Must be summer

This lovely creature was ambling across the Sedona Medical Center parking lot.  Even stopped to pose.  Back in younger days, I would have possibly run screaming.  Now we have a mutual respect for one another.  I suppose I can call that progress.

Hopeful signs

Outside, in light too dim for photographs, a bumble bee digs in contentedly to an echinacea flower.  I'm happy to see there's at least one bee left in the world.

I sometimes forget to disconnect from the tediously competitive human world and pay attention to the remainder of nature - the bees, the slugs, the maple trees, the pollen, the microbes, the pine needles... all the other universes around me.  I get caught up in notions of status and material wealth, and the tired old notions of us-vs.-them, the us being humans and the them being nature.  The silly interpretation of our position as "conqueror."  Clearly we need to coexist, and I am not being entirely realistic if I imply that mankind is somehow separate from nature.  We emerged from it.  We evolved with it.  Why do we now want to conquer it?  Co-existing in harmony seems more beneficial to both.

As our brains "evolved" however, we started to think a little too much.  I don't have to think to enjoy watching a bee at its work.  The bee doesn't complain, doesn't compare how much pollen it dispersed at the end of the day to its fellow bees.  The battles in nature are not out of vanity, merely evolutionary necessity - survival of the fittest, as Darwin never said.  At the end of the day, bees would never broadcast a show where each competed for cash prizes and fifteen minutes of fame/shame.  They just do what they do.

Do we have an advantage because we can ponder "higher concepts"?  I don't know, suppose I should meditate on that... for now, though, I'm just going to watch the snails outside the back door.  They have just as good an answer as I ever will.

Quiet

Silence is the voice of god, the almighty, source, yahweh, beatrice, or whatever it is you call the unifying intelligence of existence.  In those silent moments we commune in our highest capacity.

So why am I talking?  Good question.  I'll meditate on it.

I don't suppose it's way outside of reason to view the cacophony of noise that surrounds us (from advertisements at the gas pump to the unnecessary muzak at the dollar store to the talking/unthinking heads on the nightly "news") as the most sinister form of anti-deifying schlock we could have ever dreamed up. 

I've learned more from sitting silently on mountaintops than I have from nearly forty years of television.  I've accepted my godliness not through the class-based, arrogance-fueled American Dream, but through rising above border and tribal lines.  Anytime I compromise, it's through a desire for peace, not material gain.  In silence, I feel at peace.  Like Paul said, let it be.

Again, why am I talking?  I suppose my great hope is to use my mouth-hole-noise to bring peaceful thoughts.  To be, as San Francesco wished, a channel for peace, as well.

I shut my face

I killed off the fb for a bit.  Needed a respite.

As a social network, it's got volume and little else.  It fosters a "convenience socialization" ideal.  Click 'like' after 'like'.  I get multiple likes and the occasional "yummm" if I post a picture of dinner.  I get multiple 'likes' on some pictures I'm fortunate enough to capture.  "We love your work," they say, but only to the extent that you place it conveniently on the newsfeed.  Even if there's 517 photos on flickr, just a click away, it doesn't exist unless each photo is on the fb feed.  Or perhaps there's a link to something mind-expanding, something that expounds a point that the person just 'liked' minutes before... no dice.  It's outside of the feed.  This is something I've noticed over the past several months... what you present here is worth checking out, so long as the reader doesn't have to go anywhere else to look at it.  Surely the purpose of a social network is to not just "shoot the breeze" with pictures of our dinner or thoughts on the weather or inspirational messages superimposed on images of unicorns and rainbows.  One would hope a network like fb - with more users on it than anywhere else - would be able to foster a meaningful dialogue among people.  Instead it's a repository for seven-second soundbites and the uneducated/unevolved political harum-scarum of the paranoid masses.  Just imagine what it could be, though. 

This is not to say I don't have some good dialogues there, or that I need constant "likes" or acknowledgment to feel popular on the site.  It's not expected everyone will see everything and must click to acknowledge everything before I believe anyone's reading.  That would be silly and desperate.  It's just disappointing sometimes to see, of 100+ people, the implied opinion that "we like what you had for dinner; we're going to skip your creative work; oh, and we enjoy this picture of a cute cat dangling from a branch saying 'Hang in There'."  When you realize this is happening virtually every time, it's not unreasonable to ask yourself whether or not you're just a "'like' of convenience" to most as well.

I have many brilliant folks on my list (many who are far more productive and intelligent than myself) but I think even they are becoming jaded.  Such potential for the site, but "the lunatics have taken over the asylum."  So I need a break from it.  I'm curious to see who I hear from outside of its walls.

Creating your own light

Something very simple was taught to me recently, though to be honest, "taught" isn't quite the right word.  Indeed, it was something I already knew, but had continued to fail to do.  So, it was taught in the sense that I learned to pay attention to it.

It's no big secret: the vocabulary you use to describe yourself and/or your situation.  It's easy to disregard the significance of self-talk.  We feel it's perfectly natural to talk to ourselves with phrases like "you dumbass" or "what the hell's your problem" or "you're too fat" or whatever.  "I am... " is a wording that creates identity.  "Why am I so fat?" prompts the mind to find an answer: "Because you're lazy and you eat too damn much."  It is just as easy to ask "How can I lose this weight" and it doesn't tie you to the fat; it keeps it as a separate entity, one you can detach from without losing identity.  You're "a person with weight to lose" - that's someone who's independent of the weight.  A "fat person" is someone who remains so because their identity is tied to that description.

I use the "fat person" example because that was something I've devoted a lot of years to being... and now my vocabulary has to change.  My identity depends on it.  What is it to be "a man" or "a diabetic" or "an introvert" or "a writer" or "unsociable"?  All of these words may describe, but if they're tied to identity, they become prison bars.  If I use them to describe myself, I am compelled to live up to them, since the mind strives to keep us in line with our notion of identity.  However, if I opt to describe myself as "I am" and nothing more, I don't have to live up to any of these things.  Or I can simply choose better words or questions.

So, "I am ______."  Once you realize you will live up to what you put in the blank... you start getting more and more careful about what you say to yourself.  You become what you think about all day long.  You manifest your reality.  I have been reminded of this a lot recently, from a variety of sources.  And it teaches me, there is one thing I most definitely am: I am grateful.  ;)