Change The Channel
Dear friend,
The clouds have melted, and the sun is shining, baking hot. I can see the Alps covered in snow, and just in front of where I sit on Angelo and Betty’s balcony, a raven is harrowing a hawk. The raven’s wings are frantic compared to the much larger bird of prey.
I presume the raven has chicks nearby and is protecting them. The strategy works, and the hawk glides off to some less problematic hunting ground.
You’d think the countryside would be quiet, but it’s a working day. One strimmer in the valley sounds like a gigantic mosquito, and somewhere else nearby, the clatter of a diesel engine echoes like the battle between the raven and the hawk.
Peace is not necessarily an external condition. Though it can help to be in a quiet place, the real disquiet is mostly internal. It’s so hot; after all these wet, chilly days, I shuffle a sun-worn bamboo chair into the shade to write and to breathe.
When it’s quiet here, all you can hear is the wind in the trees, the running water, and birdsong—maybe the occasional jet heading across the Alps. You’re probably familiar with the need for calm and stillness; just don’t look for it where it can’t be found. Notice how your senses are pulled this way and that by sensations, sights, and sounds, and allow them to be as they are. To wish them away is to attach to a future moment that will not come, no matter how tense you become willing it to be so.
Ironically, the mosquito trimmer now sounds more muffled, and the tractor driver has turned off the engine. I can hear the satisfying crunch of car tyres on gravel and the whirr of a single white transit van passing on the single-track road a couple of hundred metres below to my left. The raven has settled in the branches of a nearby tree.
All of this from simply sitting, breathing, allowing the nervous system to settle.
Sometimes your meditation practice will take you into inner stillness; sometimes you might become more aware of the constant movement of the world. Neither is better than the other.
Just this changing of channels from striving or pushing away to accepting.
Phenomena come and go in the space that is you.
Even your body.
This morning again, I was eating sweet things and drinking coffee when I heard my Mam’s voice plainly in my mind. Then a sudden surge of excitement as I realised that life is infinite and eternal.
Changing the channel from identifying as the old story of who we are, chasing external security in owning and possessing and certainty—it’s refreshing to sink into noticing and accepting. Feeling the beating of your own heart. The miraculous pulse of life through your veins.
A dandelion seed floats past on the breeze to a new home. From it, others will take flight.
We are eternal souls.
Something in us remembers.
No matter how loud the madness of the false self rages, amplified by technology, there are many of us here taking other paths.
You are never truly alone.
The knack is to become quiet as best you can.
Tune into your inner knowing; make space for that each day. Whatever works for you, perhaps the peace we cultivate within is our greatest gift to the world?
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey