Seeing Through the Fog

I look out my windows and see that Ashland is blanketed in fog this morning. I’m reminded that this is often the condition of the human mind.

There is a cloudiness that causes confusion or blind reaction because so many experiences have happened over the years that leave impressions which dull the light of  clarity.

There is a way of seeing that is clear and immediate, open and responsive. How often do you see things that way?  Most of us have to wade through many hours of indecision, second guessing ourselves and others, reactivity, mood swings and other aspects of our dividing minds before we make a move.  We listen to a myriad of thoughts about ourselves and everyone else as if  a mere thought could be true and more significant than the moment in which we are living.  It is amazing we ever get anywhere.  I am not saying you should never  weigh an important decision, but wouldn’t it be easier if we knew ourselves well enough to have an immediate sense of what is right for us.  Then we would move with the flow of the river or the Tao as the Chinese philosophers described it. Our life would become more natural and integrated with the world around us.

All of us are part of an unfolding, a movement , of life itself.   Each of us is presented with the possibilities of the day every morning when consciousness arises out of sleep and into the world of form.  There is a natural and intuitive way to move into the day, in response to what is arising and in tune with our openness to it.  Sometimes a morning meditation puts us consciously in tune with this place and we can move on into the day without the fogginess of our cluttered minds.  Some people have rituals that help them orient to the day.  When I was a young mother I remember having such overwhelm just getting everyone fed and off to school along with myself on the way to college classes that it felt like I was just plowing through life, barely noticing what was going on around me.   The spirit is easily overwhelmed when the mind is running our lives like a business.

Today there is a natural rhythm in me that seems to come from the heart or the belly.  I have days that are very active and days that are quiet, but  this “I “ is no longer goal-oriented or task-oriented.  Generally there is a flow into the life, whether there be sun or fog.  The spirit is open to either and curious to see what it brings. Life is more peaceful this way.

How do we stop listening to our cluttered foggy minds and get in touch with a deeper  awareness within us?  For me it has been through the willingness to be still, to drop awareness into the heart, to notice awareness is what moves through the body/mind stirring sensation, looking through my eyes, listening, noticing emotion rising and falling, noticing thoughts rising and falling, noticing everything that arises and falls in life.  To be this awareness without attention on that which I am aware of, to get curious about what this internal presence really is, has opened a door  into  a place more deep and true and clear than I ever knew when I was living in the fog.