A new week begins and it’s time to consider “what for the blog.” Hmm… Snowed in, have been snowed in, will be snowed in, power out, temperature at 6 degrees, power back on, nothing burst, snowed in…
Where does this leave me? In a very familiar place, actually. It leaves me in “I love change!” I just love change. For years I attempted to get folks interested in having a practice t-shirt with that message but never succeeded. In fact, the lack of interest was often accompanied with the statement “I don’t like change.”
Given the amount of quiet spaciousness I’m currently enjoying it has seemed like a perfect time to explore that point of view. Why do I love change so much? Not sure, but I suspect it’s because I’ve never really grown up—which I see as very much a positive. I like new, different, previously unseen, unexperienced. It’s exciting. It is, in a word, my favorite word: Fun.
What’s going to happen? I don’t know. How will it be? I don’t know. That seems to hold the key. I don’t know. Well, I’d better be here if I want to find out! Here. Here where there are no problems, where nothing’s wrong, where all that is, is all that is, and I’d better be looking there/here if I want to be flowing along with Life.
And, it all works so perfectly, so beautifully. This many days in I don’t need to be anywhere other than here, snowed in. I have everything I need. Turns out a person in a house won’t freeze to death even at 6 degrees, especially when they have layers and layers of clothes to put on. Turns out snow is a great freezer and a room in those conditions makes a great refrigerator.
We’ve found out over the years that wet clothes and a fan make it possible to sleep just fine regardless of the heat. Wet clothes even without a fan when the power is off is perfectly survivable. How deprived one would be never to know these things!
And then there are the birds! Along with extra supplies for me that I was “guided” to lay in, I picked up extra groceries for my feathered friends. These circumstances provide longer and longer periods of the quiet spaciousness previously alluded to. Aside from being extraordinarily fortunate to have all the technology needed for keeping up with practice, I have the “bird workshop.” The “bird workshop” is, admittedly, mostly entertainment, but it’s also solid Awareness Practice. How so?
A lot of humans who are sincere and caring experience our species as a regrettable burden on and danger to other species. We are insensitive, self-serving, and, as a result, cruel to our fellow inhabitants on this planet. The apocalypse is coming, and it’s our fault. If only we weren’t so selfish the earth would be able to survive us.
There’s no doubt some truth in that, but living with my bird friends has given me a broader perspective. I am in an “aspects of the personality” workshop with these little people and since I doubt I’m a whole lot different—okay, not different at all—from the rest of humanity, it’s quite illuminating.
There’s one fellow I call Pudgy Budgey, the epitome of greediness. He will often eat and then plop himself down ready to run off anyone else who might dare to wish to eat some of his food. I keep reminding him he’s not the one paying for or distributing the food, but he seems impervious to reason. Then we have Share and Share Alike, who will eat a bit and then perch on the deck rail while others eat. There’s Shy who hides out under a shovel leaning against the wall and darts out periodically to get a bite from the PB&J treat. We have Nervous, Daring, Vigilant, and On the Lookout for an Opportunity. Perhaps my all-time favorite Curious, who comes up to the sliding glass door and stretches up very tall in order to look in. I won’t subject you to the rest of my projected aspects; suffice it to say all of humanity is showing up out there on that deck!
We can see it with the deer and squirrels, even farm animals. Seems there are just some traits that get embodied and acted out. We’re all working out our own salvation diligently? Who knows? Certainly not I, but it does seem that we humans have a decidedly different and, I’m going to project better, opportunity. We can change.
Without judgment or self-hatred, we can see the ways we are, the karma and conditioning, that cause us to suffer and contribute to the suffering of fellow creatures and the planet and we can make different choices.
The key to the whole thing is “without judgment or self-hatred.” Let’s really hop on that in 2022, shall we? Our “self” and possibly everything else might just be counting on us.
In gasshō,
ch