LOSING YOUR MIND

Sitting on grass, with your back against a tree, a blue sky overhead and a view of nature spread in front of you. Perhaps a grassy field, a mountain backdrop, a lake or the ocean. Relaxing into nature, the tree has your back, your breath comes full and deep, your heart is open and something is singing inside. Your mind drifts like a small cloud far away and you are just present in the world, alive and joyful.

You have lost your mind, It has wandered off, or gone to sleep, leaving you to experience the rest of your being and for the moment you are living from your heart, resting in your soul. .

This seems like a good thing. In fact we may go to some effort for this sort of experience. How much of spiritual practice is about transcending the mind, finding Samadhi, losing the ego? All many ways this has been said.

However to say someone has "lost their mind" has a different feel to it, in fact a different meaning. Language can be confusing. Perhaps this is something that holds us back? Considering this recently, walking in the woods, it came to me that in fact the people who are said to have lost their minds ("gone crazy") were, rather, "lost in their minds". They were lost in hallucinations, delusions, mental constructs and fantasies. They were stuck in emotions, memories, lost in an internal maze.

These people may be said to have too much mind, rather than too little.

How often in everyday life do we have too much mind? Worries of all sorts that we seem to have no choice but to play over and over. Work, relationships, health. We may even tell our friends, "I'm loosing my mind here". But actually it is far from lost, in fact we can't escape it. What we are loosing is our Self.

Sitting against the tree,we stay for a while, before returning to the life in which our mind is engaged for us. You have conversations with loved ones, remember how to fix your favorite food, or how to find a great restaurant.

There are different levels of mind and they can serve us, or enslave us. Learning to "lose your mind" is about developing that choice, to work with the right tool at the right time, to be aware of the levels of awareness that are other than "mental", are of the body or the spirit. It is about learning how to find your Self, to cease to be lost in the maya of your egoic mind. It is about becoming sane, not crazy; free of any old fears and labels.

Cultivating the loss of mind: where do you really need it, and when does it get in the way, or distract you from being present with life? The next time you are worrying, remember the tree and the field or the sea: step out of the maze, experience your Self with a heart full of joy. Lose a little more mind and gain a little more soul.

(© 10/10)

TALKING TO NATURE

All summer long I've been taking time to be in nature. When I'm by a stream, in the mountains, or just lying on the grass near my house; I let the mind quite a bit, open my heart and feel that there is a conversation going on. This is a conversation between my being and nature. Its a conversation without words, or even feelings, though it is through some level of feeling that I know it is happening.

While I don't know what the contents of this conversation are, I know deeply that it is nurturing and helpful to me as a soul living in a human body. I can guess that I am being reminded of how the natural world works, outside of mind and human construction. It is connected, and we are meant to be connected. It is grounded and that is good for us as well. It is fluid and moving, rather than stuck. It is full of innate wisdom and knowing, so that nothing needs to be figured out.

Most of the universe operates without the use of an analytic mind. I am being reminded of this, perhaps invited to remember and bring into awareness ways of navigating life that don't involve planning and analyzing. Not that these don't have their place and usefulness, but too much and you wear yourself out.

Watching the full moon in August rising from the plans of Colorado, hazy pink in the moist evening air, gradually becoming clearer and brighter as it floats into the evening sky. I am in the foothills looking east, surrounded by nature, and suddenly I have a clear sense of the natural matrix, which waits to hold me, orient me, support me. It is a different matrix from the lights and roads I see out on the plains; part of the matrix of the universe, rather than that of the human mind. Remembering this and opening into it is a profoundly joyful experience.

Driving around town as the summer days slowly fade into fall, I notice the trees, the sky, the grass finally brown after a summer of green. I am aware of the cars and what I am doing, but I allow my heart to reach our and connect to nature. Both matrices are here, woven through each other, and I find centering and joy in one, even while I navigate the other. I believe that they do not need to be at odds, but it is clear that as we yearn to bring our higher larger self into awareness, into our life, talking to nature, reconnecting to its universal matrix of spirit, reminds us and teaches us what we need to know.

So allow yourself to find nature around you, even in the cities it is there if you look. Open to it, align with it, and let it talk to you and teach you. Remembering you will find more joy and become more fully human.
(© 9/10)

RELAXING INTO LIFE

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. I've often noticed that laziness is another good stimulus for creativity. In other words, if something has to be done why use more energy or effort than necessary to accomplish it?

Working a summer office job in high school I can remember people commenting on something I was doing with a bit of surprise. I can't remember the details now (except that it involved the office copier and 200 pages reports), but I remember responding that the creativity had come from being lazy. Contrary to popular views, this sort of laziness promotes efficiency, something like inventing the washing machine when you are tired of doing the clothes by hand.

A few years later I started practicing Tai Chi. As one early teacher used to say, the whole point is to learn to relax. When asked how you did this he would say, "practice, practice, practice". As in most things in life, being relaxed, rather than tense or nervous, yields better results. It is also physically easier and less tiring. One day I was playing pool with a friend of mine and I thought of my tai chi, dropped my center, relaxed into my legs, and found that my playing flowed effortlessly.

Many years later I had occasion to spend several months digging out the lower level of a house to allow new windows and doors to go in. For a number of reasons I choose to do this by hand. Working again from tai chi I focused on relaxing as much as possible and found that I could release the tension and soreness from my body this way. I also taught myself the easiest and most efficient way to work with a pick and shovel. Over the years I have learned that if you want to learn the most efficient (easiest) way to do something: focus on staying as relaxed as possible while doing it. Your being will naturally find the desired result.

Think about all great athletes, artists, or practitioners of any art. When we wish to express the mastery we see in them, we say that they made it look effortless.

In the energy work that I do the concept of effortlessness is emphasized, though it is really more an attitude or state of being. Anything can be done with, or without effort. It is both easier and usually more efficient to do it without effort. Lack of effort is not at all the same as not paying attention, it is about relaxing while you do something. Find the tension in your body or being and relax it and everything will improve.

I once had a chance to help with a rice harvest in rural Japan, some of which was done by hand. This is indeed tiring work. Harvest time is also the time of year when there are festivals in the villages, including dancing. Watching the dancing one evening I realized that the movements in the dance where the same as in the harvesting and that they also both movements seen in martial arts. Over the millennia people have found the easiest, most efficient motions of the body. This is natural at the end of a day of harvesting, or a long practice session, you have no energy for anything else.

So if you are interested in efficiency, in the optimal way to do something, it will also be the easiest and the most relaxed. Remember to factor in emotional and mental energy as well, then it can be fun as well as efficient. Learning to relax may sound like being lazy, but as long as there is presence, awareness and attention (no limp noodles), there is life and ease and grace.

(© 9/10)