This morning I woke up with a head cold. I haven’t had a cold in a very long time, so it *felt* like a “new” experience, although one I certainly remembered in a hurry – yuk. So – what to do… Well, nothing of course. Just simply let it take its course.
Fortunately my husband was away for the day, tending to business possibilities. So I had a reprieve of sorts to just relax and let the day be what it was – simply living – without having to be “up” for anyone or responsible for anything, not having to make anything “work” – including myself.
Underneath the cold symptoms I felt the usual sense of restlessness, my constant companion for several weeks now. I’ve been noticing how she seems to like to keep churning things up underneath the surface. I’ve just allowed her to be there. But today she kept me from being able to settle into the Flow of the Stillness underneath, so I decided to pay attention to her. I simply sat with her a while and noticed that she was really just mind clutter, constant mind distraction, constant thought percolating. So we talked and I asked her to go to the back burner, like that stew of life that’s been simmering there forever.
While she slowly and quietly simmered there, next to the stew, I was finally able to get a glimpse of the simplicity of Stillness. Not through *trying* to “meditate” – but simply sitting and allowing. Simply sitting provided a felt sense of sweet communion with Infinite Presence – just being with each other like old friends, feeling that comfortable familiarity - in silence. The more I go down this life path, the more I realize that this is how I want to live – in simple communion with Being, simply living, simply Being – just simple, simple, simple. But I am surrounded by “complexity!” – mine and others. My husband spends a lot of time in his head trying to figure things out. We engage in a lot of conversations about what is going through his head, the “business” stuff, life circumstances stuff, the financial stuff – stuff, stuff, stuff - and how we’re going to navigate the stuff. I am inclined to go right along with him in this mind stream, spending time in my head, trying to figure things out as well. No wonder I have a cold, I’m all “stuffed up!” But today I just wanted life to be simple, and simply lived. So I simply sat – with the cold, with restlessness, and with the inner Flow of Life.
At the end of my “sitting time”, I went to the kitchen to get lunch. As I did so, a phrase arose from within – “Simplicity has to do with the way you *approach* everything.” Okay – what does that mean?! See, the mind kicks back in and wants to complicate the answer by trying to find its meaning. I went back to sitting – just sitting.
The awareness from simply sitting today is that it’s this restless mind clutter that keeps me in a constant state of complexity and agitation, that stuffs up the simplicity of just Being. I’ve noticed that if I *approach* life’s questions, situations and circumstances through the mind, a downward spiral of complexity results – stuffing everything up. Evidently, as a society of seekers, we think that long, involved, wordy, mental “answers” to our questions are going to take us where we want to go. Instead they keep us mentating to the next thought and the next question and the next supposed “solution.” But it’s only a mind game of problem solving, coming up with supposed solutions – a mind approach that loses simplicity in the process, and creates more complexity and more questions – more things to figure out – more head stuff.
So, what if I my approach was to trust LIFE to take its course, like my cold; trust LIFE to show me how to move with it, to inform me, instead of constantly trying to swim upstream to the mind – seeking solutions. What if I let LIFE unfold the way it needs to – like a river returning to the Ocean– allowing that movement to carry me – responding from that space of Flow. What if I “decomplexify” (my new word:) my head and simply stay open to LIFE, not *needing* an answer or a solution, or to fix anything – as if it was “wrong” – just adapting to the flow of the River. What if I patiently wait for the answer to arise, to reveal itself, from a simple resonance with Being, rather than from the mind stuff… It’s not like I haven’t been here before, or haven’t felt that innate sense of “knowing” what was needed – through resonance. But once again I have “complexified” my life with head stuff, wandered off into the mind field, and am having to rediscover the simple approach – the *Essence* of simplicity – where wisdom just IS – where life gets unstuffed. :) All that from simply sitting with a cold!
Photo - Bill Kennedy