Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

The mind is strange, at least my mind can get that way. Everything is running smoothly and I am all happy doing something or other and suddenly that thread runs out and I come up with nothing. Nada.

Or, things are going along and all of a sudden I am thrown out of whatever I was in and standing there, outside of what I was just inside of. The knee-jerk reaction is to want to get back into whatever I was into because suddenly I am on the outside looking in. And here is the rub: that never works out. I can't go back or snap back in once I pop out.

Instead, what is needed (at least for me) is to accept things just as they are, including the way I feel (which is often not good by that time), however that is. I can't help but want to return to whatever content feeling I remember, but as they say, you can't go home again.

What I can do is throw out my expectations, complaints, memories, etc. and just start all over again with whatever is at hand, just as we do with basic Shamata meditation – bring the mind back and rest in the present. Let me perhaps be clearer.

I am in some kind of groove and things change. I pop out of that and suddenly find myself odd-man-out with my own self. It's uncomfortable, and there is no way to scramble back into being just content. I am already not content and out-of-joint.

What does seem to work is to relax and start over (so to speak), start with the uncomfortable (not-content) situation in which I find myself and rest in that, accept that, and begin again. I use to piss and moan, but these days you will go no more from me than perhaps a faint sigh; I just accept what is and rest in that.

Probably more than you want to know, but that is how it is with me these days.

SHOWY ORCHID

Early this morning, along a trail in the deep woods, this young Showy Orchid, one of Michigan's finest, is just getting started. We are about a week away from full bloom for this species around here.