Barry Garden Path

This morning, I am amazed how little I have been paying attention to my own biology.   Even as an educated biologist, I’ve been able to avert my eyes from my own biological nature.   I’ve paid scant attention to that long, drawn-out process that has, over millions of years, resulted in an organism that has been shaped by its surroundings, and is capable of being aware in a manner not shared by any of my visible world.

I am only now beginning to notice how humans have used their high intelligence to break away from harmony with the world in which we have developed.   Intelligence has allowed me and my  fellow humans to construct cities, machines and societies beyond anything my basic biology had ever achieved.    But not without a biological cost.  The trajectory of intellectual achievement has become detached from its biological foundation.   If I’ve been paying attention to my biology, the results certainly don’t show it.

I know that every breath I take relies on my harmony with the plants of the earth.   My survival depends on a level of oxygen in the air determined by the activity of plants and a world-wide system that is in balance with that level of oxygen.    Together with the rest of my biological world, I produce an amount of Carbon dioxide that has been relatively steady for many thousands of years.

Now, within the last hundred years, I have joined my fellow humans in changing that balance.    My biological world is cascading toward great changes caused by our decision to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.    The whole biological world is being required to change, to adjust.    Some will manage, some will not.   I think human survival is something of a question mark.

Another human innovation that is changing my biology is the food I have become accustomed to eat.   A little over fifty years ago, my fellow humans figured out how to make food that was convenient for the many and profitable for the few.    The value added changed from the farmers who grew the food to the industrialists who manufactured the food.    My biology took another hit.    A body and internal biome  that had evolved to one kind of food was asked to adjust, inside of decades, to food it did not recognize as food.   Preservatives meant to combat biology and improve shelf-life became an arsenal of assault on the biology inside of me.    All manner of ailments have resulted, diabetes, obesity, autism, allergies etc.

Intelligence has given me the power and ability to add to my basic biology.   Now I have to figure out how to get back in harmony with that same biology.

 

I heard someone else describe what they were doing as a “news fast.”    That’s pretty much what I have been doing since mid-October 2016, and I am very pleased with the results.   I seem much more able to focus on what is important to me and on things I can actually do.

It isn’t that I am not interested in what is going on, whether it is my neighborhood, the country or the world.   I am very interested and want to be aware of what is happening, at least as much as I can be.  However, I came to the decision that the “news” I was getting from radio MPR and from the newspaper was not shaped by an interest in informing me as much as it was an attempt to keep my attention.   I abandoned TV news a long time ago.

The BBC came closest to reporting some real aspect of what was actually going on. All the other sources of news were doing their best to lure my attention with images that evolved from someone’s creative imagination.    I have always realized that some part of the news was created or at least inaccurate.    Now the imaginary aspect simply became dominant.

The news had come to excite me, not enlighten me.  It offered me little chance to have  an effect.  So I have been ignoring the “news”.   My daily life is not only OK, I think it is better.

I am now better able to focus on doing things that will have a real effect, maybe bring about a small change in my world.   Even though the headlines tell me enough about what is happening, I hardly ever fret about how to stem the national tide of hatred and injustice.   I’ve decided to spend my emotional energy getting excited about changes I can actually bring about.   I sometimes think about the big causes, but I try to focus on the local ones.

This Friday, I’m helping a group of people who are serving a meal to hungry guests of Loaves and Fishes.   Also,  I promote the sexual health of young people by helping out the Annex Teen Clinic where I can.   I am determined to be a refuge for my companions, especially the members of the Blooming Heart Sangha.   I attempt to establish an open-hearted, loving relationship with my friends and with many people I meet.

I will focus on being a gardener and a messenger of the wonders all around me.   I will build a loving community by gardening and by encouraging other gardeners.   I think most of the problems in the “news” will be taken care of eventually if I do my best to take care of the world closest to me.

I must constantly remind my heart of the vastness of the world in which I find myself.    This is my main path to being at peace with my world and loving it.    I want to free myself from any pretense that the world is benevolent, kind and disposed to take care of me.   It is a wild place, and while it may be aware of me, it gives me a kind of indifferent attention.

My world is what it is, and at most it waits for me to be aware of it, embrace it and love it.

I am able to control my wild world only by my ability to be aware of it.  The more I am attentive and understanding of my world, the more I am able to accept it for what it is.   It does me no good to deny what is in front of me, no matter how threatening or distasteful it is.   There are lions in the jungle, and they are both majestic and dangerous.    There is abundant suffering caused my humans all around me, and it is not in my interest to deny that humans can be mean, malicious and dangerous.

