The doldrums get to me sometimes, being human and all.  Just those long deep sighs when i think everyone else around me is doing something more creative or altruistic or special.  That comparing mind doing its business, over doing its business, throwing up the illusion that my life is useless and tiring.

So I take a walk.  It always works.  The grass, now yellow from a hot late summer, cares nothing about the green watered lawn beside it.  So what.  The sawdust from the destroyed ancient catalpa tree on the corner is doing its job well–melting into the earth once again.  The blinding equinox sun simply shines on the east-west roads as if it has merely just rose to the day.

Nature is simple.  Why am I so humanly complicated!  Hilarious.  I go forth today as a blade of grass, glorious, honorable and brilliant.

I have returned from camping out in the woods.  Those deep tall wide warm wood days, softened with a forest floor layered with fir cushions.  Nearby an eternal river of rushing day and night rumble.

The river was surrounded by rocks–big, small, gravel, sand, boulders–torn from the granite mountain and polished with a million years of water round.  We picked our way cautiously along the rocks, stumbling, holding on to branches and the larger stones to set our camp chairs along the tenuous shore to sit with our feet in the glacier cold.

We had to shout at each other to be heard above the rapids and rushing river.  But after a quiet time in the sun, the rocks revealed their secrets in a simple phrase: “Rumble, tumble, roar.”

So these days I make a point of rolling with it, allowing the water and boulders of the day to polish me smooth into a stone-solid heart.

When I started practicing meditation, then teaching about it, I found one of the hardest things to do was to sit with myself.  The plague of anxious thoughts–the past! the future! self-doubt!

Allowing these thoughts to flow through my consciousness like leaves on a rolling river is still, and always be, the science and art of self-compassion.  The barriers to meditation are all about that over-protective, judgmental, hyper-alert mind warning me that I’m not doing it right.  Instantly I am distracted with struggle to be better.

What if there is no “better”?  Just now.  The now, finding the now, returning to the now, is precious.  Right here, right now all is excellent.  And then another now.  In silence I find the Divine inside of me smiling.

I seek to practice mindfulness, but it is often a messy process that fills my day with aches, distractions and dull escape.  I am letting go more and more of trying to do what I just simply don’t want to do–with less and less guilt.  Sometimes those actions I do like to do are brushed aside, testing my desire.

Here is a soft center of my day–connecting with the eternal.  It doesn’t even matter if there is no such thing, it is irrelevant.  What is the proof for me is, like yeast, when gently encouraged, the bread of my day rises to easy, flavorful sustenance.  If I start my day remembering that i am truly a mystical swirl of human and spirit, the illusion of stories does not imprison me.

With a touch of gratitude, a sprinkle of perspective from the top of the trees, and a deep rooted recognition of the power of love, my day is a feast.

So anxiety about a meeting and announcement and a change gets me all riled up.  It goes pretty well, and then the next day, down in the numbness.  What an unexplainable adventure this human life is.

Sometimes I wish I think this blog is a message to non-humans out there: the crop circle artists, ET of Roswell, or the angels just there on the other side of my shoulder.  A semi-regular note about what it is like to be a biped on the lovely blue-green planet. 

Puzzling with feelings, thrilling with nature, tiring with a body that has a terminal pull date.  And precious.  Today I’ll keep that precious thought in mind and just be a witness to the leaves on the river flowing by me of tiring, puzzling and then thrilling moments.

Let it be–wise words said in a million ways by every kind of spiritual teacher.  Know thyself and let it be could serve as the best watchwords for human life.  But even knowing myself doesn’t serve me some time–just being in the moment is precious and powerful.

The power of all is in the moment–the only real time we have.  The past is memory, the future is still a story in our heads.  Being here now, keys clicking, fridge humming, clock ticking, waiting for the truth of me to show itself, is the closest I get to being a tree.  Allowing my growth, my changes, my life to unfold in each breathing second.

it is the gift of leaning into the shoulder of my Dear One and feeling Her cheek against mine, looking over my shoulder at my words i share in a small way to remind you all, remind myself really, about the grace, peace and deep soaring serenity of conscious contact.

Be still and the waters clear.  I am a being still.  I try to be still.  But I am usually a human doing.  Doing and worrying, trying to understand the incomprehensible.  Pretending to grasp the silliness of human experience, relationships and purpose of life.

All I really have is a POV–corporate world name for “point of view”.  And my art teacher calls it perspective, where I stand when I try to recreate mystery on paper.

Today my POV is surrender.  Tired.  Released feelings and tears yesterday in the midst of rambling and confusion.  So now the rain is gone and something is nourished.  I grow and change seeking the light of Divine love.

it’s best today to be still and follow my God Knows.

We are of the earth, and we are more than the dust of us.  We are creating beings.  We take the earth in with each breath and make more of it, different of it, and then we talk.  Sharing our thoughts breaks through to more creations.  Then this body wears out and we release it back to the earth.

And the inner voice says: “Is that all there is?!?!”  Well I don’t think so, but here I am at that balancing beam of earth and non-earth.  Or earth and extra-dimensional earth–like feelings and concepts, memories and dreams.  Feeling especially.  You don’t see sadness or regret in the trees much.  The rocks don’t look like they jump around in joy. 

But nature helps me with my feelings.  “Just stand and bend,” say the trees.  “Rest” grumble the rocks.  And the bustling, gurgling, rushing river says, “Dance!”

The trick is to enjoy the balancing act of rock and river, body and spirit, feelings and sleep.  On to the tightrope once again.

I’ve been in the woods.  The mere act of walking from my campsite to the circle of friends around the fire, under old growth wide cedars, with tender tiny purple flowers at their feet, even with the forest dripping with the mist, I am transformed into an angel walking through heaven.

Now back in my cluttered house, silent partner, stuff to do, things to move, heart aching, ready to change.

Watching the Tao rush and move, splash and sparkle, deep and still as I sat by the river, there is only change.  Yet it is the material world that reflects this–from the inside of the stillness in me to the movement of my fingers on the keyboard.

I bow to the Tao, but need my Dear Divine One close to my cheek, arms around my shoulders as I walk in bare feet through the haphazard rocks, sticks and tossed shoreline of my day.

Sometimes–ha–most times–I lose perspective.  Doing has been such a definer of my identity that when in doubt of myself, I do something.  Then I go into the belief of the invisible and do nothing for nobody and seem to indulge in the low doing, like sitting, reading and putzing

They say the Tao is about being at peace with the nothingness.  I am a human and my feelings are part of this earth.  I cry at the death of a century-old tree at the end of my street.  The geography of my emotional life has been changed forever.  I am perplexed at the mystery of companionship.  I resist the tiring routine of rising for work.

These are the times that I indulge in my belief, my choice, my respite of loving the Divine.  the essence beneath the trees, river and even the statue of Kwan Yin on my table.  She who stirs the Tao from nothing to something and back again.  I lean on Her as I love myself in the mystery.