Colette Obrien

In-to-me-see. To see and be seen is the single most important psychological imperative.  Studies of infants in orphanages where they’re fed, warm and dry but not held– not seen–show that most of those infants will die. Severly abused children survive because they’re seen; the psyche doesn’t distinguish good attention from bad attention.

Do the stars care that I gaze at them in wonder?  If everything changes when it’s being observed, what does that say about the star’s recognition of the attention given by almost 7 billion humans, not to mention all the other beings that turn their attention to them each night?

Cat’s eyes light up in the darkness, like star-light they project into the void.  What do they see that we do not?

If eyes are windows into the soul, it is no wonder humans have gazed into the great eye of the sky and imagined gods and goddesses,  universal-mind, the infinite, the creator, the over-soul.

Like the cat, maybe we see many things held in that great infinite space, but without the ability to register our usual perceptions of light and form to give it meaning, we catch a glimpse and call it wonder, or awe, or mystery.

 That felt experience has made believers of humanity for millenia; believers of life outside our usual ability to perceive where the imagination and faith reign supreme and meaning beyond the mandane is found. 

Wonder

I do.

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The cultivation of peace is at the center of psychological and spiritual practices that strive for growth.  Defined by Webster as; serenity; calm; quiet; tranquility; harmony, we tend to assume that means a cessation of thought.

But if you’ve ever tried to still your mind you will have discovered you could not.  This failure causes most of us to believe something is  wrong with us. Whether it was in the middle of the night when you couldn’t sleep or in a meditation or yoga class or at  school or work when you were “supposed” to be quiet, you will have discovered the mind is NEVER still. It’s not just you; you’re not broken, but life can best be described as a state of perpetual motion. Physics has proven that all matter is in motion, and though we’re unable to see a rock moving, we now know that it is.

So if peace isn’t an absence of thought, what is it? The answer to discovering a peaceful state is in the last word of the dictionary definition; harmony which is an absence of conflict. Since I cannot stop my mind from thinking, and would not wish to for it would mean I was no longer alive, my thinking must become harmonious.

A mindful practice is one in which one watches their thoughts. Have you ever just watched and not been drawn in? If drawn in you will discover tension as at the heart of most of our thinking whether it’s problem solving, worrying, regretting, etc. In other words; most thinking is conflictual by nature. Does that mean harmonious thinking is not possible?

Not at all, just unusual. When we’re able to watch our thoughts without being drawn in to the conflict, harmony is the result.  Accept everything, reject nothing, and the mind is at peace.

 Oddly out of the ordinary is whimsy’s definition.  Just the feel of the word on my lips makes me smile, a verbal form of Prozac for the spirit.  Like the archetypal trickster in Jung’s psychology and the Tarot deck, whimsy tricks us into a shift of perspective.  To see the ordinary a little out of kilter allows us to play with the object outside of the box of our usual view/belief about it.  Whimsy stands things on their head, or tail, or puts ballet tutus on those we’re intimidated by. Harry Potter learned to handle his fear of dementors by making fun of them.

Playful spirits are a form of whimsy; making the imagination and all of the “unseen” world into a place we can venture into without so much fear.  That’s not to say we can rid ourselves of nightmares but we can balance the tendency of the mind to fear the dark by seeing light within the darkness.

Most of us in the western world today have important concerns but they’re not life threatening; meaningful work, the mortgage, money for our children’s college, our daughter’s weird boyfriend, etc.   We don’t live in Sub-Saharan Africa or any number of other places where whimsy would be inappropriate.  We normal neurotics, as Woody Allen spoofs regularly, are candidates for lots more whimsy.  Most of our fears aren’t helped along by worrying, but will benefit greatly by lightening.

On the table in the dentist’s office waiting room I visited too regularly as a child, was, “Laughter the Best Medicine.”  It really did help make those fearsome visits a little more tolerable. Proof of that is that I remember the jokes, not the drill.

Whimsy is also considered childish. And what is meant by childish? Playful, imaginative, fun-loving, fearless, courageous, adventurous, curious, uninhibited . . .

If by being whimsical adults we tap into that list, I say “Go For It.”

A dream, like a dragonfly, alluringly invites us to follow. This morning early, not yet light, I woke in a state of awe; the dream, like a brilliant violet dragonfly flitted across my mind’s eye. Seductively, it came close and darted away, again and again. How I longed to name it, define it, tell it’s story, believing if I could it would be mine. But what would that accomplish, I wondered? Holding it in my hand, would it be more meaningful? Why wasn’t it enough to experience it’s color and movement, its scent of mystery, like something glimpsed through mist that comes in and out of focus?

If I did manage to catch hold of it, I would surely admire it for awhile, and eventually, believing I’d come to an understanding of its nature, I would put it down and look for something else to capture my imagination. Had I caught the dragonfly or had it caught me?

Like a dream analyzed, knowledge sought and gained leaves a brief impression on the mind, and then the fickle creature moves on.  The mind holds to the belief that the current love interest will be the final one; the one that ends the seeking. However, the mating of concept with reality is an unquenchable thirst, a hunger never sated. It is the nature of mind to seek knowledge and of knowledge to seduce with creative fluorishes of color and movement and of possibilities only dreamed of.  Like dreams in sleep that elude capture or if caught, aren’t what we’d wished for. 

Mind’s nature is to posset questions and seek their answers certain there will come one special one; one unlike all the others that will give us peace, believing if it isn’t found in life surely when the answer to that biggest question is before us, and we know what happens after death, surely then?

Stored safely in travelers bodies upon return from exotic destinations are just as exotic bugs –travelbugs.   Catching a ride on high speed vehicles to colonize new planets, the darlings have “traveled” the world and today are more prolific than the w.w.w. humans are so fond of.

Where did  this interesting juxtoposition of terms originate?There are 145 million links on google,and though I didn’t read through all of them, the first few pages didn’t give the original derivation of the term.  How many links do you think there are in the bug world? Quadro-trillions? (If Shakespeare could make up words, so can I, and though today we think “he’s Shakespeare,  he’s brilliant.” When he made up the words he was just a guy and his mother would surely have protested at the proliferation of misspelled words on his pages.

Now, about those bugs, the difference between a home-grown bug and those brought from far away places is that our bodies recognize the difference and tolerate the home bodies with reasonable discomfort (reasonable discomfort being an oxymoron). While, on the other hand, they react violently to strangers, even when the stranger is no more of an actual threat.

Our psyche reacts just as the body; experiencing reasonable discomfort when those we know hurt, abuse, ignore, or violate our persons while fearing a stranger no matter how kind their intentions.  We trust known individuals to do what they usually do and distrust the unknown for we do not know what they may be capable of.