I wouldn’t wait until 2013 myself.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
This sounds like things I have heard in meditation and yoga classes and in various memes that have gone around over the years. Never understood what it meant. I expect it’s best if what it means to have an inner goddess is left each to their own.
I may have a nagging cough from a cold that started over a week ago, and it might not have been the ideal of a walk in the woods with a beloved, but I had the best walkabout possible today. The air was mild, and the rain held off until mid-afternoon, leaving plenty of time to get out and appreciate the day. Enjoying that I did not need hat or gloves, I walked for a couple of hours around the neighborhood before I went to the Sunday jam to dance. I picked up a few things that I needed, said hi to neighbors who were also out walking, and looked at trees and clouds and invited myself to be filled with gratitude for what I have.
I was thinking about the exhortation to have the “best possible day.” Before I started my walk, I got an email from a friend about setting a date for lunch, and she said that she’d had the best holiday possible. I think it was in response to my wishing her such–the best holiday possible, that is.
I’ve long stopped exhorting people to have a happy holiday or a merry christmas because I have no idea what might be going on with them (or, I do have an idea). I have enough friends, neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances who are facing serious challenges–illness, difficulties with work or difficulties getting work, kids stumbling to get through life, relationship complications, elder care navigations, loss of a loved one, or loneliness–that wishing a happy holiday might be kind of clueless. And then there is the state of society and the world.
Thus, I wish that we are able to recognize and experience what we have that is good (while working to make healthier and more life-enhancing choices/changes for the things that are not good that can be changed) and bring out the best in ourselves in navigating all of life–the best possible holiday, day, year, etc.
For those of us moving in time and space, I’m pretty sure the only thing that is free to take is, indeed, nothing.
When I was waiting for the bus this morning, a woman walked up the sidewalk with two dogs off leash. The back, belly, and hindquarters of one dog had been shaven; he looked post-operative and stayed close to the woman. The other was eager to check out the man sleeping on the bench.
“Venus, come,” said the woman to little effect as she walked in front of the enclosure to get some distance.
“Venus, come,” I joined in with more directive tone. Though she’d never met me before, on hearing me say her name, she trotted up to me and sniffed my hand favorably before allowing me to pet her head.
“She doesn’t bite,” said the woman.
“No, I expected not,” I replied, continuing to pet Venus (after all, how often does a goddess condescend to allowing pettings from a stranger), “but I think the man on the bench might be wary of her.”
“That’s why I walked on this side of the bus stop,” the woman added and off she, and Venus, and the other dog, he limping, went to buy milk at the grocery store across the street.
It only takes one thing to put a dog in danger–traffic, other cars, strangers who don’t know how to deal with dogs, bicyclists racing down the sidewalk, etc. I’ve seen the harm done. In the city, please keep your dog on leash.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
I just spent a week looking at the celestial realms — inner and outer. Fifty of us spent a week meditating and studying with Paul Muller-Ortega at a retreat center in Sedona. It might seem from these pictures that there was not a moment when we weren’t exclaiming in awe over magnificent visions. The truth is that many times of the day, the sky was not spectacular, but I was always looking and always had my camera in my pocket, whether the sky was dull or flat when I left my room or whether it was engaged in some outrageous display of light. The photographs below are in chronological order to show the pulsation of night and day, the progression of the moon from almost full to full, the shift in mood from day to day. But, the images show a completely edited view. There were the views for which I did not take out my camera at all. Those were the majority, but I was still looking. There were the views I photographed, but deleted from the camera memory, choosing not even to save them. There are the photographs that I downloaded onto my computer, but did not even enlarge to get a better view. There are photographs I enlarged, but decided not to edit. Then there were the photographs I chose to edit by making decisions about cropping, brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation. The photos below are a subset of the last group.
If I were doing a show where I printed and framed the work, I would have worked from at least ten times as many images and would have done multiple prints of each image before choosing what to display. In this persistency and discrimination, photography teaches much about meditation practice. To show what is seen in a way that shifts the soul of the viewer, the photographer has to look over and over again. For example, Robert Frank took over 20,000 images for “The Americans.”
Anyone (especially these days with the technology available) can take an extraordinary picture or two if in the right place at the right time with the camera. But to have a body of work takes consistent devotion, work, and presence. So too, with our meditation practice. Some days exquisite visions arise. Sometimes we are pulsing with extraordinary energy that fills us with a sense of the very fullness of being. Other times, old issues or the to do list or even feeling trapped by sitting still is what comes. If we sit consistently over a long period of time, though, we will witness — just as the camera did — the extraordinary. We will know from being consistent that it is our very consistency that reveals bliss.
