This afternoon the sky is clear and blue as only Colorado and other high dessert skies are blue. The sun is warm, if not hot. Fruit trees are beginning to bloom, as are the little spring flowers in the grass and along the trails. The air smells fresh and clean as the snow on the high mountains. Its about as beautiful a day as you can imagine.
My emotional body responds to this beauty, relaxes, opens, feels happy. Its an easy day to drop into my heart and breath and be grateful to be alive.
Then I notice my mind doing some strange things. It’s actually trying to talk me out of the way I’m feeling! It skips right by the fact that it may snow tomorrow (this is Colorado after all) to the fact that its tax day, that a client postponed, that various other things are not perfect in the accounting department. One after another it’s tossing these dark thoughts at me, challenging my right to feel happy and enjoy the day.
None of these things affects the present moment, like tomorrow’s weather. None of these is cast in stone either, and in fact they may well turn out to be opportunities in disguise. Like tomorrow’s weather everything may be different by the time it shows up.
So I ask my mind what the deal is? Well, you can’t just feel good for no reason can you? comes the answer. To which I say why not? You’ve talked me into feeling bad many times for no real reason, haven’t you? say I. No reply to that one. Why should it be that we need a reason to feel good? or to feel anything for that matter?
We feel what we feel when we feel it. If we can let ourselves have this then the feelings come and go and we move on. If the mind gets a hold of them and sticks them in a story, or connects them with various memories (in order to explain or justify them) then we start looping. Feelings to memories/story to feelings to.. over and over.
So today I simply choose to connect to the day around me and feel good, be happy, use this as another lesson in what living with an open heart feels like. It may not change tomorrow’s weather, any more than my mind can change today’s, but I can enjoy today, and perhaps enjoy the snow tomorrow as well.
And perhaps, a little voice says, if you allow the emotional body to cultivate feeling good, in spite of the mental programs, we can learn to feel good most of the time, even when challenging things come.
Choose love not fear, and have a wonderful day.
(© 4/2008)
