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Perfect Sky

September 27, 2006

ph_sep_sacredClouds.jpg

Perfect Sky ~ Canon 30d

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back
and laugh at the sky.
~ Buddha

The last couple of days I've been suffering from a case of what fellow meditation pracitioners call "Monkey Mind". You know, the kind of thinking marked by cumpulsive chatter and frenzied intellectual wall-bouncing gymnastics. Like a late summer storm, Monkey Mind swiftly dominates our inner landscapes ~ lightning strikes, and a hailstorm of chimpanzees flood the mind, breaking the levees of present moment thinking. A whirlpool of thoughts pull us down the drain of past regrets, or waves of panic catapult us forward into worst case scenarios for the future. Monkey Mind sucks, and once you recognize you're speeding down the Primate Highway with road-raging Gorrillas cutting in front of you, some radical down-shifting becomes a top priority.

I watched a phenomenally good movie over the weekend called Off the Map. Without giving too much away, it's about a family living in the middle of a magnificently beautiful nowhere place in New Mexico. An IRS agent comes to visit them for an audit and through a sequence of events, ends up staying and blossoming as an artist. His first watercolor is long narrow seascape depicting a precariouly thin line where the ocean meets the sky.

"It has struck me to view the ocean as the past, the sky is the future, and the present as that thin precarious line where they meet."

The metaphor took my breath away. Think of it ~ to live fully in the present is to reside where the sky meets the sea. How do we balance ourselves in this delicate place of awareness? How do we walk the tender tightrope of a curve separating illusion from reality and become fully alive?

After watching the movie, I wrote these words to a friend ~ "This morning, I'm thinking it would be rather Buddhist of me to let the landscape around me just be. I feel like I'm balancing on the horizon like a tightrope walker, with stars spiraling in the loveliest of patterns atop my head and the sea, with all it's subconscious wanting and past wanderings, undulating to distant rhythms of the beauty that brought me here. I'm not making any sense, am I ~ imagination-induced watercolor images rarely do."

I'm figuring some things out. Meditation practice isn't about distancing oneself from the past and future in an unhealthy act of disassociation. It's all in the balancing. We learn from our past ~ mining beautiful wisdom from it, and apply our knowledge in the present moment to create a better future. There's no swinging back and forth with worry and regret. All we have is this moment, and the conscious choice to serenely accept it and welcome it is a radical act of freedom.

This moment, filled with so much beauty and mess... so much chaotic wonder and brilliant uncertainty... this sacred place where we embrace ourselves with acceptance and love and realize we are "all right" just the way we are ~ this, my friends, is the place of perfection where the ocean meets the sky.

You're cordially invited to tilt your heads back and laugh along with me.


{ Photograph shot this morning at dawn in the district. Nothing cures a case of Monkey Mind like a long talk with a true friend and a meditative photo shoot. }

ps ~ my friend is doing so much better than expected after her fall. I'll write more when I have time to weave my thoughts around it. I have no doubt your prayers made a difference. The fact she didn't break anything is nothing short of a miracle. Thank you for the concerned emails.

Posted by vincent at September 27, 2006 04:31 PM

Comments

Beautiful photo and thought-provoking post. Thank you and bless you for sharing your gifts with us.

Posted by: Beth at September 28, 2006 10:07 AM

i'd love to swim in those clouds.

i saw off the map last summer and loved it (joan allen--fabulous, sam shepard--wonderful). thank you for the reminder. i just love that quote.

sweet-crazy--that's what i like to call it.

i'm so glad to hear your friend is doing okay.

Posted by: la vie en rose at September 28, 2006 05:35 PM

I love the quote and your website. That sky looks like a "mackerel sky" according to some images I recently saw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altocumulus_cloud

Posted by: mikaelah at September 29, 2006 03:01 PM

I'm a thinkin about what you have said in your post. Maybe I should start meditating again. It has been a difficult discipline for me to maintain, but I see it can be beneficial.

Posted by: Timbo at September 30, 2006 04:12 PM