Today I can only ask my heart to become aware of a small part of the danger and suffering in the wild world around me.    For me it is a beginning, and I am choosing to ignore the vast dangers and suffering I am not ready to absorb.   But I will pay attention to a small part of the suffering.   I will change what I can and accept that my world is beyond any of my control. First I have to learn to embrace and love my small part of the wild world.   Today will give me adequate opportunities without my picking up the newspaper.

I really don’t think about death very much.   However, this morning Rilke reminded me of the significance of death.   In a strange kind of manner, my thought of death has brought me into a greater awareness of my current experiences of joy, love, sorrow, pain.   Even before I die, death can play a pivotal role in my life and give a deeper awareness of everything that precedes it.  Death can walk with me as a friend.

Death is the exclamation point at the end of my life that gives nuanced meaning and special emphasis right now to all that goes before it.   As I think about this, I am resolved not to wait until death to realize all that might have been.  I do  not want to find myself grasping for a life never experienced, never lived.

I am determined not to hear myself mumble, “So that’s what it was all about!”   I fondly hope that my death will be a moment when I look forward with curiosity and not back with regret.

I think that my death may possibly be a moment when I realize with clarity just what has been happening and what might have been if I were more awake and attentive.   That is when there will be no more distractions, no more living in the imagined future or the remembered  past.   I expect my death will be a confrontation with reality unlike anything I have experienced before.   It may be my closest encounter with certainty.  It will be reality in bold print.

I think my death has already  taught me something today, without my having to experience it yet.   I now want to be even more awake and more attentive to each passing now.   I want to do the dishes with awareness, and experience the rinsing of pots with an attention and presence that gives joy.    I want to love every moment that passes with all the open-heartedness I can muster.   I want in this next moment to be as ardently attentive as I will be in my last.

 

I am glad that there are times that my eyes can tenderly release what they see.   In those moments, my mind takes a break and no longer tries to impose order on what my eyes see.   My mind stops trying to fabricate a world that makes sense and has some connection to what I previously experienced.   In those moments and for the first time,  I see someone, a plant, a cloud.   I am able to look past all the offerings coming from my mind, and come face to face with what is before me.  It is a totally new and fresh experience.

I know that my mind is active any time that I have my eyes open.   It is constantly working to make sense of anything that I am looking at.   Mainly, my mind is relating the image to what I have experienced before, imposing on the image all that I can recall of my past experience that most closely matches the image.

What I experience is often something that my mind makes up on the spur of the moment, on the instigation of what I am seeing.   It interprets what my eyes experience and gives meaning to all those photons registering on my retina.   I often get a feeling of recognition when my mind tells me that I have seen this chair before, I know what it feels like, I know what it can do.

Sometimes my mind goes into fibrillation mode when I see a confusing scene, and I have to make a snap interpretation.   My mind responds to my eyes and tells me what I am seeing.   Often, I have to revise that interpretation of what I have seen.

It is hard to constantly tell my mind to take a break and just let me see things “for the first time” without any reference to my past experience.   For me, this is what mindful awareness is all about.    Awareness is being able to look beyond the mind-enhanced image and have a fresh and new experience, without the thought limitations.

When I am able to set aside my mental images, I am better able to experience someone, a plant, a cloud with an open heart.   Reality is something my heart is best at grasping.    My heart is so much more reliable than my mind.   But first, my eyes have to release what they think  they see, and I can then see beyond.

 

 

I intend this to be a year of ‘everywhere joy in relation, nowhere in grasping.’  These seven words were put in my mind by Rilke this morning, and they are very fitting for so much of my daily struggles.   I have a strong desire to create relation with the world around me, including my garden and many people.  This is how I create my reality.  I establish relation when I maintain mindful awareness.

Relation happens when I  keep an open heart and is a source of great joy.   It is so attractive that it is hard for me to avoid grasping.   I want to give permanence to a reality that is not lasting.    The moment passes and is gone.   The relation is there and quickly makes way for the next.  The joy is real, it surges throughout my body.   And it too makes way for the next.

I want the intensity of relation, and I want it without attempting to grasp it.   I want to constantly plunge into the new.

My life has seemed like a string of beginnings.  I have experienced  big beginnings and small ones.   I can think of five times when my life took a significant change of direction because I made a big decision.   It seems that these changes were large enough that I felt I was beginning a new life.   And so it turned out to be true.

This morning I began a new year, and while it is truly a new beginning, it doesn’t seem that monumental.    Just the same, I have expressed my intention to begin being more  mindful about how I live out my dependency on my friends, my companions.

