It is a lovely day; the third in a row and the longest dry spell we have had since August 2010, although there may have been one in October; I can't remember. This morning, I was going to meditate; I really intended to. I meditate for a little while before I get out of bed, but I usually take care of my body's needs like ablutions, fluids, and food, before I launch into my spiritual studies and meditation. Today, after eating my granola with yoghurt and berries, I played a little Spider Solitaire on the computer. Then I took Sadie for a walk, made and ate a cucumber sandwich, drank a glass of water along with the remainder of my vitamins and minerals, washed the dishes, and put on my boots and went into the garden.
I had intended to mow the lawn as it needs doing again and I have no idea when it will next rain, so carpe diem and all that. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have almost ceased planning and making plans and I know so well and from experience that if I go out to the garden to do one thing, I will likely end up doing something completely different. This was the case today. I found myself pulling out the tarps I use to cover firewood, and spreading them out to dry. I then took the last of the firewood -- one wheelbarrow's load -- from the upper woodstack site to beside one of my back doors (I have a cord of green maple due to arrive on Tuesday). This done, I did manage to pull out the push mower and give the grass a good shaving. Then for some reason as I stood staring at the fish pond which came with this home when I bought it, I found myself hauling at a large clump of bull rush. Needless to say, it was heavier than me and I couldn't simply pull it or roll it or anything else out of the pond. I ended up cutting it down to size with loppers and grass shears and frequently asking Source what I should do next and much of my activity was performed in a state of mindlessness. Finely with a steady mighty tug, I was able to get the thing out of the pond.
I then had quite a bit of cleaning up to do and there are still bits of dead bullrush floating around on the water. I know I should get those out too, but got a lot of it out and by this time I was tired and wanted a cup of rose congouo tea.
I am fastidious about my garden tools. Although many of them now look used, I try to put them away cleaned and dried and oiled (if they have moving parts) and I do this no matter how exhausted I am. I also had to get the pond pump up and running again and drop the two pots of water plants that came up with the huge mat of bullrush roots -- one of them is what's left of the bullrush -- back into the pond. This I did and I have to say that it is very pleasant that the dead bullrush stalks are no longer there. It was an eyesore but only because I knew that all that dead vegetable matter might decay into the pond and create an unhealthy environment for the lovely goldfish that came with the pond when I bought this home.
I always find my approach to tasks, interesting. As I wrote previously, these days I rarely plan and usually find my Self launching mindlesslessly into work. I might get more accomplished if I created a plan and stuck to it, but so often one sets out to do something only to find that it can't be done until something else is done. The simplest task seems to sit upon a foundation of larger tasks. For example and this is only an example as I keep my garden shed in order and my lawnmower is where I can easily grab it and pull it out: some people might want to mow the lawn, but can't because there is clutter blocking the mower. They start to deal with clutter only to find the shears that they lost a week ago. While the shears are in their hand anyway, the person might go and tackle the job they wanted to do a week ago but couldn't because the shears were missing. And so on ... I am sure this happens to most of us, even if we are organized. I can remember way back when I had three young children and I kept a lot of food in bulk in lidded buckets in the basement. It seemed that every time I wanted to bake a cake, I had to go to the basement and bring up the flour bin (truthfully and for a long time I ground my own flour with a stone burr mill), fill up the smaller kitchen bin, then take the flour bin back down to the basement. All so that I could make cake. My point is that simple tasks are rarely simple and straightforward. And plans fail too often. But feeling internal pressure to tackle a job and acting upon it as one is inspired works well for me, almost every time.
Technically and if one is truly spiritually awake, one probably wouldn't care that last year's bullrush stalks might decay into the pond and create an unhealthy environment for the fish. But I don't know that one who is spiritually awake and has been given a goldfish pond to tend would leave it to nature to run the show although nature can probably do a pretty good job of running the show, even in a small pond like I've got. Having said this, sometimes if nature is left to its own devices, it behaves inappropriately. It was inappropriate for the bullrush to spread so wide in such a small space. And I have heard horror stories of decaying matter poisoning fish. I think that being spiritually awake doesn't preclude activity and that a spiritually awake custodian of a fish pond would suddenly get the urge to clean out the pond, just as I did, and would act upon that urge. And I am not certain that I had anything in the way of negative or positive emotions invested in the state of my pond. Okay, well to be honest, every time I saw it I felt twinges that I should take responsibility for it. And I really don't know if those twinges arose from the little me or from Source. I really do wonder. And I think Adyashanti would ask "what or who really cleaned out the fish pond?"
Despite the fact that I laboured in the garden instead of doing my spiritual studies and meditation, I feel very good right now. I don't know whether this is because the activity released chemicals (neurotransmitters?) into my body that cause me to feel this way, or that I am relieved to have done something useful, or that while I was labouring to pull out the bullrush and mow the lawn, I was actually in a somewhat meditative state.
Namaste
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