A Moth

Wing Dust

Dear Friend,

This morning I picked up one of the blue cushions we keep on the kitchen chairs. They’re constantly falling off. It’s a feature of our life to be stooping to retrieve fallen cushions from the floor.

Chiara’s in Budapest directing an opera and then she’ll be on tour and then some teaching in Tuscany, at any rate she’s away for six weeks. That feels like an epic stretch. Left to myself in the home, it’s easy to slide into scruffy ways.

Without someone else to relate to I can become internally focused so that I don’t notice if there’s jam on one of my fingers and now the jam’s smeared on the fridge door handle. Or if crumbs are amassing under the toaster. It’s a practice to stay present and notice my surroundings.

I don’t wear glasses all of the time, but I do need them to see clearly. It’s part vanity and part just not enjoying the inconvenience or the feel of them on my face. I noticed what to my glassless eyes looked like a brown stain on the cushion and I thought maybe it was a part of a leaf that had blown in from the garden or some dropped food and as I went to pick it up it flew off and hid on the under side of the fiddle leaf fig plant. Leaving behind on the cushion, a smudge of fine wing powder, scales from the wings of a house moth.

I felt a terrible pang of guilt deep in my stomach. Poor creature, I’d seen it yesterday. I’ll let it out the window today. As much as I love moths, I don’t want them munching their way through our clothes.

There’s a house fly buzzing round too, I’ll open the windows and hope it finds its way to freedom. The house is full of life. You can feel it all around and in you. An ocean of energy taking the form of a cup, a photo frame, a human body, a plant. Vibrating with light and sound, heat and cold.

I saw a youtube clip yesterday where men were on a stage talking to an audience of men about success. One guy defined himself by the strength of his muscles, the quality of his car and the dollars in his bank account. He spoke of his partner in terms of her physical attractiveness.

He looked kind of cool on one level the way he dressed and his tattoos, but he was clearly terrified, driven by images in his mind, blindly compelled to the effort of making the information from his senses match with the interior movie show.

When he was challenged on his ideas he tried to shut down the conversation, eventually resorting to hurling insults.

Powerless in his pursuit of power. If only he could know his loveliness.

The food on his plate can be nutritious and delicious. His body can be clothed in ways that are pleasing to him. He can be moved through time and space, in a seat, in a car or a plane or a train, sheltered in comfortable buildings. He can be loved and respected by friends and family and community. He can be held and loved and strengthened through humility and tenderness in union with an equal.

When we identify with our body, possessions, achievements or lack of them, financial status, fame, whatever it may be, we are in the dualistic, split mind. It’s the false self.

This self is so incredibly unstable is it any wonder that people are suffering so much emotional anguish? Houses built on sand.

Eventually we must let go of our images. Rest in silence and stillness and perceive the world afresh. The spiritual life is where you willingly embrace letting go of who you thought you were.

This may for a time involve creating new spiritualised images and trying to live up to them. It’s a modified form of ego.

This too passes.

The letting go doesn’t need to be completed, there’s no deadline. We’re not running out of time. The space that opens up, so you have room to see your attachments, is enough. This tiny gap between thoughts and between words is a world changer.

The willingness to see is all that’s truly required. A tiny willingness. There is unbelievable strength in it.

Not to be despondent, but rather accepting of our messy human conflicted nature.

There’s peace in letting go of the need to be perfect, or to be anything at all related to an image in the mind. The mystery of who we are is much greater than our minds can conceive.

Back to that moth.

I read Carlos Castaneda when I was a kid. He said that the moth is a bringer of wisdom, something like that. For me, its message is to love and care for all beings, animate and inanimate.

To pay attention to the present moment.

To the world and its creatures, One Love in and beyond all forms.

Picking up cushions, folding blankets, walking Zara.

Working, resting, being.

The day is coming where peace is restored to all minds.

We can decide to join in any time we choose.

Choice belongs with us. Though it may walk beside us unnoticed.

We can be tricked into thinking we are powerless to choose.

But we cannot be powerless.

That my friend,

Is an illusion.

With Love

Till tomorrow

Mikey