Hold and release

Change, the nature of thought and beauty

Zoomed in on the snow capped Cascade Mountain peaks

As regular readers know, I draft each post earlier in the week, then edit and publish over the weekend or Monday. It’s interesting to come back to a marinating post. Now it is Sunday late morning and I’m about to add the photos and hit publish. The sun is streaming into the house, the Christmas tree all packed away and the beauty is calling me outside. With so much chaos and destruction in the world: war, fire and flood, it could seem tone deaf to immerse in the beauty here. Yet, on the contrary, I think it is a radical act of love to allow beauty to suffuse your soul amid the turmoil. I’m prompted to share it with you.

View from Kukatali Preserve, Skagit County

It’s pre-dawn, just one degree above freezing on this Tuesday morning. The table lamp and Christmas tree lights throw a soft glow into the living room. Outside the dark outlines of the cedars are visible, lights on the nearby houses like artificial giant fire flies, all waiting for the sun to rise. That’s what we say: sunrise, though science tells us no such thing happens. We live on a planet we call earth that orbits around a fireball we call the sun. Yet the lyrical illusion of the sun rising and setting persists, stubbornly occupying a corner of our collective imaginations.

Placed there by poets, dreamers, writers and artists throughout the centuries. The sun rising on a new day, inviting unknown possibilities. The sun setting on our troubles, regrets and woes. Sunrise even when obscured by mist or smoke reassures us of a fragile permanence. The reliability of sunrise mirrors our hope and expectation that we will wake each day, even while knowing, one day we won’t. The coming light filling the sky, signals the dawn chorus, birds singing their hearts out. We hear it and want to join the celebration. Another day on planet earth. Or we don’t hear it and blithely busy ourselves with preoccupations of past and future.

I’ve been seeing more deeply into the nature of thought and for that I am grateful. I’m noticing the randomness of what appears in our mind and the attendant feeling state it produces. How we may have a preference for ‘good’ feeling states that have us getting busy trying to manage ‘bad’ feeling states yet how transitory it all is. When pressure builds in the mind, how we can fall into old habits of thought, feeling and behaviour. At once familiar; yet not. Predictable, yet new. Old yet ripe with possibility for seeing something new.

Is the invitation simply to release? When we are gripped by stories of woe or judgement, what if there is nothing to do but release? When we release, we allow something new to emerge in our minds. Gripping is a learnt habit of trying to pin down and hold on to what is transitory and ephemeral by nature.

I can’t remember what I was thinking last Tuesday at 7.40am, can you? I have no idea what I’ll be thinking at 7.40pm tonight.

Reflections at Cornet Bay

We want to hold on to exciting thoughts. Meanwhile we imagine distressing thoughts, like trophies in a scrapbook, tell us about ourselves, our lives or the lives of others, or perhaps about our world, our planet, our past, our future. But do they? Of all the billions of thoughts running through our minds, who’s to say what is true. Is any of it true? One thought replaces another in a perpetual twisting of the kaleidoscope of what we call our lives.

The only constant, then, is not the sun rising and setting, but the awareness of that sun. The awareness of our thoughts. I have watched, agonised, analysed, argued with, tried to manage, been seduced by and generally been fascinated with my own thinking for decades. The consistent piece is the fact that I think. What I think has swirled and looped all over the map like a whirling dervish. Some loops get revisited time and again, others are new and fresh. Do they leave trails like stunt planes? All trails fade.

The holding and release, perhaps it never ends. We hold onto thoughts that distress and disrupt us, then at some point, we release them. Or perhaps, they release us? Or release just happens and there we are with new thought, new experience. Are we holding and releasing or is it happening like the rise and fall of the tide, answering to some deeper rhythm beyond our knowing?

Glimpsing this pattern, invites us to collaborate with the hold and release. In breath, out breath. What happens when we release our hold on our thinking? What might flow in? What happens when we accept we cannot or don’t want to release our grip? Can we accept the rise and fall and be grateful for the release when it comes and be in wondrous awe when a new wave of fresh thinking has us forget ourselves and be in the world as pure creative energy.

Looking out from Sharp Park, Anacortes

Being a new immigrant here in Skagit County, every day brings newness. It’s a turbo charged experience of new. A chosen fresh start. A personal odyssey of adjustment and integration. Looking around, we might fear the turbo charged experiences of loss all around our built and natural world. It can feel like we are free falling, out of control in an accelerated virtual reality where words tumble, species die out, opinions clamour for recognition. Yet in this moment, right here, right now, what is present? Simply, an awareness of being aware, with no control over what falls across that awareness.

And therein lies the hope. If we have no business trying to control or fix or manage our experience, then what? To simply ride the waves, enjoying the ebb and flow, how would that be?

How do we hold the paradox of being alive on this extraordinary, breathtaking planet while witnessing death, destruction and chaos, and bearing the losses, close in and all around?

Is Life simply a continual symphony of hold and release?

Gratitude

I am so grateful for all the friendship and new connections that have come my way, here in my new life in Skagit County. Grateful too, for the love and support of my husband through all the changes of the last few months.

Threads that pull me

I am struck with the power and joy of yoga! I learnt yoga when I was 16. My Mum took me along to classes run by a Swedish hairdresser. I have returned to yoga on and off over the years and always find something new and fresh with the practice. I bought a book in 1988 and I still refer to it often.

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