Barry Garden Path

It is so human to make things mine.    I love to capture things in my mind.    I constantly make the world I encounter somehow fit into the concepts I have already developed.  My life is full to the brim it seems with remembered experiences, and everything new I encounter is neatly  tucked into those stored memories.     My days are so packed with the familiar.

This is my way of taking possession of each experience.   I attempt to make familiar each item that otherwise would be a complete surprise.    Plants are given names of recognition, people are recognized or put into categories, streets are becoming familiar avenues.    I capture each encounter in the framework of my mind.    It becomes understandable and mine to the degree I can make it fit.

What if I was able to completely turn this around!  What if I became possessed by my garden every time I walked out the back door.   Each time I saw the moon move from behind a cloud I would not capture and recognize it but instead reach out and be totally captured by it.   The tree would not be possessed as an old familiar, but it would be the tree that absorbed and captured me.    I would hand myself over rather than have it bend to me.

Everything I passed would be a new encounter without the sense of familiarity that arises every time I fit something into my life time of experiences.

That would be my future.   I would wander the world without a map, no sense of where I was or what I saw.     I would be amazed at each new and ‘unfamiliar’ plant I saw, every person I touch would be a ‘first’, every smell that stirred my nostrils would be ‘new’.

I would no longer be the captor gathering the world into my net of categories and familiar identities.   I would be the captured.    I would become prey and be taken in, absorbed.    I would slowly know no longer who I was.   I  would no longer recognize my world.    I would instead be totally absorbed by it.

I want to be present the moment something happens.   It could be anything, and I don’t want to miss it.   It is the sound of a distant lawn mower.   It is the twitter of a bird.    It is the movement of a leaf and the brushing of a branch against the screen.

I don’t want to miss anything.   My walk through the garden is a succession of happenings and revelations.  What seems a passing of time is simply one happening after another.     It is one now after another now.

I don’t intend to miss out on any of them.   I will always be ready to raise my hand and, once again, shout “present!”

Race is a very complicated thing for me to sort out.    It is hard for me to think or talk about race without being provocative.    The word itself, “race” is so loaded.    For months, I have stopped checking the “white” box when I am asked for my race identification, just because I think using the term is a not so subtle claim for a privileged position.

Skin color is just a substitute for what most of us really mean.    When I say that I am “white”, I think I am saying more than my skin pigment is rather light.    “White”  is a signal word that I am part of an honored group of people.     In fact, it would be a lot simpler and more honest if we just called ourselves honored.   The color of my skin is an accident of birth.   The special honor given to me is a decision of society.

If I had been born in another part of the world, it is likely that my skin color might not bestow on me a mark of honor.     There is a good chance that I would be considered an outsider,  not “one of us”.     The decision of my society to give me a position of honor because of the color of my skin is hardly different from another culture’s decision to tattoo my face as a mark of special distinction worthy of privilege and respect.

The provocative part of race for me is my conviction that when we talk about race, the emphasis is on people who have dark(er) skin.  What is really going on has more to do with my being white than their being black.    It’s about whiteness or the absence of whiteness.   The practice of racism in all its perverted thinking has more to do with asserting that I am white than asserting that someone else is black.    I am protecting my status of whiteness, my status of honor.    “They are not  like one of us.”

I think there are a lot of people who have white skin who think they are white, that they are honored.     They are white wannabes.  They don’t realize that the truly white, the truly honored people are an elite group.    The rest of us with white skin are a suck-up buffer strip around them protecting their real position of honor, of whiteness.

Many of us attempt to live with the illusion that we are part of the honored group, and we do that by affirming our whiteness and separating ourselves from all those who were not born with whiteness.    Skin color is a convenient way of keeping straight who want to be honored, and who are not to be honored.

Anyone who thinks they are born into a culture because of their skin color is buying into the illusion.    There is nothing special about being either white or black.   However, in our culture, we have created the myth that being white bestows a position of honor, just as though a tattoo was etched into our face as an infant.    Being white is a signal of honor.   I am working to distance myself from that way of thinking.

“Foolish.   Incredibly foolish.    Dumb.   Dumb.  Dumb.”     Claudia Schmidt

It’s actually rather nice to realize that I have begun to awaken from being so foolish.   What a fool I have been not to see what has been so obvious and right in front of me.    For most of my life, I have lived in an interior world of categories, a world defined by my very human mind.    My culture has helped that definition a lot.   So much has been an illusion.

All around me, a  perception-ready world presented itself.   Yet I have mostly experienced it all through a filter of my own fabricated ideas.   I had so much more to be aware of, to work with.

It has been the nature of my human mind to see all the world through a pixelated lens that broke all existence into small bits of categorized data.   All along, it could have been so much simpler.    Everything simply is.   I have struggled and worked hard to make it something that reflects my own notions and ideas rather than the other way around.

Concretely, I live in a city created by people, defined by concepts arising out of creative minds.   At the same time, all around the real world goes on, ignoring what we humans have created.    So it will continue long after we humans are gone.

