When I got to my tree friend, we shared our usual salutation and then I rested my back against him and set my gaze high and unfocused so that I could encompass all into view. I saw the sky and the branches and the light slurry of snow drifting down through them and it felt like I was in one of those things you shake up and it snows. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion and this is how he shared his next lesson with me.
Most of us are constantly running from one place to the next. “I’m picking up my daughter from school,” “I’m going downtown,” “I’m dropping off my rent check.” But while responsibility reigns and duty dictates, we seem to forget that on the way to picking up our daughters, or riding the subway downtown, or walking to the landlord, there is a whole slew of ripe sights and sounds and experiences ready for the picking and savoring.
Looking up, I saw single snowflakes, too light for gravity to take hold of them, drifting on invisible currents toward the ground. The whole world around me stopped and all that was moving were these little white angels falling Earthbound. No worries, no “To Do” list, no thoughts of where I’m going in body or in life entered the scene, for these distracting thoughts are too fast to be felt when you slow yourself down to be fully present for whatever little angels presents their wings to you.
As I left my tree friend, I brought my mind back into play like a net to help me catch this butterfly experience to later translate into words that can still fly, knowing that true experience is like snowflakes that will disappear when the heat of our thinking minds tries to hold onto it. I witnessed my legs moving half the speed that they usually carry my body and everything around me continuing to be slowed down.
While the whirlwind of the world will never stop its tumultuous twirl and the tornado of the times will not disappear by us fighting to hold our legs in place, when we step into its eye, we also enter the “I” of our own center’s silence.
Slowing down can mean physically, to move our bodies through space at a pace that doesn’t feel like we are trying to catch up to a time that is always running one step ahead of us. Just by breathing deeper and slower, the fast things around us still go at burning speeds but we remain unsinged by their fire. It is time to throw away our “To Do” lists and stop rushing to do…and slow down and start to be.
That’s beautiful:
“I brought my mind back into play like a net to help me catch this butterfly experience to later translate into words that can still fly, knowing that true experience is like snowflakes that will disappear when the heat of our thinking minds tries to hold onto it.”
Wow.