Sometimes when I dip into the political discourse, if I’m not careful, I can find myself walking in the polarized landscape of my lizard brain. Then, this mind that was created to serve me, can quickly become my prison guard. In that state of mind, I can be easily angered as I try to comprehend why ‘they” cant see “the” (my) truth. After that, it’s one short step into the self-created world of victimization.
Neurobiology tells us that the lizard brain can create our experience (of reality)… by resurrecting past memories and using these memories to filter our world based on our own biases (alternative facts). This state of mind is the tyrant of our own psyche; it is self-focused, and seeks every opportunity to prove that we are right, safe, and “tremendously” liked. ;-)
Some time ago, in an effort to move beyond the grip of this tyrannical little mind, I decided to head out for an afternoon hike. For the first 20 minutes, I tried really hard to “move beyond” this grey, mechanized, polarized mind. I’d look at the blue sky, the majestic movement of clouds, the expanse of golden grass waving in the breeze, and yet the mind just kept running its incessant litany of provocative images and phrases.
Then from out of nowhere, I began hearing, and then singing a quiet lullaby to everything I saw. And soon, it wasn’t me singing, it was the Buddha field, the heart of the Christ… singing to itself in everything as everything. There was no difference between a rose quartz pebble and the fragrant pile of poop next to it. For the next hour, I experienced a state of open Presence that broke open the labels and containers that the mind-made world had placed on everything I saw and heard and smelled and felt. There was no past, no future. Only this, only Here, only Now. Thoughts came and went, but they were no longer creating my experience. They were also simply part of the landscape. At one point, I had to leap out of the way of a biker who cursed at me for getting in his way… and this too was part of the landscape.
Pebble, poop, biker. Nothing personal. Nothing to fight against. Just moving through the landscape and responding to it all exactly as it is. This... is freedom. This... is what we were made for.
:)
(photo by Anne Geddes)
