Tuesday, January 8th
I live on a mountain side from where I look out at the contour of the mountain and a valley full of trees of many varieties. When I sit and look at this gorgeous vista, I know in my mind it is beautiful but it seldom catches my breath as it does when the mist is playing hide and seek with me.
All day today the storm has brought layers of clouds and mist. In this season of mist everything moves in and out of existence, now here, now disappeared. Each reemergence a delight; a friend recalled. I think we are very bad at appreciating what is too present; too constant. I no longer see the art on my walls that once had the power to move me to heights of passion. It is in my nature to delight at existence however, it needs to catch my attention and familiarity does, sorrowfully, breed discontent. Here is another of life’s brilliant ideas; we all know that the one thing we can depend on in life is change, right? So life makes human nature fickle, which forces us to be awake to the next moment for as soon as we fall asleep – fall into any form of complacency- we lose life, in other words we experience varying degrees of depression. To be fully alive we must be fully awake; we must be able to see the tree anew each moment. This is where the mist is a great gift for it tricks us into thinking the tree is gone so that when it appears again, Voila, we actually SEE it.
I have spent a lifetime studying and practicing different prescriptions for awakening. Nothing works as well as mist.
