Pepe Le Pew

Skunks are mating. I can smell that spring is near because the scent of skunk is in the air. It's an unmistakable nighttime fragrance. The unpleasant olfactory sensation (skunk!) becomes a pleasant mental sensation (i.e., thought = almost spring!).

If you don't want to be skunked by your distracted mind during meditation, set your intention before you begin to meditate. Then, be diligent. Diligence requires effort. Keep applying effort, gently but firmly.

I use the Dismissing Technique: Thank you (thought) for coming. I don't need you right now. You can go now. Often, i say this repeatedly during meditation.

Otherwise the mind runs off over hill and dale, and you will be skunked in your effort to find a moment of calm.

Feeling Left Out

 Last week, my 6 a.m. meditation buddy, Elizabeth, reported that, during meditation, she had felt a very familiar feeling of being left out. She recalled a reading group she was part of, but she hadn't heard from them since last summer. Were they meeting without her?

Feeling left out is one of my very familiar go-to places. I could give you a hundred examples, similar to Elizabeth's. They are meeting without me. No one told me about.... Everyone else is (or has).... They all seem to know about [something i don't know].

Elizabeth said, that during meditation, she felt the thought from a place of Awareness, and the thought turned into a pleasant vibration. The thought was gone. Gone.

I said, "Well, that gives me hope."

The following morning, i saw HOPE floating among the trees in my yard.

The belief that I am being left out is just a thought. A thought that, if i pay close attention, is a vibration. 

Sound is a vibration. You can "hear" sound throughout your body as it vibrates your bones. That vibration can be pleasant. Though roaring motorcycles might be unpleasant. A thought is nothing more than inner hearing; hearing an inner sound with a very weak vibration. But it does vibrate. Use all your mindfulness to notice this.

The thought/belief of being left out dissipates into emptiness.

Extruding Ice

 

We hiked on a wet hillside on a 33 degree day, and ice crunched underfoot. The water had frozen into ribbons of ice called extrusions. Water, which would normally be in the ground, expanded as it froze and "grew" or extruded out of the ground. Continued water seepage underground forces the extrusions up above the soil and leaf litter.

It looks like i'm hiking on crystals. It sounds very crunchy.

An oft-repeated behavior--gesture or word or thought--crystalizes into a habit. The habit hardens into our character and becomes our personality. That's who we think we are. By the time we're old, our personality can be downright crunchy. Perhaps you know someone like this.

Let the water flow through your life. Let Life flow through your life.

Frozen Parsley

Just before dark, i went out to the garden and picked all the parsley. At 23 degrees, it was frozen stiff, so it simply broke off, like green icicles, into my gloved hands. I laid it on the kitchen counter to thaw, and an hour later, it was fresh as a daisy. Or maybe i should say fresh as parsley?

What a recovery from life-threatening circumstances! 

One idea that threatens our life is the belief in death.

Look closely. Where is your 5-year-old self? Dead. All the cells in your body have likely been replaced since then. 

Where is your teenage body? Your young adult self?

Where is the last breath you breathed? Gone.

Where is your last heart beat? Gone.

Where is what you saw in the moment before the last eye blink? Gone.

Where is your last thought? Gone. Forever gone.

If every moment dies, and our bodies are dying in every moment, then what--really--is death?

The parsley lives.

Turkeys Eating Ticks

 I opened my eyes during meditation this morning and saw 22 turkeys strolling across my lawn. Heads down, alert to their surroundings. They were all pecking at the grass--eating ticks, i assume.

Have you seen the movie My Life as a Turkey? A wildlife rehabilitator raises a clutch of motherless turkey eggs, and he himself sees much more life in the woods than usual because he is seeing as a turkey.

When we look closely at our own inner landscape, we see much more than we usually do. We might see the arising of a thought, the disappearance of a feeling. Last spring, i discovered the earliest warning sign of oncoming sleepiness--heaviness behind my forehead.

