Moss and Lightning

There is a calm after the storms yesterday. Lightning darted from cloud to cloud, pink and violent. My meds kicked in this morning, and I, too, feel calmer. My friend who had the cookout the other day, the household goddess, brought me fresh trout for dinner. How she takes care of all those who are around her, and comforts me as well, astonishes me.

I am not my mental health diagnoses, nor am I, what Eckhart Tolle calls, the Mind. Any more than I am gender role imposed by culture. There is a core Me, that surpasses all of my surface identity, and all of my past. I could call it the soul, or the Holy Spirit. I think of it as simply, Me. It is the core self, and you have one, too.

I lean heavily on Tolle's teachings right now, in this season of hurt. I am not all the definitions imposed on me by others, anymore than I am the Mind. And I lean on the old saying, "This, too, shall pass." Events move on, in a too frenetic pace. I am withdrawing some, in an effort to slow events down. I practice Core Mindfulness, to stay sane. Core Mindfulness is nothing more than breaking the pace of time down, the pace of life down, to each separate minute. I pay attention to each moment as it comes, and then, let it go. I concentrate on my breathing, to the rise and fall of breath. I extend my other senses, to notice each moment to the fullest.

That is what Nature does for me. How easy to stand in a quiet forest, listening to each bird's song, and seeing each blade of grass. How easy it is to imagine my higher Power as a ball of energy in the middle of this forest. There are ferns there, that grow by the path, and small Lady Slippers. The sunlight comes down in shafts between the trees. There is moss at the base of each tree.  Eddie, my service animal, waits there, quietly. There is a beautiful stream that talks on the edges of the forest, that rushes past rock spun down to its essential form, by the water.

The hurt is taken by the water, downstream, away from the forest's core.