What We Do Not See
From the filmy, synthetic oval of the airplane window, the desert seemed as barren and dry as a forsaken, late-summer creek bed. From that distance I couldn’t see the endless varieties of beauty that awaited. I compared the lush green of my home to this rough, oceanless ocean floor, and found it lacking, and even forbidding. It made me thirsty and restless. This sun-blasted desert felt foreign enough to awaken my vulnerability to heat, to sun, wondering how many of us could crowd into the shadow cast from one of those archetypal thin-trunked palm trees?
Once that soft sun hit my skin, I cast off my PNW cheerleading suit and forgot to be afraid. I was intoxicated. Following the wise words of Alfred Wainwright, "There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing", we had packed those almost-forgotten shorts, sun hats, Margaret Mead button downs. We then found our way into the desert straightaway. It was so ALIVE, we couldn't shut up about every tiny, exquisite flower, cactus, and lizard.
Look at this beauty! Pink, striped stars, bursting out to greet you! This was no ordinary spring, it was a super bloom. Billions of plants had been waiting, dormant for decades, to show off their radical abundant beauty. They had to wait for the perfect conditions, but it was worth the wait.
We don't get to know what's going on underground, with any plant or any person, unless we take time for inquiry.
As with my comparison between Bellingham's evergreen moss factory and the subtle beige-toned desert, our assumptions and preferences can hijack opportunities for more enrichment.
We don't see what's here.
This reminds me of a folktale about a beggar, sitting on a trunk his whole life, lamenting at his poverty, begging others to save him.
As he became elderly and more dried-out, like the desert, a passerby inquired, “What is inside the trunk?”. The beggar rarely stood up off the trunk, and had never opened it, only seeing its value as a well-positioned seat for petitioning his fellows for donations. “There’s nothing in there.”. “Have you ever opened it? I could assist you.”. In a bit of a daze he stood, and with help, pried the rusty hinges to gape wide. He gaped along with them, for the trunk was filled with gold.
What treasures await, when we can wake up from our assumptions about ourselves and the world around us?
Can we listen when asked why we’re doing things the same way we’ve always done? What if we accepted help? Tried something new?
The Upanishads and the yoga sutras tell us that “the joy of the infinite is ever with us, but we do not know this truth…True knowledge of the self…is salvation.”.
Has it rained enough in your desert to allow those delicate, multihued petals to breathe? You might need more time, or unique conditions, like all the storms in California this year. How can you create these conditions?
Here’s what’s helping me along this hero’s quest:
Relaxing away from some of the habits I’ve held dearly!
I’m learning to hold the reins more loosely:
letting myself wake up without an alarm, resisting planning out my whole day, leaving unstructured time, going to bed when I start to yawn, calming down about the bizillion little things I have done every morning or evening, forever.
The gold for me,
right now,
is trusting that I am actually OK.
I can connect with the joy of the infinite in many ways. The gold that’s inside me isn’t going anywhere and I’m finding more ease in exploring ways to feel it.
So I am sticking with art making, writing and time in nature. These are all creative, exploratory practices. I’m playing around more with āsana, prānāyāma and other routes of inquiry. When I feel myself tense up around a hardened “rule”, I experiment and pay attention to the outcome.
More than adhering to any proscribed regime, I want to see what’s really here, inside of me.