I think nature must have a good laugh at our idea of permanence, as she wraps her vines about us.
Tag Archives: Zen
Leg of Balance
I injured my leg while on vacation last week, although it might be more accurate to say I saw the end of a slow motion injury last week. The set up for the injury began long ago with repetitive activity that set the tendons up. I was already out of balance and the wrong landing on a run just sealed the deal. So, I sit here thinking. I’m one of those folks who always sees patterns, habits and a story in the events of life. I don’t believe in random, at least not how most people see it. We are in an endless feedback loop between ourselves and the Universe; and everything begins with a thought. I think my life into existence. Thus, I sit here looking at my leg and thinking. The imbalance of my body, at the moment, speaks to me of an imbalance in my thinking.
I run the stairs at work, which is really good for you. However, I’ve gotten so addicted to it that I haven’t been doing other things I used to love, too. Especially as running the stairs caused me to lose a lot of weight. The downside, of course, is it over-developed my outer quads, leaving the inner leg weaker and more strain on the tendons. Also, worth noting is it doesn’t develop your upper body strength, thus, these crutches are hard on my arms.
I tighten the brace on my leg and consider the lack of balance in my body. It really is a reflection of a lack of balance in my thinking. The first indication of that is of a low grade, but steady anxiety about putting on weight because I can’t run the stairs. The second indication is the desire to push my healing. Find a magic trick to heal up faster. These are systemic thoughts from a deeper belief system about well-being. To truly heal the leg, I’ve got to heal the way I perceive time and well-being.
I have to slow down and fall in love where I am in this moment.
I’m a firecracker loaded with gasoline. In person, I’m a pretty mello person to be around, but inside I’m always on the go. Driving to work has been my spiritual gauntlet, as I have to harness my energy not to speed every second I’m in the car. There’s a curious pressure in my mind to get projects done, as if there were a clock somewhere ticking incessantly. I have ideas, brilliant ones by the way, that I fear won’t see the light of day if I’m not on the move. I recently started a life coaching business, as I know a great deal about how to bring change and ideas to life, but I’m sitting here looking at my leg realizing I also need to understand ideas like slow, inactivity, and quiet to coach, too. I need to know how to have balance in my thoughts, to have balance in my body and life. This equates to working hard and hardly working. Yoga and running. Playing foolishly and getting the job done. Outright, unapologetic laziness and periods of industriousness. Dancing disco and sitting quietly to meditate. Balance. This is what my leg has given me. A lesson on the importance of a slow, quiet, occasionally frenetic, balanced life.
Web
Clarity of Vision
Stairway to Heaven
Sorry couldn’t resist the title.
I’d been climbing the stair to the cliff path. The light broke the ridge and poured down the stair. Amazing moment, made more so by the fact I almost didn’t take the evening hike. I’ve been focusing on living more in the now, lately. Taking advantage of what is available in my life. Filling my mind with more nature and less obsessing about the minutiae of daily living. Something about a mountain trail makes me more aware of my good fortune and breaks my egos need to look for what’s missing.
Still, it had been a long day, and I could find a million reasons to veg out at home. This moment was a perfect reward for having stepped out the front door. A little bit of spirit in the mountain weeds.
Salt Flats of San Francisco Bay: Part 1
Pictures will both look best enlarged. This series comes from an arial shoot of the salt flats of San Francisco Bay. Had no idea of their beauty. This is coming into the Bay and the beginning of the drying beds. I have been thinking a lot lately of dimensions. I’d been listening to a scientist presentation on dimensional reality. I’d never given it any thought. It was fascinating to realize how different the world appears to an amoeba and a fly or how there are dimensions beyond the third dimension, that we live in. We have the view of an amoeba to someone else. When I flew over the salt beds it occurred to me I’d driven by these before with my friend, but had never seen them. We walk around all day thinking we see the world, when really we see just a tiny sliver of an infinite whole.
Beautiful Cocoon
Before the beetles find me
Or the fire licks my bones
I will forsake this body
That has so lovingly carried me
Long upon roads
Of hot days and cool nights
Deepening forests
And fine ground sands
For in the end it is but a
Beautiful cocoon
And comes a point when this spirit
Must break free
To fly
Smallness
When I look closely at my small life I get caught up in the details of its constrictions. I see pitfalls and turn little disturbances into high drama. When I look around at the people and places I see every day, it can feel closed in and predictive. But if I look up at the expansive blueness of the sky above me, or out upon the grandeur of a cityscape I fine myself breathing more deeply. The dirt of a trail and a green canopy above invert the smallness of my life into an expansiveness that is freeing. If I draw my eye away from the close aspects and out to the wider view I don’t feel smaller. I feel I have grown bigger and become more connected to what is vast and beautiful. What is eternal dissipates my constrictions and my fear of sameness. A few moments of a night breeze through the bedroom window shows me my life is not small. Only my perspective is.
Little Gem
To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead to its own.
Meister Eckhart
Dying Grace: Photo Poem 45
For my fortieth birthday my colleagues at work gave me a party with black balloons and a wheelchair. I’m normally a person with a sense of humor, but I had watched this parade with colleagues before me. I work with mostly women. We have a habit of telling each other stories of how our time is past as we age. The best years behind us. We’re used up and lost our sex appeal. Men don’t do this to us and they don’t do it to each other. We do it to ourselves. I smiled and thanked everyone, but I knew in that moment, that I would live differently. That I would not see aging as a cross to bear, but an immense opportunity.
I look at this leaf dead, fragile, used up and am filled with its beauty and grace. Even dead, passed its season and it’s still showing the world what it can do. What it has to give. Aging isn’t about years, it’s about perspective. It’s seeing beauty where no one else would think to look. That isn’t weakness, that’s power. In that power is the possibility to transform. To embrace death when it comes and know you are about to pull out your best work yet.












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