cedar_grove | Live Like A River

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

As a frightened man in a burning boat
has only one way to the rest of his life,
we must move with courage
through the wall of flame
into the greater sea.

But the subtlest ring of fire, it seems, is that self-centred way of thinking that starts to suffocate us with its smoke. For we carry the smouldering of being self-centred everywhere we go. It lives off us and eats up who we are. So, how to jump from the burning boat that is us? Well, it somehow requires jumping from the boat of the ego into the sea of our spirit. This somehow involves the courage to surrender our stubbornness and dreams of control. It means letting the ribs of the ego burn. And jumping through. We will more than survive-we will be carried to an unimagined shore.

I am self-centred, to much so… though not always in the way people might interpret that admission, (though maybe my qualifying what I mean is a kind of self-centredness in itself. I don't know). The stupidest thing about it though is that I'm this way because I want to be able to do things for other people, be in places, and be there for other people, and because of that I'm stuck with living in the material aspect of the world far too much, with little consideration for the spiritual or other considerations… and I don't mean that in an airy-fairy kind of way.

Today I was expecting to work only in the morning at a school I know well. It's where I did a whole term of tutoring for children that had fallen 'behind age expectations' (yeah, lets not even go there… whatever happened to letting kids be kids and learn at their own pace?). About five minutes before I was going to leave the house, I got a call to ask if I could go to a second school (also one I know well), that is about 10 minutes walk away from the first. I said I would, of course… but sitting here now, my motivation for that kind of hurts me. Didn't say yes because the kids didn't have a teacher for the afternoon and needed one. Didn't say yes because it's a great school, (though it is). I said yes because it meant a whole day's work, and I need the money. Now, I know, in today's economic climate, and in the grown up world, that's going to be a consideration, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with thinking it, per se… but… it's a terribly materialistic way of looking at things. I don't like that in myself. No, the need to earn a living isn't going to go away just because I don't think about it like that, it'll still be there, but I don't have to let it drive my thinking in a way that makes me feel as negative as it does. It makes me feel choked and stifled.

That aside… lunch time came around and I started my walk, along streets that actually used to be my old haunt, because it's not far from where I lived for a while. I couldn't help noticing the changes, and the things that were still the same. I couldn't help but notice the plants and things still flowering… and notice the quite of the outdoors… I actually found myself missing the racket that the cicada's make in the woods around home in NC and missing that sound opened up the whole of my heart to missing everything about home… not in a painful or bitter way – but in a poignant and fond way.

I don't mean to say that I don't miss being in NC at other times. I miss Mir every moment of every day. I miss the ratties, I even miss the cat… but this was in a different way – in a way that acknowledged that a greater part of it was outside of my control, and in an acceptance of that I found connection with the world again. It was a step away from self-centredness that somehow brought me back to my self for as long as the pressures of the 'real/material' world would allow anyway. I felt creative for the first time in a long while.

I think there need to be more moments like this, and while I know I can't control them, I understand that, I can accept them, recognise them when they arrive… when they give me the opportunity to be myself in a un-self-centred way, and just be without the driving considerations and stresses that are dominating my ego and consciousness. I need to be the river… go with the flow…

…and I need to walk in nature once in a while…