The ultimate in sheds!
I’ve been thinking how very fortunate I was to be able to spend time alone on retreat in that wonderful setting in the mountains. Unremitting sunshine, peace and plenty. What a charmed life! It is all too easy to lose sight of the gifts that fall before us. So this is just a pause to express gratitude and to realize that I’ve already mostly forgotten those long sunny days and those dark clear nights. And all that came and went in the constantly changing inner landscape. But it doesn’t take much to cast back and remember….
Small things can take on a life of their own, when alone in the mountains. There was the obsessing about and looking for the lost stainless steel half cup measure. There I was digging through all the kitchen drawers, several times. Opening up all the food containers to see if it had been left there. Turning over the compost bin, going through the bags of rubbish. On and on. And I never did find it. Nor did I find my glasses! Then there were haunting sounds. What was that? A bear! The wind in the trees? Or something, someone perhaps, much more sinister. Imaginings can grow and grow until ones little heart is thumping with fear – when out in the woods alone on a still night.
So knowing ones mind to have certain capacities; for example to go way over the top on small things, to have the ability to enter into wild imaginings and generally to while away hours of daylight is to be freed. And that might sound like a rather odd thing to say. Perhaps knowing the extremes of ones thoughts and emotions helps one get a perspective on them. Thoughts pass and often there is a chuckle in there too! Who for example would have thought I’d imagine I was damaging my brain with my eye drops? Or that the headache was a sure sign of a brain tumor! Really!
We might laugh but it is no laughing matter for those who are, for one reason or another, caught up in such thoughts and really believe them to be true in an absolute way. And have no means of gaining a perspective or even know that they have lost it. Those for example whose senses are impaired, who are physically or mentally restricted or are in some other way vulnerable. Living in restricted circumstances can cause the imagined to become real, and then be acted upon.
This is a simple thing to see, and a good thing to know. After all are we all not living in restricted circumstances?
