Barry Garden Path

Today I discovered that my garden does not belong to me.    I belong to my garden.

I like to imagine that time when there was nothing alive on this planet.   The whole earth was a place where the only interactions were between rocks and wind, water and shores.    The only chemistry present was in its simple form with  electrons moving from atom to atom or being shared.   The energy in matter had not yet pushed for anything I now call organic.

Forces and particles from distance galaxies buffeted the stuff of this small blue planet.   Chunks from other worlds sometimes rained down from the sky.   Perhaps there was some level of awareness in this young world, a kind of intelligence.    But there was more to come.

If I could go to this ancient, lifeless place, if I  could go back 4 billion years, I would be entering a sterile environment.    There would be a total absence of life as I an encased in it now.   Every thing I would touch, every breath I took (if I could breathe) would leave a living signature behind.   I would be trailing a cascade of life in an otherwise lifeless world.

Cells from my  body, organisms that live in and on me would be invaders in this world previously untouched by life.   A living cloud of thousands of kinds of organisms would travel around with me and descend on everything in my wake.

Of course, I could not survive in this setting without the presence of the oxygen made so abundantly by plants.   I could not continue to live, nor could the organisms that accompany me live, without nourishment from our fellow creatures.    We have all evolved together and rely on one another to stay alive.

We have come jointly from the same lifeless past.    Where once there was nothing at all alive, I now cannot move without bumping into my fellow creatures.    Every where inside me and around me, I am immersed in  and flooded with living creatures.   My world is wholly alive.

What a waste of a day when I haven’t been dazzled at least a dozen times. True, there are those days when the soft touch of the carpet fails to excite the bottom of my feet.   There are also the mornings when my ears  barely react to the chirping of birds on the other side of my bedroom shade.

I am so grateful that there are many other days when the cold granite in the bathroom leaps at my touch and grips me in the memory of its ancient excitement at being on fire.   Water rushes against me from a shower head and in an instant pelts me with the tale of a lifetime adventure involving now-dead stars and treks across limitless fabric of space and time.

I walk through my garden, and step into a small part of the world teeming with life.    Plants strain to reach the energy of the sun, roots pull water from the ground, the soil vibrates with the silent movement of millions of small organisms.    Subtle changes in the posture of plants discretely reveal themselves, new blooms shout their presence, fish drift about searching for something to eat.   Everyone is prepared to engage me, to absorb me, to fill me with wonder.

And so it goes through many days.    It would seem that I would be exhausted from all the excitement and interaction.   Instead, I am energized by a day that has connected me to the whole cosmos, immersed me in a space where time does not matter.    I have the joy of being joined with the seemingly endless energy of all things.

By the end of the day, I am tired but I also am filled with a peace that rises through all things to meet me.   I want to do it again, and again, and again.   With every step, with every glance of my eyes, with every movement of my hands, I want to feel the joy that comes from unending chances to be dazzled.

Today, my garden has all the early appearance of a spring garden.    Some blooms are already disappearing, like Scilla, but they are being replaced by an abundance of new blooms.    I love the excitement of my spring garden, the sudden flash of color, the awakening of a new growing season.

I am reminded that it is one thing to bloom and be beautiful.    It is quite another to ripen.    I often think of new aspects of myself now beginning to bloom, after all these years.   Actually, I think that for me it is also a time of ripening, and that may be more significant.

Ripening comes to me only after facing and accepting the pain, the darkness, the uncertainty.    To ripen, I have had to face the possibility of pain, the uncertainty of a future.    I have needed to become a friend of the night.

Ripening may be revealed in the bright light of day, but it occurs only through the acceptance of the dark time.

For a while, it was becoming slightly alarming that I had become less connected to reality.    Today I seem to be more connected than I have been for nearly a week.   Actually, becoming “less connected” with reality has meant that I seemed to be slipping back into my old way of seeing reality.    Most people would probably consider my old way as being more in touch.   What I have become more aware of in the past two years is that  my “other” reality only appears when I am more truly aware.

For me it is like looking at the screen on the dash of my car that shows me what is behind me when I am backing up.     I can choose to turn around and see directly what is actually behind me.    Or I can look at the screen in front of me and watch the imaginary world as seen through a wide-angle lens.   Sometimes the imaginary, distorted image is useful because it gives me an image I want to see and can benefit from.    Sometimes, I just turn around and look at what is actually there.

I have been learning to look at what is actually there as I have practiced my mindfulness skills, as I have become more aware. It has meant that I have had to put my imagination to rest.    I am less inclined to interpret what I sense, what I see, in light of my past, remembered experience.    I am also less likely to interpret what I sense through my imagined reality of what might, or even likely will happen.

Basically, it has meant staying in the present, paying attention to what is going on right now.   It has meant seeing reality without the interpretative lens of my remembered experience or my prediction of what is going to happen.

So often, what I have reacted to in the past has been a reality that wasn’t there.   I’ve mis-interpreted what is going on because I am caught up in my memory of what happened in the past.     Or I am focused on what is likely to happen rather than what is before me right now.

Being able to use my memory to interpret or my imagination to predict are useful skills.    I think that I find them so useful that I tend to use them constantly, habitually.   As a result, I am not connected intimately with what is actually happening right now.

I am convinced that what is actually happening right now is the only reality.  The future and the past are distorted, fabricated illusions that can disturb me and distract me from reality.   I’m happy to be slipping back into my new way of seeing reality.    I don’t what lured me out of it, but I definitely prefer my alternate reality.

