Co-existing awareness

Before I turn off my computer for several days, and even though I am in a hurry to get on the road, I felt the desire to make a note of my thoughts.

What comes to say is that in my city it is a superb  afternoon, which comes after a little rain last night, a great relief, and prior to that, a very dangerously hot day.

As I tend to my garden, Confidoring the aphids off the new plantings, aware of the peace and quiet in my garden, a few hours away are horrendous fires, forcing thousands of stranded and isolated people onto a pier and perhaps later into the water. The fires in this state are out of control. Already people have lost their lives and many homes have burned.

In fact, our holiday home may well burn too. Most of my family are currently overseas, but even if they were here, the roads are closed and it would be suicide to attempt to get to the property. It is in the lap of the Gods.

My younger self would have found this deeply disturbing and worrying. Today, I am philosophical. Bad things happen to good people every day and I have no story around the fact that it shouldn't happen. It is happening and there is no reason it shouldn't happen to me in the same way that it may happen to anyone. It is eerie. The calm before the the storm perhaps, but I am at peace with this.

Lately, I have become less optimistic about the state of the planet. It's possible we won't be here as long as we think. Certainly, we can't take for granted what we once did, but maybe that's the wake up call; to stop being complacent and to start being more mindful about everything.

I have become far more comfortable with the idea that I am not in control. Oh sure, I can't stop loving things in their place and feeling good when I am on top of the details of life. But, I recognize I can't make every post a winner, and nor should every post be a winner.

I've been more or less alone now for a few days. I can feel the magic of alone time, and silence, weave its magic on me, like it did for me earlier in the year when I was fortunate enough to be on retreat in India.

Silence quite naturally restores us back to our natural selves; not bogged down in anxiety and thinking, but free to let the mind wander in a 'no thinking' sort of way. My goodness, how I love that!

I get in the car now and go down to visit my mother. Will she trigger me; will I feel an intense tightness in my chest, a number of times during the visit? I think this is inevitable.

Perhaps the answer lies in not having a story around that either. It's not an easy time for me with her, although I will do my best to make it as pleasant as possible, for both of us.

It's not the relationship I'd like it to be, that's for sure, but I can't do anything about that either. I can make it as good as it can be, but 63 years later I recognize that there are reasons why it became problematic for me (thought not at all for her). And, that's just the way it is.

What's really important to note here, I believe, is that life is this weird experience of good and bad happening at the one very moment. Yes, my holiday house is in peril and at the very least the surrounding land is burning, and yet, in this moment I feel an abiding peace with the fact that today on this planet there is both good and bad happening; that no matter how bad it is gets, there is good. You might say this mindset is a co-exising awareness. Like people, the situation is never all bad.