A thought and a prayer for the new year. May your consciousness continue to grow and awaken. May you know freedom within your own being. May you touch and know joy. May you be grounded and weather all the storms that come your way. May that which breaks your heart also open your heart to deeper capacity.

Standing on
the edge
of
illusion,
May I
see
what
I see
as
I
see it.

Recently I watched a recording of Adyashanti in which he suggested to “contemplate complete silence” as a portal into deeper awakening, into deeper relationship with what he refers to as the “ground of being”. I’ve been exploring this over the last few days. First, I discovered it is helpful to remind myself that no amount of efforting on my part will open me to complete silence. The suggestion to “contemplate” initially lead me to effort through my analytical, rational brain to find complete silence. While I enjoy engaging in deep, analytical process, that, for me, is not the way to complete silence. Rather than settling, engaging the analytical had me chasing after what I thought the experience of complete silence would be, and also feeling my environment needed to be completely silent in order to contemplate it. Even though I live alone in a rural setting, complete silence is rarely, readily available.

I thought, then, to trust that complete silence already and always is.

Today I learned to drive the red tractor. The big one. The new one with an enclosed cab with heat and AC. I began to mow the meadow. We had let the grass grow all summer long to allow the field birds like the bobolink, a favorite summer bird, to have a safe breading ground. Then Dad got pneumonia at the end of August before we started to mow. We waited, hoping he  would recover enough strength to get into the tractor again, but now it is November, and I find myself in the tractor in his stead.

After a trip around the loop to get used to the feel of the tractor, I headed down to the field to start mowing along the south woods.  I mowed for about 90 minutes, squeezing some time in after a work from home day and before darkness. I thought I would get more done in that time than I did, but I could only go so fast.