Wednesday, October 14, 2009

What is Your Mind Drinking?

Well this is not the Green Tara as promised but it is green. It's an oldy (from the summer) that I realized I hadn't photographed. It has a high gloss resin finish that gives it a kind of glistening sheen that is quite pleasing. A little recycled prayer flags, some hand stamping combined with a little acrylic paint and some image transfer. The colours remind me of kool-aid or freshie, if anyone remembers that kool-aid tag along.

Today I have been working with patience, trust and surrender. I won't say too much but it has to do with real-estate goings-on. Who said "the doubting mind is hell". Seems like a quote I've heard. And in it's effort to grab onto something, you can watch the mind reach for a tumbler of single malt doubt. Strong, enticing stuff, doesn't take much to get you going. Somehow the mind prefers known intoxicants to standing on the edge of nothing, staring into the abyss of wait and see. It's not a bad abyss, it's just we're so unfamiliar with that whole experience that we don't really know how to balance there on the edge. The edge makes us nervous and twitchy.

The other thing I have been watching the mind do, is go over the details and the facts, combing them for some type of certainty, hoping to pull up some gleaming shard of reassurance that everything is just fine. But in truth we are standing on the edge. And that is fine. It's good to learn how to balance on one foot, not waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So as I go about my day I get to see how important it is to be aware of the little tricks my mind likes to play, the stories it likes to conjure, kind of like a tempestuous 10 year old that likes to tell stories that scare all the small children in the lunchroom. I can cast a stern eye on it and tell it to stop or I can simply give a little grin and remind it that I see what it's up to.

So there's kool-aid and stories even though summer's over. Maybe it's time to put them away and bring out the candy apples and pumpkins and get ready for the Hungry Ghosts.

3 comments:

  1. I love your phrase: "standing on the edge of nothing, staring into the abyss of wait and see." It almost sounds like a rather powerful place to be actually, as well as scary - not identifying with what you see, but just seeing it, and being present to what is actually happening. Seems I recognize this place too :) I love the delightful play of awareness that you have going on here, seeing and recognizing the trickster mind - letting it play its game and flow through... Peace :)

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  2. "The other thing I have been watching the mind do, is go over the details and the facts, combing them for some type of certainty, hoping to pull up some gleaming shard of reassurance that everything is just fine. But in truth we are standing on the edge." It's the whole hundred foot pole story. You're on the hundred foot pole being called to let all the constructing of "certainty" drop away. I'm in the middle of that myself in a lot of ways right now. Stories about much of life aren't holding up. It's all very interesting, and yet so hard to let it all finally drop. (The clinging and fear are palpable.)

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  3. It's nice to know I have company on the edge of the abyss or the hundred foot pole! The ability to stand here seems so elusive and fleeting. So little experience here. And yet there is the recognition of freedom available to us in this moment.

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