Nature follows its own laws and patterns, oblivious of what humans have done and what they dream.    We attempt to control and harness nature according to our own ideas and notions, but nature follows its own mind.

We destroy forests to plant crops in rows to fit our ideal of what providing food is like.    We employ chemistry to attempt to manipulate the growth of plants.   But nature has a mind of its own.

I tend my own garden and attempt to shape it according to my own notions and ideas.    It is best when I yield to the desires of plants and we dance a waltz of close interaction and intimacy, following one another’s lead.    I have mostly been a fool to fail to see the plants as they really are and not as reflections of my own ideas and dreams.

They have been here before I came and will likely prevail when I am gone.    All this will change, ignoring what I might dream or imagine.    It is a joy to see what I am able with eyes of one who is part of the world and not apart from it.   What a joy it is to begin to wake up and no longer see with foolish eyes.

And all I have to do is yield to what is.

The practice may be called mindfulness but it involves a lot more than mind.   Mind is only part of it.    The practice is really  one of the heart, and of the whole individual.    The mind is a kind of gateway that can limit or allow access for the heart.    It is a gateway that I want to keep open.    In my case, that means my mind must  be kept quiet and calm.    Only then can my heart be involved and engaged.   Then the heart- fulness can be felt and experienced.

As a first step, my mind must be paying attention.    Mindfulness means that the mind is fully present.    That is how I operate.   First, the gateway of the mind must swing open.    Then the heart can enter in and unfold.    It is hard for the heart to be present when the mind is shouting orders and stomping about.

I often tell my mind to be quiet, relax and allow my heart to beat slowly.   I lighten up, I allow lightness to emerge.   I feel my presence and feel the space around me.    This is the realm of the heart.

I sometimes like to give my mind something to do, like pay attention to my feet, or my hands or my breath.    It is my choice what to experience, and that allows my heart to unfold.    In this light and relaxed place my heart is less tentative, more able to reach out,  to embrace, to accept.

First, my busy mind must come to a rest.    I know that is happening when my arms, legs and head all let go of their isolation and allow the world to enter.     My mind can often be a barrier, telling me about the world, not allowing me to experience it directly.   My mind can populate my world with its own scenery, obscuring the reality.

I want to empty my mind, live with the lightness of mind-emptiness and allow heart-fulness to occur.

I find it disturbing that I am one of those beings who have used their great power so recklessly.   It is hard to realize that I am part of a cluster of beings who are separating children from their parents at the border with Mexico, and only for political reasons.   I am sad that my fellow humans in the US still put tens of thousands of poor people in prison just because they can’t pay up.     They simply can’t afford to pay, so we put them in prison.

I feel powerless to go effectively against the will and choice of the many.   The power of the vote is mostly an illusion.    Replacing one group of officials who support the wealthy and powerful with another group who support the interests of the wealthy and powerful is such a minimal solution.

It is with a great sadness that I regard myself as human, part of a species that has not yet found or has lost the skill to live in balance with nature and with one another.

What can I do?

I will find a crevice between two hard building stones of humanity.   I will gently sprout and send my tender roots into the essence of nature.   I will breathe in the air and moisture that finds me.    I will quietly bloom in between the hard presence of my surroundings.  I will welcome bees.    I will be a bringer of wonder.

I will bring joy to whoever passes through my garden.   I will extend happiness and insight to all who pass by.   I will offer wonder to whomever I touch or who come in contact with me.   My roots will cling to my surroundings, and I will gently change rock to dirt.

The trace I leave behind on the world will be the essence of life, written in small script, left behind for the manifestation of life yet to come.    I will nourish the future with whatever I have become.

Past experience has been there to help me to make sense of future experiences.   It was meant to help me interpret new things, and it often did.    I suppose that is what the past has done for me for most of my life.   The past has served a real purpose and benefit.   Past experiences not only had a meaning of their own but they served as a means to interpret new encounters.

At some point, I began to notice that the past had become baggage.   It had become a suitcase no longer of use, out of place, a bit moldy.

Much like past purchases, once new fresh and exciting,  the past began to become the clutter surrounding me, limiting my movement, my perspective, my space.   The past at some point stopped being of use and became a collection of mementos, organic figurines kept on a shelf or behind glass.

The past has often even disfigured my experiences and caused me to misinterpret what was right in front of me.    My helpful past has become a distraction.

I have begun to value and appreciate what shows up in my every-day world with true presence and meaning.    I am learning to experience “now” things not because they fit into some pattern of past experience, but because they invite new, fresh insight.   Plants familiar in my garden still have that aura of the past, but they have more significance because they are here today.    And they are different.

Memories still have an influence on my perception and my awareness, but less than they once did.    There is sometimes comfort in remembering the past, but I seldom dwell there.    My attention and awareness is more on the present.    Slowly, I am leaving the baggage of the past, leaving it behind.  It sits on yesterday’s platform, no longer of great use.

