Prodigal Summer's Toll

Spring is a time of proliferation of things green. The trees, shrubs and grasses thrive with their newly sprouted growth. Everything is fresh and alive and awake from the dormancy of winter.

Summer is a time of feast as the insects, birds, and other vegetarians eat their way through the lush diet made available to them during spring. There is a slow withering as the diners take their toll on the leaves of the trees and other plants. This gorging that takes place during the prodigal summer, along with the heat and aridity, causes the fading away of the lushness that was present in the spring and early summer months.

I am like the trees except I’m not sure I have their hardiness. My roots don’t seem to store up the necessary nourishment from the previous season. Summer’s heat and drought conditions take a higher toll on my spirit and mental outlook. I have to spend time outside in the cool, quiet, early hours of the morning. And I try to sneak in a few precious moments in the evening, after I have gotten my disable husband to bed to watch television. I am like the insects that gorge themselves on the lush vegetation. I soak up the sap of summer’s spring lushness in order for my spirit to survive until the cool months of autumn’s return.

My problem as a human is that the heat and lack of rain of summer sometimes take a higher toll on me than the renewal I received from the “sap” and lifeblood of nature in the spring. Depression ensues. It’s something I must constantly attempt to ward off by spending time working and playing outdoors as much as the hot conditions allow.

It’s as though, unlike the trees and shrubs, I did not put in enough of springtime’s supply of renewing growth of spirit to see me through the prodigal summer. I like the other life forms need to better adapt myself to all seasons of life, drawing on my inner strength to see me through the dry spells. I need to look inward for spring’s renewing presence to feed me through the time of spiritual drought of summer. For this too shall pass and a refreshing, renewing rain will give my spirit the nourishment it needs to spring back to emotional equilibrium so that I, like the other forms of nature, survive and thrive in my summer as well as in my springtime.

Unlike some other life forms, my well being can be controlled by my attitudes. I can allow summer to make me a prisoner by its excessive heat, or I can accept the fact that yes, once again my least favorite season is here upon me, yet I am full of life and spirit, and I’ll go about living life to the fullest and just sweat!

A Shell Left Behind

While keeping my son’s puppy, Deco, he brought a “gift” upon the front porch. It was a turtle’s shell mostly decomposed having now been left to the ants to finish its demise and decomposition. And yet, what it left behind is so beautiful; its shell, its shield against the stronger forces of nature. With lovely patterns and a myriad of striae within each pattern, it is a truly a work of art.

What will be left behind of me to show that I was on this earth? Obviously, no corporeal work of art, but hopefully, I can leave behind for those who knew me a tapestry of memories woven from threads of the joy and love for life that I have cultivated in my recent years, as only one among many of life’s beautiful forms I hold so dear; the trees and plants, the insects including the nest of wasps on my front porch I call “my friends”, the birds that grace the view from my window daily, the deer and coyotes, the raccoons and rabbits. Finally, I welcome the thread towards my fellow human beings whom I am coming to appreciate after a long stretch of having an attitude bordering contempt.

Only until one has esteem and love of self can one appreciate the humanity in others. I am now open and willing to accept my humanity with all its vulnerabilities, its frailties, but also its possibilities and strengths. And now, as in a looking glass, I can see and cherish that same humanity in others. When I let go of my ego and open my essential self to love them, I am able to receive love in return.

So the snobbish bitch persona that I so often wore as a shield to protect my vulnerable inner self from my fellow humankind, unlike the turtle’s shell, I cast off as a work of my own making of ego. Now I hope to create and leave a legacy of moments open and exposed to the fullness of life and all the joy, contentment and ecstasy that goes along with being in tune with the breath of life and being that runs through the essence of me; that part remaining when my outer shell dies.

"A thousand eyes but none with correct vision"

Just because I look at a situation, it does not follow that I see the situation. For the last six months, I have been looking at Enchanted Lakes, the community where I live, through lenses colored by anger, resentment, and self-righteousness. And since my lenses filtered what I saw, my vision was likewise skewed. I saw anger, resentment and self-righteousness in others. So though I thought what I was seeing in other people, I was seeing correctly, in fact, it was as though I were looking in a mirror. For what I saw in others, lay behind my eyes as a window to what was in my soul.

Granted that initially I saw with correct vision that the way people do things here are very questionable morally, but this correct vision, so to speak, did quite a spiritual number on me. I became like, if not worse than what I saw. Moreover, I was blind to the awful changes occurring within my spiritual being. My ego was fed by my vision and I became something very close to a monster: an egoic self consuming negative energy and burning up the positive energy within me. I became what I saw and what I perceived.

“There is only one time when it is essential to awaken, and that time is now” said Buddha. And so thankfully, my vision has been restored and I have awakened, for the present moment anyway. “The scales have fallen from my eyes” as mentioned in the Bible and at last I can see. No one made me the moral authority. Mo one made me responsible to correct all the world’s wrongs, not even here in my small community. To think I could or should do so puts my ego on a pedestal whose foundation is shaky at best and at worst is short a leg or two.

No! Things are not perfectly managed here in Enchanted Lakes; but it is an enchanted community if I have correct vision. I always have two lists at my disposal.
One list contains all the things wrong about my world and that make me unhappy. The other list contains all the things right about my world and contain all the ingredients for my happiness. It is up to me which list I focus my attention on. If I awaken and choose the latter list, I have correct vision. For therein lies my true self which holds the path to peace, joy and love. My correct vision is within not through what I see with my eyes, whether two or one thousand.

Prickly, discarded cedar needles and such

After the rainstorm of the last days, before practicing yoga, I was sweeping the fallen cedar needles from the mats. They were old and brown and so had been cast off by the living tree.

Absorbed in my task of sweeping away the discarded cedar needles, it occurred to me that I should likewise discard some old and outdated thoughts that hang around in my mind much like the prickly dried out needles of the cedars.

When I carry too much old baggage from the past, which includes all memories with negative associations that serve no purpose unless they remind me of past mistakes not to repeat, I like the cedar needlessly carry useless weight that bears down on me similar to the drooping branches of the tree before it sheds and frees itself from the dead weight.

Once shed and let go, the branches spring back upwards to their intended resting height. I, too, shall benefit from the lightening of my mental housekeeping by a healthy upswing, coming to rest at my natural and intended spiritual place of Being.