When Planting... Plant.

[cedar_grove]

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

The inward battle-against our mind, our
wounds, and the residues of the past-is more
terrible than outward battle.
--Swami Sivananda

...let your inner and outer attention go in the same direction.

There was a question the other day, on the 'wii vote' channel, that asked if life was simpler now, or in the past – something like that. The answer was obvious to me... that things were simpler in the past.

Now there are so many pressures, to get so much done... to do things in a certain way, to focus on so many things at once that nothing really gets done to any satisfactory level – if at all. We all spend our days multi-tasking, interrupting ourselves with one task, before our first is completed, or doing several things at once.

I'm just as guilty – terribly so as a matter of fact... spending the days trying to get something done, and then getting up every few minutes to... wash the dishes, or change the laundry, or fold the laundry – then lose the thread of what I was doing in the first place, because my brain has been conditioned that I have to do, do, do... and if the drier buzzes, that means the laundry is dry and needs to be put away so that the next lot can go in to dry, and never mind the fact that I was mid sentence on some part of dialogue or whatever...

And never mind that I have no connection with either (any) task that I was doing. That's life, right?

I'm beginning to think not.

I said to Mir the other day that, one of the differences between she and I was that if she asks me to do something, I'll drop whatever I'm doing, do whatever it is she asked, then go back to what I was doing. She on the other hand, if I ask her to do something, will finish what she's doing first. While that is often frustrating to me, because often what I'm asking for needs to be done right away so I end up doing it myself, I'm starting to think that she actually has the better idea... that what she was doing is the better for not having been interrupted... because her inner and her outer thoughts and actions were focussed on the same thing.

Comments

[vegawriters.livejournal.com]

I do that too. My mother will need something and I'll drop what I'm doing and do it and then I personally get resentful. Since I've started saying "Can this wait or do you need it now" I communicate a lot better. It's something I have to actually remind myself to do, but it keeps me in a healthier headspace because I am less likely to feel put upon when Mom does need something right away.