Like most others, I would like to feel beloved.    Better yet, I would like to feel part of a beloved community.    It could be debated whether this results from an act of bestowing the feeling of being beloved on someone else or receiving it from another.    The experience of feeling beloved may be neither giving or taking but instead is both.

It is a great gift to be able to feel secure and stable when being alone.   It is an even greater gift to embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty of existence.   That is the moment I most feel beloved.

Feeling beloved is, I think, unique to human experience.    In the midst of the deep uncertainty we share with other sentient beings,  I have the capacity to acknowledge and experience my relationship with the rest of existence.    I can know and experience the convergence of causes that determine how I am beloved and have every reason to be grateful.

Humans have this unique ability to give this as a gift to one another:  to declare and acknowledge that each of us is beloved.     It is especially a gift to the degree that it is freely given.

There is something almost perverse about the human conventions that seek to provide a safe refuge where we might feel beloved.   Humans surround themselves with assurances and conventions that would guarantee, affirm that we are beloved.     We are burdened with conventions developed over ages that seek to be safety vests,  life preservers, that will support the experience of being beloved.    They mostly don’t deliver.

Like existence itself, being a beloved is ambiguous. uncertain and beyond the guarantee of time.   It is what I choose.

 

There are many seeds in me, many not put there by my own choice.    These are all the bits of information put there through my experience since I first became aware.    That was some time around when I was born.   I am human, and I have the ability to put these seeds in me to help me make sense of the world.   Some seeds are from my deliberate experiences, some are there with little deliberate action by me.

The seeds are pieces of a giant puzzle that offer me my personal view of the world.   They are offered out of my subconscious whenever I experience something new, suggesting interpretations to help me make sense out of my new experience.

These seeds are little pre-judgments, interpretations that, because I am a highly developed human, help me to navigate the world.   Relying on these seeds have helped my ancestors rise above other beings and achieve such a dominant place in the world.

All the messages I have heard about the right kind of cereal to eat, the beer that will allow me to have a good time, the clothes that will project competence or conformity are all locked up in these seeds stored in my subconscious.

Since the time around when I was born, I have been methodically collecting the seeds of experience, and they have been tucked away in my subconscious, waiting to be put to use.     All the comments about black people who steal, who don’t work, who abandon their children are all part of my seed store of information.    The young boys who walk by my yard speaking a language I hardly understand except for the frequent crude and vulgar expressions are all part of the experience I have of black boys.

The collection of these seeds is not something I am typically aware of.    I have some control over what I will experience, which politicians I will listen to, which books I will read.    Most of the time, my seed gathering happens automatically just because I am human.     When my subconscious offers these seeds as an explanation of what is going on, I can have a choice of whether to use that information or not.    Unless I am choosing to be attentive and aware, that decision can also be almost automatic and without effort.

It is the way that my human brain works.  When I experience something new, all the seeds of my past experience spring to life to give meaning to that new encounter.   It is simply natural that when the electrical cord is stolen from my back yard, my subconscious instantly offers the image of a young black male to explain what has happened.     That is the image I have most often experienced in the past.    That kind of seed dominates my subconscious, not by my choice but by my exposure.

It is beneficial to my seed storage when I listen to an articulate, insightful black man or woman speak.   It is a helpful seed to place among all the contrary seeds I have gathered over the years.

I am a little surprised to realize how my brain works, and now I want to gain the insight to see people just as they are.   I want not to rely on my storehouse of past experiences to explain who they are.   I want to have the insight I need in order to be critical of what my seeds tell me about the world, especially about my fellow humans.

I realize that I am struggling against a dominant, very successful feature of my human nature.    My ability to store and use seeds of experience to allow me to be dominant and in charge, is not likely to make me the kind of human I choose to be.    I am more critical of what my seeds tell me.   Also, I now know I can choose experiences that are likely to form seeds that can be of good use.

 

For me to forsake the world is to turn my back on all the elaborate plots humans have created to obscure the reality of their experience.   I recognize that I have been part of that effort.    I  have been occupied with and supported assorted vain attempts to make enduring edifices to capture what has been but a passing experience.   So much of this effort has been misguided, misleading, and, as I now realize, a mistake.

Learning from experience is not the same as preserving experience.    Yesterday’s rose may be pressed  and preserved between pages,  but those same pages blur the beauty of today’s garden.

I forsake the world of this morning’s newspaper headlines, an unending recital of our failure to come to terms with our experience.    At best, it is a gleaning of shallow observations of what has occurred.   I am daily invited to live in a fantasy social environment that does not exist except in the imagined edifices of country, state and city.

I struggle daily to forsake my identity as a white male, an identify littered with the privileges, rights, expectations and fears of days long disappeared. Every day, I realize more deeply the mistaken and misleading veneer of religion that I have identified with.    Old structures hardly give meaning to a world that is constantly evolving.    On balance, the religion identity of Monday is the pressed rose of Tuesday.    More is obscured than revealed.

The more I forsake of human invention and fantasy, the more clearly I can see.    The moon glows more brightly, the birds sing more sweetly, and the Bloodroots shine brilliantly with white petals that will be gone by evening.