Sixth Month Meditation

During this beautiful time of the year I find myself combining my meditation with my daily walk(s).  This month I think about the five senses: sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste.  When I get to the top of the hill, I stand very still and explore myself and my world through my senses.
  

Of course the sight part is easy, but looking up into these trees, identifying singular leaves, fully seeing the tree both in parts and as its whole that fills my spirit.

The scents in the woods are transitory.  This past few weeks it has been honeysuckle - filling the air with its beautiful scent. Now the sweet spire is in bloom and to savor its delicate scent I have to pause for a moment. 

I touch a leaf, or cradle a delicate bloom in my hand.

                                                                         Photo by Tom Baugh

I listen carefully to the birds but I also strain to hear all those insects living on and beneath the forest plants.  I know they are there and I know they must be making the teeniest,  tiniest sounds.

Lastly, taste, and this happens when I get home and settle down with a cup of tea, thinking about what lives all around me each and every day.  Savoring the spirits of my senses.

"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason.  There is nothing higher than reason." - Immanuel Kant

Fifth Month Meditation

While scrolling through book images (for an upcoming house design) I found this treasure.  Reading the title aloud made my heart sing.  A meditation subject of gigantic, uncountable proportions.

How will my mind and heart and spirit even be able to contemplate this in the silence of my own small space.  Much to ponder...

"When we try to pick out of anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." - John Muir

Fourth Month Meditation

My meditation this month is 'time'.  It fills our days.  The sun comes up, the sun goes down, the earth rotates and the universe continues moving through time.  As humans we have managed to 'manufacture' a lot of our time.  We have rules for it, we try to tame it, even change its parameters twice a year.  We worry about having too much time on our hands or not enough time in a day or a month or a year.

Recently I had the opportunity to take a drive with my hubby where he was to attend an a half day meeting.  It was held at a beautiful lodge in the mountains but it turned out to be a grey, rainy, wet day.  I settled myself in a chair, opened my book and started to read.  I had a cup of tea beside me, my book and a beautiful view.  I wasn't 'filling' time while I waited for the meeting to be over.  I was letting go of time. There were no errands to do, no deadlines, no responsibility I had to fulfill.  Just a block of unregulated space and I realized how seldom I allow myself that kind of freedom.

A word such as 'time' is literally a never ending source of meditation and thought for me.

"Meditation is the soul's perspective glass." - Owen Feltham 

First Month Meditation

I am a rock.  I began with sharp edges, jutting out then over time made round from the constant movement of the water.  I sit quietly in a bed of crushed rock and sand.  The water flows around and over me.  Sometimes it is so strong that I am carried further down the stream.  I hear and feel both the calm of the river and the tumult of the rushing water.

Life is the water, I am the rock.  I sit here while life flows around me, over me, through me.  Eventually I will be worn away and will become part of the floor in which I presently sit. For now, I am the rock.   

"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again." - Joseph Campbell