eat draw fret

a bounty of fresh garden vegetables

Back to my early morning posting...there's a giant full moon outside my office window, it's very still and balmy, and sweet Oliver is curled up on his bed by my computer. I didn't sleep well last night and why is it that my thoughts are so worried at 1:30am... seems I'm never lying awake in the middle of the night thinking how great my life is, I'm always thinking, in a grossly exaggerated manner, about all the things that need to be done -jungles to hack, wood to order and put in, taxes to pay... all the things that I should worry about.

I'm reading, and enjoying Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and last night in the middle of the night I turned my light on to read, in the hopes of distracting my busy negative mind. Here's a passage from the book. She's in India, living at an ashram and working, hard, on her spiritual self.

" Meditation is both the anchor and the wings of Yoga. Meditation is the way. There's a difference between meditation and prayer though both practices seek communion with the divine. I've heard it said that prayer is the act of talking to God, while meditation is the act of listening. Take a wild guess as to which comes easier for me. I can prattle away to God about all my feelings and my problems all the livelong day, but when it comes time to descend into silence and listen ... well, that's a different story. When I ask my mind to rest in stillness, it is astonishing how quickly it will turn (1) bored, (2) angry, (3) depressed, (4) anxious or (5) all of the above.

Like most humanoids, I am burdened with "monkey mind"– the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but– whoop! –how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it's the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

The other problem with all this swinging through the vines of thought is that you are never where you are. You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in the moment. "

OMG–it seems Elizabeth has spent some time recently in my head. I find this passage, in this book, extremely comforting. I think that's another human trait– to somehow believe that you are the only one that thinks & feels this way.

The moon is now a giant orange disc, like Mars, hovering low over the horizon and shining down on the harbour. Surely that's a sign of some sort...