being." It will take a while. Days perhaps. Or even months.

Simply keep rinsing your mind with loving-kindness until your heart cracks open.