Knowing that the turkeys are cleaning my garden and woods of tick pests, i feel much safer.

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.

Awareness of Forget-Me-Nots

Forget-me-nots form a sky-blue cloud floating on several of my flower beds. The dashes of color--purple money plant, the white bells of leucojum--poke out above the ground-hugging blue cloud. Naturally enough, our attention focuses on the taller red tulip or yellow daffodil or purple money plant. This is a gardener's definition of attention.

That blue haze at the base of the garden represents our peripheral awareness. While we focus on the beautiful, the different, the unique, we are also aware of bird song, cool breeze, and that blue haze of forget-me-nots.

Try this in your meditation. Spend one period of meditation simply noticing how the mind works. Hearing, seeing, feeling are all happening in the background, then the mind is drawn to something or other (probably a thought) and focuses on that.

Smile. You've just succeeded at noticing the difference between attention and awareness.

Sowing Money Plant

Money plant, which bloomed so beautifully in May, has gone to seed. Last week, the seed pods were a pretty mauve. This week, due in part to the drought, they've turned brown.

Now i pull out this biennial (Lunaria) and walk around my flowerbeds shaking it like a magic wand. Next spring, i want money plant here. And here. And here. The seed husks fly off and land on the ground like pennies from heaven.

Every word that flies out of our mouth is planting seeds for our future. A friend told me yesterday, "I don't want to talk about it, because talking about it will only make me upset." That is wise speech in action.

We want to prepare the ground for wholesome thoughts, words, and deeds. We all already have quite enough weedy thoughts and words for this lifetime, thank you very much.

A penny for your thoughts.

Money plant blooming in late May with seed pods just forming.

Hammock Relaxation

I'm taking a nap in the hammock beside the garden every day. I'm usually a go-go-go gal, but, perhaps due to radiation, i feel more like a go....go.......rest gal. Many good ideas of things to do are not getting done, and it's quite interesting how easy it is to turn those good ideas loose as i float down the stream of Life this summer.

After all, a thought is just a thought. It comes; it goes. A thought has a shelf life of perhaps a second or two. Then it disappears.

The mind thinks a thought, but the body doesn't have to jump-to to obey the slave-driver mind.

The body can relax in the hammock. And really, the mind could use a dose of relaxation too.

Zucchini: While It's Still Small

I picked my first zucchinis this morning. I caught them while they are still less than 8 inches long. Whew!

We try to catch our bad habits while they are still small, still just a thought in the mind. We pay close attention to that thought, just as we (hopefully) pay close attention to that baby zucchini.

Sink into that thought, whether it's irritation, impatience, desire, or what have you. Label it. Label it out loud, so that you can hear yourself being mindful. Label it out loud, so that you can hear mindfulness above the inner din.

I'll be eating zucchini for dinner this evening.

What's in the Front Row?

It's time to start making space in my solarium for the spring plants. I'm potting up the rooted cuttings of many of my houseplants. I need more space even though I've decided not to start seedlings (although it's not too late to change my mind).

So it's time to take the front row plants and give them seats either in the balcony or the pit orchestra (i.e., my sweetie's music studio in the basement). Then i can push other, younger, more tender plants into the sunny front row.

What are some of our front row re-actions? Impatience? Anxiety? Frustration? Worry? Planning? Yearning?

The Buddha spoke a very clear poem on just this subject:

The thought manifests as the word;

the word manifests as the deed;

the deed develops into habit;

and habit hardens into character.

So watch the thoughts and its ways with care,

and let it spring from love

born out of concern for all beings.

We take one of our bad habits and start working backwards, mindfully.
We mindfully suppress the deed, the action.
We mindfully suppress the words on the tips of our tongues. Oh, this is hard work.
We mindfully feel the thoughts and emotions in our body. Oh, this is painful.

After several workouts of our mindfulness muscles over the course of a month or two, we will be surprised by the occasional arising of patience and kindness, concern and compassion.
Born out of concern for all beings, ourselves first of all.