oh, dear!

An acquaintance's mother died recently and I sent her my condolences on Facebook.  When I ran into her a few weeks later at our monthly food coop pick-up I had forgotten about it, chit-chatting, going busily about the coop business of unloading the pallet, distributing orders, and weighing out produce.  Bye, see you next time.

Then I came home and it hit me that I had completely forgotten to express my compassion for her mother's passing.  Shallow living.  Oh, dear.  I'm so busy, we're all so busy.  All I was focused on was to complete my coop business and get on with all the other items on the to-do list for that day.  I felt guilty. 

I like it when people show me compassion and understanding.  As a matter of fact, my morning was fantastic because customer service people at two large organizations I needed to speak to were so incredibly helpful and personable - something that is rare and that I don't expect.  The feel-good energy radiated out for several hours and improved my mood so much. 

On an intellectual level I totally understand that compassionate behavior needs to be reciprocal.  If I want empathy and understanding I need to sow it.  I guess there is always a next time.

 

we've got it backwards

The farmers I buy my produce from are some of the most important people in my life.  What they grow goes into my body and literally becomes me.  How they grow their produce has a direct influence on my health and wellbeing. 

The nursery and preschool teachers who nurtured and taught my children were some of the most important people in their young lives.  Together with my husband and me they were instrumental in forming their early impressions and life experiences. 

Farmers and early childhood teachers should be compensated royally for the importance of their role in our lives.  Yet, the sad reality is that these are some of the least compensated professions, as a recent NY Times article states about kindergarten teachers, while the average farmer salary  is between $24K and $31K according to ziprecruiter.com.  Instead, we pay movie stars, football players, business and financial people, or tech start-ups, fortunes.  But how much do they contribute to our immediate health and wellbeing, or to building the minds of the next generation?

What is behind this incredible distortion?   A crumbling value system.  We've really got it backwards.  We worship entertainment and making money more than forming the next generation's minds or what we put in our bodies.  What do you think?

           

 

enlightened?

I have been wondering for years what enlightened means and why the definition is so elusive.   Or maybe it's rather the experience that's so elusive, not the definition.  Sure, easier said than done.  And explaining or defining it doesn't mean I can do it.  I can't.  The closest I have come to even getting a smidgen of a glimpse of comprehension is by dropping into wordless space - here a previous post on it. 

I think enlightenment means experiencing the world as non-dualistic, not for seconds or glimpses, but forever. When I'm able to do that for a few seconds, it seems that my experience happens all at once instead of consecutively.  I am in the experience, I am the experience - there is no separation between the experience and me.  It's what people achieve for short moments when they meditate.  All impressions of a moment - sounds, tastes, feelings, sensations, sights - are all there at the same time. 

If you sit quietly and become aware of all impressions on your senses simultaneously you'll get it.  It's intense, and it leaves no time for pondering the past or the future - it's all Present, it's all Now. There is nothing to add, nothing to do.  It is, and it's timeless.  

 

perspective is everything

You probably know that famous saying about not seeing the forest from the trees.  Perspective is crucial.  When you see the thyme on the picture above you might presume that there is thyme, thyme, and more thyme.  But zooming out you discover that there is more to the wild thyme, that the pictures is actually not about wild thyme at all, but that the wild thyme is merely a background for the stone heart. 

You may have seen one of the famous zooming out videos, where the perspective changes as you go up, up, up.  The details keep receding and every new close-up soon enough grows smaller and becomes background, until it too disappears, then makes way for yet another perspective at yet a higher level.

A few days ago NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof wrote a beautiful article on how 2017 was the best year ever.  Huh?  Really?  You doubt that it was?  I devoured the article and felt so uplifted.  You have to read it.  Perspective is everything.  We tend to get so bogged down in details and pettiness.  Granted, we don't necessarily have the statistics available for as sweeping an assessment of our state of affairs as the one Kristof provides.  But really, let's acknowledge how much better things have become.  Let's acknowledge how distorted our view can be if we stay in the trenches.  Come up for air every once in a while to get inspired and to readjust your perspective.  And may 2018 be even better than 2017, as Kristof hopes to find out.

 

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rhinoceros gazing at full moon

Love that name for a qi gong exercise.  Recently I took up qi gong again, a very gentle yet powerful, ancient Chinese practice that is thousands of years old and is so much more than exercise.  I love exercise forms that do more than just get you to move your body.  Qi gong promotes wellness by moving the qi or life energy in your body around to circulate it more freely and unblock energy channels along the way.  It is a very slow practice that doesn't look like anything much when you observe it from the outside.  Yet it turns out to be incredibly complex.  Qi gong requires intense mental focus because it entails the coordination of many aspects, such as eye movement, breath, different body parts, awareness of postures and precise positions.  And because the movements are so slow and repetitive it also promotes endurance.

Qi gong works well for me as a meditation in motion, and that is what it is often called, because I don't have much patience with sitting meditation.  With qi gong I am so busy focusing on the various aspects of my body that I am never bored, no matter how many repetitions of the same exercise, and I cannot not be totally in the moment.

I admire our teacher who, on top of doing the exercises with us, talks us through them in a slow, meditative voice, all the while noticing when someone locks their knees, hunches their shoulders, or cringes their face.  Then she gently makes us aware of how to improve the posture by a nod of the head, a movement of her eyes, a constructive comment or a prodding question.  Powerful!  What movement practice do you enjoy and why?

transparency promotes trust

My son recently went to a car dealership about a recall as well as a muffler issue.  The recall fix was of course free, but the muffler repair was to be $1200, they said.  I am so tired of corporate rip-offs, of corporate padding, the relentless push to pack on the costs, but also the plain disregard for our pocket books.  This behavior sows distrust. 

Having done his research, and knowing that not everything was broken that the dealer wanted to "fix," my son went to a small mechanic, who he knew he could trust, and who did the muffler repair for $540. 

With regard to price shopping the internet is bringing out one of the millennial values, transparency.  Of course, this pricing transparency can also turn into its flipside - ever smaller profit margins because the competition is so large, which can make things more difficult for small local merchants.  But all in all our ability to do our research on the internet and understand what's what, promotes honesty, accountability, trust and transparency.  Transparency promotes trust.