What's Real is What's Right in Front of You.

The sun is trying to come out, daffodil buds are starting to unfurl, a garter snake is coiled in the side yard, a substantial part of its tail lopped off.  I don't know if it was injured by human, critter or car.  

Life is what's right in front of you; not some imaginings about what used to be or what might be.  Good and bad, OK, not OK, is just a judgment.  It just is.

Gratitude

This morning, I set myself a simple exercise:  while sitting to simply notice whatever arises within; no other intention, just to see what's there.  My mind has been dominating; I need to be more quiet and just see.

This morning, it's very clear how much I have to be grateful for:

 -- I have a strong, healthy body that has it's own wisdom and has been a friend, all these years.

 -- I have a strong mind that, while often running wild, is capable of learning and understanding an enormous variety of things.

 -- I have a strong emotional center that, while also often running astray, is capable of deep love and compassion.

 -- I have had the fortune of a variety of accidents of fate which have put me in front of people who know and understanding things that have shaped my thinking, my feelings and my life and have moved me toward a path.

While I am a lazy student and practitioner and more often absent to my life and myself than present...

This morning I am grateful for all that has been given and received.

Wanishi

I have forgotten more than remembered the exercise given in the reading group. The resistance that arises is subtle but powerful.  I have been unable to try more than a few minutes each time I've remembered.  How can I try?  I push too hard, in the wrong way, with the wrong part.

Days and days with no hint of presence or self awareness and then a day of finding myself in the midst of my life, in my body, doing dishes, playing some pointless game online, going downstairs, sitting in a chair, watching television, climbing the stairs, aware of my the sensation of my muscles and joints, every so often, throughout the day, moving in and out of myself, sometimes lost as usual, sometimes leaving awareness, sometimes returning; a wordless question about who I am.  

Today I remembered a recent moment, looking in a mirror and seeing my mother on my face, but, today, I saw several fleeting images of myself in my mind's eye; all of them and none of them all of who I am.

I am blessed and inexpressibly grateful for the moments when I wish and I'm able to be present to my life, exactly as it is, and as much who I am as I know of myself, so far.

Earlier in the week, reading of the law of octaves, I wondered if I could find examples, knowing how easily I lose my way.

Baby Spiders

A few days ago, I evicted a very large hairy spider from the bathroom and house.  

I have arachnophobia but I've worked at controlling it because, I know that spiders eat a lot of insects and because I felt that it was fundamentally blasphemous.  To be afraid of something so much smaller than myself and something that, in most cases, can't really do me any real harm, is, more or less, accepting the thoughts that I'm weak, that it is bad, both thoughts contrary to my faith in creation and my upbringing as a Christian (which upbringing I have largely moved away from).  Also, killing is not, to me, an acceptable first response, to anything.

In fact, I quite admire spiders like the wolf spider which is a wonderful mother.  Those are her babies on her back in the photo below.

Years ago, in California, I was clearing weeds and kept thinking I saw movement to my left and behind me, in my periphery.  I kept stopping to look and didn't see anything, until...there she was, about the size of a quarter, loaded down with maybe 20-50 babies.  I watched her for about 20 minutes.  She was transporting her brood.  Every once in a while one or a few would fall off her back and she'd stop, turn slightly and wait for them to climb back on.  While wolf spiders can be quite quick (they're hunters, not web builders; they go after their prey.) it took her quite a while to cross what had been a driveway, then overgrown.  I watched her and let her go.

Today I had to kill the remaining baby spiders in our bathroom because, if they were allowed to remain in the house, they would grow up the size of their mother, who I'd evicted.  I'm guessing that their bite would not be pleasant.  These spiders, which might be very large wolf spiders, are much, much larger than a quarter.  They're very intimidating but not aggressive, as most spiders, even the wolf, are not.

The day after I'd evicted the mother, I discovered that she'd left an egg sack that had opened and dozens of baby spiders were there waiting for her.  I sucked up many dozen babies and evicted them as well.  I also sucked up many babies and threw them in the canal where they will most likely be drowned or eaten by fish and I finally flushed a couple of dozen of them.

I noticed later there were more, in the same place, probably waiting to be carried elsewhere by their mother.  Many had undoubtedly gotten away into cracks and later emerged.  Today, I killed more, squashed them and flushed them down the toilet.  Some of them hung on a strand of nest web and dropped on the floor.  I squashed them.  As I squashed them, I began to cry, for the tiny baby spiders I was killing; alive only a few days.  

Am I silly?  Am I crazy?  Some would say so.  I don't care.  It hurt me to think of them as babies, so tiny, so delicate.  And, I didn't make them.  They have a purpose with which is it not mine to interfere.  But, they were in my space.  They will grow to a very large size.  They bite.  There were dozens of them.  I have myself to think about.  But, I cried.  Why is this world this way; that I have to kill them to feel safe?

And, yet, I remembered myself, brought my attention back to myself, with these questions remaining but the emotional impact reduced and some degree of separation with the part of me wrapped up in this drama and another wondering.  What's done is done, or maybe not; I might have to kill more as they emerge from their hiding places.  What is, is.

My Inner World

From the time we're born, apparently, our attention is drawn outward to the world in which we live, for food, for pleasure, to fulfill obligations, for love and affection.  But, the world inside our skin, inside our minds, inside our emotions, inside our bodies is as vast and interesting as that outside our skin; and largely unexplored.

What is this attraction always away from myself?  Why is it so easy to forget to make the small effort necessary to sit with myself for a few minutes in the morning; to bring my attention back to my self and my inner world?  I've been given a practice.  I identify with the practice; and yet, I clearly prefer to disappear in all of the attractions outside myself.

Yes, disappear.  There can be days between the moments when I remember I exist and have a clear sensation of being inside my own skin in whatever time and place and circumstance.  Having experiences those moments, I know that I don't truly exist outside of those moments when I'm standing inside my own skin.  Without the wish to be there, I'm not actually typing as I am now, typing is simply taking place, often my mind is elsewhere.  I know that it's possible to drive from point A to point B and not be there in any moment during the drive.

The wish to be present is there but is often buried beneath habitual activities, thoughts and reactions; I'm usually gone; asleep.  What can I find to help me remember the wish?

Within and Without

It seems to me, at this moment, although I could be mistaken, that a balance between the struggle to improve the outward circumstances of my situation and my inner responses to my situation is something to strive for.  It's seems to me, at this moment, a better use of my limited energy would be to understand my various responses to my situation and how those responses affect me and, perhaps, my situation.

and

Perhaps, if I am unable to find any sensation of my physical presence at any particular moment, then, I am taken by, identified with, whatever is happening around me; what will be will be.

But, just the question of whether or not I'm able to sense some part of my body, brings some sensation and some detachment from the circumstances of my situation; if only for seconds; what will be will be and, for those seconds, I AM in the midst of what is.