Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Autumn Sun


September 20, 2011

               Each morning as  Iay in bed right after waking, I turn and watch as the sky in the east lightens from the black of night to the whitish, eggshell blue of the pre-dawn.  This time of year, the sun has begun its trip south, rising further to the right on my horizon every morning.  This day, He sits exactly between the two big Douglas Firs that stand outside my cabin.  Weeks ago, in August, He was to the left of the first big tree.
                I can see yellow light drenching the hillside above me, out the other window, while I am still in pre-dawn darkness.  Then it reaches me, and the inside of my house is drenched in the light of another day.  I make tea and sit outside by the window box, reveling in the sunshine and the birdsong.  And when the tea is finished, it seems like I am already half way to the state of mindfulness.  So I put my cup down, sit quietly and allow the rest to happen.
                Thoughts and feelings recede.  They are back there, chattering away, but now the foreground of my attention is just the sensation of my breath.  A few minutes of this, and I am able to send my attention out, to the trees, the light, the birds.  Then I can bring it back, all the while residing in the subtle and profound sensation of the breath.  It’s as if that sensation becomes the vehicle I travel on.
                Moving within, I see there a terrible jittery feeling that wants nothing to do with this.  Get up it says, move around.  Of course, it doesn’t want me to continue.  Doing this means the annihilation of that jittery feeling, and like all other living things, it wants to survive and continue.  I negotiate, and it recedes.  And in its absence is a fresh, open space.
                 I sit for another twenty minutes in this state.   Then I pick up my tea cup and take it to the sink.

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