Healing

The body is much more than the mind. The mind can interfere significantly with bodily wisdom. The body's mindless urges can also trouble the mind. These are challenges of the human condition.

Healing often entails telling the mind to yield to the dictates of the body. A common obstacle to healing, in my opinion, is the refusal of a tired and malnourished person to rest and eat properly. One result of this mind-dominated behavior is reliance upon drugs and alcohol for the facilitation of relaxation. Another result can be obesity, caused by reliance upon fast-food, sugar-caffeine drinks and carbohydrate snacks for energy.

The body's wisdom is simple. It will tell you when to breathe deeply, sit, sleep, eat or fast. However, to hear the body's wisdom, one must learn to shut off the mind's voice to hear the body's voice. This is where meditation can be helpful. By lying or sitting still for ten or fifteen minutes at some point during the day, you can tune into your body's voice and reap the benefits.

The choice to live entirely in the mind is promoted by technologically driven capitalist society. i-Phones, iPads, netbooks...all these devices promote mind-centered living. The eye becomes a portal for overwhelming amounts of mind-centered information. A mental form of bulimia can result. Gorging and purging. Cramming information and then blowing things/people up in computer games.

For the young and healthy, this is all a great ride. However, the ride itself, over time, can erode the health and well being of youth as it advances inevitably to middle age. By then, entrenched habits of being mind-centered, fatigued and malnourished start taking their toll. Healing balance must be initiated to avoid disastrous consequences.

Beginning a daily practice of some form of quiet relaxation or meditation for fifteen minutes in the middle of your day will bring tremendous benefit for very little cost. This can be done in a cubicle or on a park bench. Pay attention to how your body feels after these periods. Thoughts that seem particularly hard to escape while trying to clear your mind are the clues to what requires your healing attention.

Use the information access of technology to read up on good nutrition, the benefits of sleep and meditation. Health entails the ongoing healing of the inevitable toll time and gravity take on our bodies. While the mind may tell you that you are immortal or invulnerable, the body, which includes your brain, knows the truth of being. Living fully and well entails paying attention to that truth.

Life

I am a gardener of very modest talents, though many of my ancestors were serfs and farmers. My garden is 100 square feet, a small patch behind a picket fence. Very New England. In that tiny patch, life is teeming. There are probably close to 100 different species of plants, many planted by me, but most native to the ground here. I am not a compulsive weeder. I find great joy in watching strange green things rise from the earth. Sometimes they are winners; sometimes they are a pain in the ass, like the morning glory vines which try to choke just about anything they can get their tendrils wrapped around. There are about 10 different kinds of bees who pass through regularly. Fat ones, wasps, little ones, all on urgent missions of their own. I saw a particularly cute tiny green grasshopper today next to the boxwood. The grasshopper really showed up all those big black ants who insist on visiting me indoors. Last year I even had a beautiful garter snake, who slept in the morning sun by the garden gate for a week in May. The snails are fun to watch, or rather observe, from day to day, since they are really too slow to watch. There is so much life in my garden that I often lose scores of minutes just staring at it. The neighbors, I am sure, think me insane, or simple or just a garden nerd, I suppose. It never occurs to me what they think when I am absorbed in all that buzzing and growing life out there. And, if I do notice a neighbor passing by, I notice they are most often smiling as they look at my flowers. To be happily absorbed with life, as it simply is, is a great healing blessing. Part of my daily practice has been my garden and its joys.