This morning I also began a new day as I chose to become awake.   Then I began to roll to the right and place my feet on the floor.    One decision after another,  one beginning following the one before.   Every step, I suppose, is a new beginning.   Every step is a bold movement into uncertainty.  It has an unpredictable outcome, and I move into that world of ambiguity.

I want every step, every movement to begin an open-ended adventure.   The more mindful of what I am doing, the more I am aware that every step opens a vast array of possibilities.   Each step is a new experience, a new lived moment.

So far, my life has been a succession of new lives on a large scale and on a small moment-to-moment scale.    I have begun so many new lives that it almost seems like a continuity.    But I know each passing moment is as fresh, new and unpredictable as the last.    That is how I want to experience them.

I spent most of my adult life trying to lessen the impact of the waste of Minnesota society.   Apart from some focused successes, I can mainly look back on mournful monuments of discarded waste in the land, water and air.  I see now a wide range of memorials to parts of the earth we altered and destroyed in a frenzy of consumption.   I don’t see how this can continue.

All this dumped waste surrounds us as our accusing souvenirs of a land pillaged by us and our recent ancestors.   The piles of waste and rubble are reminders of how we took from the earth more than we could truly use in reasonable time and in a respectful manner.   We attempted to satisfy our immediate wants and cravings, then quickly moved on.   The ephemeral benefit has been bought at the sacrifice of materials that took many life-times to fashion.

We no longer satisfy our needs by simply consuming the plants and animals that come from the earth.   We now consume the earth itself in an effort to give substance to the objects of our craving.   These monuments to our grasping are not things of beauty.

Now I can begin to relax, at least a little.    My two sons have survived just over twenty years and are now young men.   I am relieved that they are now launched into young adulthood, alive and without serious scars.

For me, there is no more anxious driving on winter roads, constantly attentive to that tiny, precious cargo in the back seat, going home from his hospital of origin.   There is no more standing next to his bed, listening to his rhythmic breathing, assuring myself that he is still alive.   I’ve not yet done anything tragic.  He survives.

I no longer stare at the young students getting off the school bus, looking for that familiar face and coat that assures me that he has made it through another perilous day at school on his own.   I am almost ready to admit that my vigilance has prevented his drowning in the lake at my cabin.   Childhood, lake and cabin are finally proven compatible.

I may be ready to give up lying slightly asleep in bed, half-listening for the assuring slam of the back door that announces that my son has survived another late-night trip home on the bus.

Parenthood is a perilous time for vulnerable offspring, and it is such a relief that success is in sight.   There were no multiple eggs in a nest, most of whom were destined to be food for others.  There was just a solitary tiny baby boy, one at a time.   Each needed constant attention, routine feeding, and vigilant protection.   The attention, feeding and protection has gone on for many years, even though the level of vigilance has gradually diminished.

It is a relief that, though the fledglings may return to the nest, they have proven that they can survive on their own without a vigilant parent.  Whew!

I know my body houses memories.    That is where the memory of the cereal I just ate will be for the rest of my time.   Within this husk of skin, supported by bones and muscle, are a seemingly infinite number of memories.   Where else are they if not in this body.   Unless I have some kind of spiritual external hard drive that stores a back-up supply of memories, everything is inside this aging skin.

I don’t know how I hold in this body all the traces of past experiences, the joys and sorrows, the pleasures and pains, the hopes and disappointments.   I know that I cannot intentionally recall all past experiences.  But I unexpectedly see the images of my past when an experience  spontaneously retrieves the memory of a previous one.  I draw upon my past when a dream pulls images and events from my storehouse of memories.

I wonder how much of a memory the cells of my body have.   Can they remember what it was like before they multiplied repeatedly to form this cooperative collection of cells that makes up my body.   Within them, and certainly in my DNA, is the memory of what it was like to form fish then reptiles and other primates.   These were the senarios of past events that were played out in the early weeks of my body when it engaged in genetic recall of what it was like to live with a previous form.

So how far back does this body memory go and is there a way that I can get access to these stored memories?  I would like it if my body could remind me of what it was like before its form could support human intelligence.   It would be such an adventure if my body could recall what it was like when molecules discovered they could join and support the spark of life.   I wonder what it was like when cosmic dust spread throughout the universe, and eventually formed our planet.

I think my body knows.    All those memories are stored deep in the fibers that make up the cells that give my body form and support life.   Somewhere inside of me is the memory of that act of intelligence that launched this whole event.   Maybe I’m thinking it right now.