Blurry...and Deep

Orange Sunday

I am working on less than 3 hours of sleep...Home from the event at 11:30 last night, I took Lux out for a stroll and then relaxed a little before heading up to bed, only to find my older teen sound asleep in it. I headed back downstairs and pulled the futon to the floor and gathered up stuff for my nest. Of course, moments after my head hit the pillow, the cats were climbing up to the window from the outside, wanting to come in...okay...okay...okay...

2:00 finds me waking with the familiar electrical storm in my right leg, jolting and full of anxious, restless energy. I stretch. I go to the kitchen and swallow three capsules of the homeopathic leg stuff and a folic acid tablet. Sleep finally comes around 3:30.

The cats pounce me at 4:30, and I shoo them away. Lux, right on schedule, starts whining in her crate at 5:00. Thus begins my Sunday.

Coffee in hand, I head out. Lux stops by the yew (you) bushes of my neighbor, noshing on the tall grass, having some "salad". I am faced with a long wall of bushes, with tender and bright green New Growth on the tips. Ah! Face to face with New Growth! I get it!

I have been keeping a keen eye on messages lately, from the Universe. They are always all around us, and if we don't listen, well then, the volume is turned up until we do.

My friend, Steve, currently residing in a temple in Thailand, has given me permission to relate to you some things from his daily emails. Yesterday's installment had some really interesting things tucked away in them. I wrote him back, and told him about all the metaphor I see in his tales. Like this:

So what's been going on since I last wrote? Not much. Life at the wat (temple) is extremely slow moving. Like I said before, In the morning I practice my Thai and a couple of the guys come and practice their english. Usually work from 9 to 11. Monks eat their lunch then and rest for a while before returning to work approx 12-5 or 6. Days will vary some if they have a ceremony to attend, but for the most part, that's it. After the first day of mixing concrete, I was hoping that job was done. But I found out yesterday, we'd just begun. Picture large areas of land, sections as big as 30ft by 30ft, uneven earth, just sand, rock and fits of weeds and grass here and there. Ajahn says, "Oh yes, we will make this a patio like area, with little gardens here and there. And over there we will finish the floor and connect it with the other section and put up brick walls to close it in." O man!!!!

This made me laugh out loud! The metaphor was loud and clear to me, for me. Trudging through tough work, mixing the concrete of our lives, one day feels like it lasts forever. The "issues", the "pain" the "sweat and tears" of moving heavy "stuff" around is sometimes exhausting. And JUST when you think you are done, no. They say if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. The truth is Inner Work is never "done"...it just Is, and if you don't get the lesson the first time, don't worry. There are plenty of opportunities to move more concrete around, make inner patios and beautiful places from rocky, muddy, Primordial Ooze.

Also from Steve yesterday:

Some times I am bored to death and can't stand it anymore, but I try to separate my consciousness from my mind, stuck in this boring moment, and observe it, rather than experience the boredom. Sometimes I am successful, others not, but it is very interesting.

So yesterday around 4 or 5 pm, there is no time at the wat, it had been raining for a couple of hours. I took a nap, and finished reading Juelle's book, 'the Walking'. My friend Chat was painting in the wat, the monks had left long before, and I was so bored I thought I would die!!!! So I decide to walk back behind the wat and kitchen... As I walk by the kitchen and pass it on my right, to the left of me, is the side of the mountain. It reminds me of being at the bottom of a cliff. Looking up, you see the side of the mountain is like one big ledge of stone. Jagged edges protruding in all different directions. The Vines!! Vines sweeping down the rock wall from the top and different sections of the ledge. The vines are all different shapes and colors. The look is very dreary. Dark, damp, steep and alive! The ledge must raise up over 30 feet from where I was standing. The atmosphere was eerily quiet, except the rain falling slowly through the trees and branches above. It was getting a little dark at this time due to the clouds and my surroundings. Only maybe 100 feet from the wat and you are in the woods, walking by this cliff. Some of the vines are as long as the cliff itself. They cover sections of the rock, like clothing. Some of the vines are so thick, I now understand how Tarzan and monkeys can sway from them!!!

For me this speaks to the reality that just outside the perceived borders of Regular Life Stuff, the kitchen, the laundry, the daily routine, is the Wild and Juicy Stuff. Right. Next. To. It. With colorful vines, even!!