Barefoot, walking in the desert. Focusing on each step – the sounds of the sand crunching beneath my feet, like breakfast cereal before the milk. The feel of the uneven pressure on the bottoms of my feet. The temperature of the ground. Warm – almost too warn – but not burning. Watching as my mind tries to calculate if I am in danger of burning the bottoms of my feet. Allowing the inner alarm to sound and then recede. Naturally. Watching the process, as if from a distance.
How slow can I walk? Can I break down the function of each step into its component parts?
There goes my directing mind again. Making a game of it. Or perhaps it is a game and my mind is just playing along with what is already here.
Watching thoughts as they come up – triggered by what, I don’t know. Don’t need to know.
———-
My mind has wandered. Return to the sensations of the body. The present moment. Tuning into the sound of the wind in my ears, the pressure against my skin as the wind ebbs and flows. The sensation of expectation between gusts. The waiting for the next movement across my body.
Becoming aware of my emerging thoughts again. The desire to be anywhere but here. So boring is the present moment. No problems to solve. Nothing to understand. No thing to hold onto or to judge.
There is a satisfaction in judging. A satisfaction in having an opinion. A satisfaction in being right while another is wrong.
When I acknowledge this and choose to recognize the satisfaction as just another trick of the mind, I am opening a door onto my own freedom.
There is a rhythm – a tune of some sorts – arising in me now. I walk to this new rhythm. From where it arises I cannot say. Something I heard? The beat of my own heart? The rhythm of some universal undercurrent? Yes. Perhaps these are all the same.
Turning my attention now to the breath. The rise and fall of my chest. The sensation of the air – pre-warmed by a desert sun – moving into my nostrils and down into my lungs. Opening. Opening Opening.
Becoming aware that I am not the breather of my breath. If that is the case, what else am I not? I am not the beater of my heart. I am not the flower of blood through my veins. I am not the digester of my food. I am not the contractor of my muscles. I am not the thinker of my thoughts.
I am not the thinker of my thoughts.x
I am not the thinker of the thoughts.
After all, the thoughts are not mine to think.
I have gone transparent again. There is no sense of panic. No sense of injustice or outrage. Just wonder. Joy.
The body laughs out loud. I hear the deep resonance of the body’s voice. And hearing this, the body laughs louder.
I recognize that, if another person where to be hearing this, they would think this laughing body was crazy! This makes the body laugh even louder still.
Of course, being transparent cannot last. And that is OK. I have more work to do in this life. My life. And so I return to myself. But not without leaving some small part of myself – a bookmark of sorts – to this otherworldly place. Something to hold the door open. Just a sliver. For my eventual return.
My feet again, crunching sand and stone and desert debris. Awareness that I am walking the bed of an ancient ocean. Continuity. Me connecting this moment to all past moments to all future moments. The ocean of eons ago washes over me, through me. My gills fill with salt water, pulling from it the life-giving oxygen my body needs to live.
Everywhere I look there are gifts. Small surprises to find behind the cactus and the boulders. Even the shadows offer up their secrets. I cannot help but accept it all. I am the receiver. A great feeling surges through me again.
The feeling that has no word.