OK, my first foray into the blogging world

Hello World,

I am ready to play my part in the internet world of blogging – brand new territory for someone who didn’t grow up with computers.  Normally when I want to know something, I either look it up in encyclopedias or the dictionary!   My daughter, on the other hand, immediately turns to the computer to look up darn near everything.   And my granddaughter, who is 3, has weekly computer lessons in her Montessori school.  Ah, yes, evolution!

So a few years ago (yes, years) when Tom Parish suggested I start a blog, I didn’t even know what one was.  Now, I know and have even contributed to blogs.  (I still don’t understand how they work, but I am educable.)  When I asked Tom exactly what I should ‘blog’ about, he said, "just be you and write."  That  seemed way too easy.  And then when I booted up the ‘compose’ page, it looked so ‘blank’ – which meant either I have nothing really to say or there is so much to say that I don’t know where to start.

So I’ll start with "The Current Main Issue" that occupies my mental energies – aligning myself with Reality – not the one in my head, but the Real One – the one that flows from God/Life/Universal Spirit/Reality (or whatever else you want to call that which organizes the Way It IS).   Actually, it’s not just aligning myself with Reality, but it’s also not being attached to what happens – while, at the same time, living the richness of all the glorious sensory input we are offered as human beings.  Once I leave this body, I won’t have eyes, ears, nose, taste buds and skin cell receptors to soak in all the vibrancy of this smörgåsbord of human experience! 

I very distinctly remember a middle-of-the-night experience, backpacking in the Okavango Delta about 10 years ago.   What woke me up was the heat rash that pretty much covered my body (as the Brits would say, it’s bloody hot in the Okavango, even at night).   So there I was, scratching my arm mindlessly … and stopped.   There was a stillness that was filled with sound – two hippos "wha, wha, wha-ing" off to my right, a leopard ‘coughing’ over to the left, a couple of lions roaring over a kill about 2 miles from my feet, an elephant almost soundlessly stripping bark from a tree about 50′ from the end of my bedroll, 3 guys snoring close by, and 500 +/- mosquitoes buzzing inside my mosquito net.  OK, I didn’t actually count the mosquitoes, but suffice to say, the sides and top of my net were coated with the varmints.  Anyway, my senses heightened acutely.  I wasn’t in the least scared, in fact I felt connected to the whole scene – micro and macro – the moment and The Moment in Time/Space.  I belonged there, ‘they’ belonged there, and we were each/all necessary inclusions.  My senses tuned me into that moment – or rather, my mind stopped long enough for me to tune into my senses which were tuned into that moment.

So here I am 10 years later, practicing tuning into my senses in order to tune into what is on offer … aligning myself, letting go of preconceptions, making choices about the part I want to play – not just in the short term ‘moment’, but also in the long term ‘scheme of things.’ After 60+ years on this planet, I am truly beginning to enjoy the privilege of being human, and truly grateful for this experience of living Life As It Is.