April 10, 2022
Everyone has agony, the difference is I try to take my agony home with me now and then and teach it to sing. ~ Arthur Miller
It’s so tranquil this morning, I almost don’t want to spoil it with words. There’s a lovely sense of drifting on a tide of bird song and breezes, dozens of vibrant pink flowers bobbing in the gentle movement of air.
When I pay attention to the natural world rather than my internal system of worry, I believe peacefulness can be mine. I don’t need to pick apart the elements of my environment and myself that I have decided are troubling, that I don’t like, that I wish were different.
Perhaps I can absorb a sense of letting things be, bottle it in some etheric memory tube, and carefully place it where I may find it again.
I’m quite sure Nature doesn’t need such a reminder. Even the hawk being chased by the crows returns to the nest and continues to build. The dried grasses are stuffed into the intricate weave of the nest, and the hawk soars again from the tangle of palm fronds to seek more material.
The hawk seems to have an effortless balance between being alert to its surroundings and focusing upon its tasks. Effortless balance is something I strive for, a somewhat oxymoronic statement since striving feels anathema to balance.
*****
I’ve recently seen a couple of articles or podcasts reminding us how important humanity’s focus, thoughts, words, and projections are, particularly at this historic time when the aware / awake community fervently wishes to shift us into the benevolent New Earth that’s coming.
There appears to be evidence that our thoughts can directly influence our physical reality (see, for example, the Emoto experiments with water). Many in the spiritual community accept that this is so, and some of the more open-minded members of the scientific community agree.
If we allow ourselves to be drawn into the theater of fear that surrounds us like a vintage cyclorama, this focus on potential disaster may inadvertently help perpetuate frightening world circumstances. However, if we can shrug off the yammering from the declining voices of the dark, those non-benevolent energies should vanish all the faster as their fuel supply—our fear—trickles away.
They will vanish, we are assured. The manner in which this occurs, as well as the speediness, appears to be more under the influence of humanity than we might credit.
*****
I suspect I’m not alone in feeling a perpetual sense that this noble focus away from fear is easier said than done.
I think it’s likely that only ninja-like self-control of the mind could allow one to routinely brush off the assault humanity is undergoing. I’m definitely not anywhere in that league, and I’m not sure how many of us are.
Even someone dedicated to meditating an hour or three per day still has many hours of wakefulness during which to practice ignoring a world situation that’s continually slapped in our faces like a red toreador flag.
Like the unfortunate bull in the arena, many of us find it nearly impossible to dismiss that importunate call upon our attention.
*****
The theater of fear has been well constructed and reinforced for millennia. Humanity has been a captive audience.
But there have been holes ripped in the curtain. Some of the floorboards have disintegrated, and the actors are falling through at an increasing rate.
The stage is becoming depopulated. We begin to realize we’re witnessing an old recording rather than a live performance.
Somewhere, someone waits to pull the curtain all the way open one last time, turn off the projector, and raise the house lights. It appears that we can hurry this process along by deliberately turning away from the crumbling stage and focusing on the new panorama that awaits.
Regardless of when the final revelations bubble up from their noxious pools, we can still see, imagine, and create—at least in our own minds—the new panorama we’re longing to experience.
*****
I watch the hawk returning, small branches and grasses extending like a riotous mustache to either side of its beak. It ignores the crows in the next tree and proceeds to build a future in its painstakingly constructed nest. The future comes closer to the present with each blade of grass or tuft of dryer lint it tucks into the weave.
Instinct the hawk has been gifted with is mine, too, if I wish. I can build the nest to hold my future with every conscious thought and word. I don’t expect I’d be able to hold this focus for every moment, or even many moments every day. But whatever energy and effort I can dedicate to conscious creation of my preferred reality, I’m sure it can be, if I allow it, enough.
I close my mental curtain to the crumbling, derelict stage of the old order, and moment by moment sketch in the details and colors and sounds of what I wish to be. No matter how it eventually turns out, I’ll know that I contributed the best that I could to get there.
