Signs Around Town (Excerpt)
It’s a call for these times.
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- Art and Culture | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Gardening
Found Quotation
Last week’s DOL elevator poster.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Spam Filter (and thoughts in meditation)
When I have not looked at my email for several days, I am faced with dozens of emails in my two regular accounts, plus the spam folders. The first thing I do is see what in the spam folder is not spam. In doing that, I give some attention to everything in the folder. Then I go through my in box to figure out what should have gone to spam. Then I delete the spam. Then I decide what emails from list serves there is no point in reading because if I have not read them immediately, I will have missed the letter-writing, petition-signing, event-going, offering-enjoying that is described in the email. Those get deleted without being opened. There is another level of emails that I open, but just skim. Then I either delete quickly or leave to be read after I get to the important stuff. Then there are the personal and business emails that I want to read and require my attention. I look at them to see if they need immediate attention or can wait.
The thoughts that arise during meditation have a similar filter. Some are spam. There is a certain almost mesmerizing quality about the quantity and array of the thoughts, but I just let them go — returning to my mantra or the breath because the mantra is far more delightful than the thoughts. Other thoughts, I acknowledge, but leave for later (i.e., the proverbial “to do” list), again finding more delight in the spaciousness and light of meditation. Sometimes particular thoughts relevant to my practice and very being will start resonating in the light itself and becomes messages. These thoughts sometimes dissolve again into the light of meditation and do not come with me from the session in a tangible form. Others stay with me and give me fruit for contemplation, for investigation and study, for illumination of my day, or for discussion with others for further refinement.
Always, though, there is an acceptance that thoughts will arise as inevitably as one with multiple active email accounts and many list serves will get email. The practice is learning which thoughts I should give heed, which to discard, and when and how to listen to those that will serve and inform.
Cicada Watch
Here’s some useful, along with some merely anecdotal and highly subjective discussion on the impending arrival of more cicadas than usual. I don’t remember them being overwhelming in 2004, but vividly remember being astonished by them 17 years earlier than that–more cicadas than I ever dreamed possible. A Jain would have had much trouble walking down the street for worry about stepping on one (or dozens).
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Another Storm Passes Without Any Rain Falling Inside the Beltway
What’s a gardener and concerned for the trees and the health of the planet citizen to do? I’ve got enough water in the rain barrel to water the vegetables and herbs once or twice, but what impact does that really have? At work, people were grumbling because it was cloudy. They seemed shocked when I advised them that we are an inch under normal rainfall for August and have a fairly significant deficit for the summer despite the July rains.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could move some of the flood waters that have fallen only a couple hundred miles away to irrigate our fields without disrupting our eco-system? Part of me just wants not to know about the consequences of global climate change, but it is hard not to notice that all the weather patterns I used to know and understand do not seem to apply quite the same way anymore. What do we do when the systems and practices we have in place for our ease, comfort, well-being, and understood day-to-day peace of mind are disrupted?
Yoga will not fix the big outer problems, but it can provide us with the steadiness and ease needed to stay present and be flexible in the face of crisis, upheaval, or disease. It can also provide insight into how we can live in better alignment. In the meantime, I am practicing gratitude. I know how blessed I am that, so far, the wild upheavals I read about in the news have not kept me from all the food and comfort that a person could possibly want. And I pay attention, because to be ignorant ultimately never serves ourselves or others.