As I look out my window, it seems to me that everything is on fire.   Everything, everything is alive with the energy of the Big Bang.   The energy locked up in my own little fingernail has all the power of tons and tons of TNT.   I am surrounded by and in relation to a myriad of dynamic shapes, each with its own expression of being alive.

Some of the fire of the Big Bang comes together in recognizable, organized forms such as rocks, trees, mountains and humans.   All of us, animate and not, are patterned expressions of energy locked up in an organized, functioning shape.   I have senses that can tell me some of the features of those shapes.

Some days it is clear to me that all these shapes embody a certain intelligence and awareness.   On those days, everything around me perceives my presence and I perceive theirs, each of us with our own intelligence.   Most days and above all else, I just sense the presence of energy that throbs with the rhythm unique to its own form.   Everything is on fire.

This is the joy of awareness.

It seems to me that the rising complexity of intelligence is not consistent with the principle of entropy.    As time goes on, my own intelligence seems to increase, in spite of physical decay.    Even the process of evolution seems to support greater complexity in the genetic inheritance passed on.   The physical constructs of living organisms seems more and more complex.

The organization of society and evolving cultures also seem to be evolving to a higher state rather than lower.   Human intelligence, at least, seems to be expressed in deeper and more complex ways.

This is an issue I need to explore.

It’s an expression that is under-used, mis-used and over-used.  My experience with those three words, “I love you,” is so varied.    These days, I am most focused on how uncertain those words are to use and how cautious I am in using them.   I know part of why they are scary is that they are so ambiguous , and can mean so many things.

They can also be very revealing.

In their deepest sense, they can mean that I have opened my heart and can see the beauty of someone.   They are an expression of non-conditioned love, acceptance of someone, recognition of them as a lovable human being.    I find it much easier to talk about how I love certain individuals, and it is pretty rare that I will speak those words to them, face to face   It is a powerful experience when I have been able to exchange the expression of mutual love.   I wish I would use those words more often, but I am aware of their power.

I am also bothered by the mis-use of the expression.    For me, this can also be cases when they are over-used.    “I love you” has become so romanticized that it can be like too much icing on the cake.   I hear it used in all forms of media as a gushy expression of an unthoughtful feeling.    Sometimes it can simply mean “I want to be sexual with you.”    I think the words can be nothing but an expression of runaway feelings.    I want them to be more.

There is the throwaway expression of “Love you” which can casually mean that someone likes being connected with me.    The same expression can be used, especially  in family situations, to say that someone wants to keep me under their influence, or that they want to extract love in return.  I feel uncomfortable whenever I hear it.

I am grateful that there are a number of people that I can identify as individuals I truly love.    I’m not so agile about telling them that.    I don’t use those three words very easily.    I sometimes prefer to say “I see you,” which is a subtle way of saying ” I stand before you with open eyes and an open heart and I recognize you in all your radiant beauty.”

I know it is a lot to ask of those three words, but for now I want them to carry that message.   Some day I may figure out how to use the other three words more freely.

 

I am growing weary of watching the futility of people making promises to one another and I know that those promises are no reliable prediction of the future.  In spite of all the trust and faith put in them, the promises are little more than a statement of someone’s good intentions.    I suppose we all feel better when we think we can predict a future where things turn out just the way we expect.   I’m working on what I think is a much better way for myself.

I have come to accept that there are no guarantees that carry into the future, least of all guarantees we make to one another.   I have noticed that assurance I have given or received, no matter how good the intentions were, end up being a weak prediction of the future.   These promises assumed that the future circumstances could be adequately predicted and presumed how we would act   For me, it has been an attempt to live in an imagined time that is yet to happen.   I don’t see much stability in any of that.

All I can say or hear from someone else is to describe what is going on right now, and that can be a little fuzzy.   I can reasonably say that this is the person I am now, and these are my intentions.   I don’t think any of us can predict how we will act tomorrow.

 

It has been pretty amazing that in my old age I have actually entered a new Age of Discovery.  I have finally figured out, absorbed the ancient wisdom that the more I grasp and try to control, the more I am deterred and suffer.   I knew this in a kind of theoretical way, but experience has planted it deeply in my gut.

I learned it as I slowly let go of something I really wanted, moments I had savored and wanted to continue.   I wanted the continuance even though the reality may have only existed in my imagination.  It was a simple but lengthy process of evolving, a process I trusted even though I had never experienced its outcome.

I was hardly aware of this evolutionary process as I sat and settled into a time of clearing my mind twice a day for months.    The moments of grasping for something I so badly wanted showed up less and less frequently.   My sticky connection to the memory gradually loosened, and now I am mostly free.

Evolving is not an abrupt or obvious process for me.    I scarcely knew its beginning and doubt it will have an end.   However, I have stepped into the process with both feet, and am very unlikely to back out.   I have discovered dry land and the only direction I see is forward.  It is a process I have some skills to manage.

Each moment is beginning to be something brand new and I welcome them.   Each moment flows over me with a constant feeling of fresh newness.    The past quickly fades away, except for lingering signposts of moments that have been.   I will never recover them.   Neither can I basket the passing, joyful moments.   I know that grasping them will only cause me frustration and suffering.

This is an journey of evolution only I can take, even though there are companions that can join me for a time.   I am so grateful for my companions and welcome their walking with me.   I know this is can be confusing for them at times because none of us know where this is going. I trust the process.

I know that I am committed to evolving and savoring each new moment, then letting it go.   There is no assurance that the path will be anything but lonely and dangerous.    But I think it will turn out all right.