Hungry for Life!

you know that feeling
when you wake up
some mornings,
with an empty mind
looking into
an empty sky
impossible to be contained
by a line of blue?
yes, that's how
I want to wake up
to every moment,
hungry
for life!

Recycled Love

this moment
I find myself in,
holds the harvest
of yellow green summers
threshed out of their husks,
and a white field
of virgin snow
waiting
to be consummated
with gentle steps,
making their way
with and into
recycled love.

Everything is Quiet Here

everything is quiet here,
the sun's gone somewhere
for a sleepover,
clouds linger for one last peek,
window-shopping at a world
too busy to be sold into,
the waters are restful,
singing their own lullaby
into the growing night,
the birds are back in their perches
communing over the mundanity
of yet another fulfilling day;

everything is quiet here,
the doorbell's fallen silent
straining its ears to listen
to the breath of all things
animate and inanimate,
the phone lies in a corner,
undisturbed by the desire
to belong somewhere
falling back into the emptiness,
tiny ants scurry along
the safe edges of a wall,
risking their busyness
to feel one another;

everything is quiet here,
where happening melts
into being,
where I am something
that simply lays still
with the hushed air,
not wanting to be anything more;
perhaps that's how we feel
when we die,
when we feel we're a part
of everything's that's here,
in the quiet greatness,
simplicity and totality
of this one precious moment.

The Fear of Not Having Enough

I was at the organic store today...a place that I frequent now only when I can, with no compulsion to buy only organic, or only from that shop anymore. I feel free inside living this way. Free because I saw the wall that I had myself erected about living this way. When I bumped against that wall, I saw that what I had been following was out of a subtle fear of what would happen if I didn’t eat organic food. And when I saw that clearly, I saw that all food was a blessing....that I had more access to more food choices because of my lifestyle than most other people on this planet. It suddenly didn’t make any sense to me to be fanatic about my food choices. Some of them at least. For I cannot in my wildest of dreams imagine foregoing my need to be a vegetarian! So when I saw the number of choices I had with just food, I realised that I had way too more than just ‘enough’. And I was willing to let go of some choices because I was grateful for what I had access to.

So today, I had an interesting experience at the store. We were there pretty early for the first time, and I was hanging around talking to one of the staff and some others there. The veggie bazaar begins at 2pm, not before that. So people were gathering and looking around, keeping their hands off the veggies until 2 o’clock! :) Just before 2pm, when one of the staff brought out the bags that we need to use to pick the veggies, and I was still ambling along to the place, I saw most people taking their positions in front of the rows of veggies....much like soldiers on the battlefield....each one knew exactly what they had to do, exactly what they wanted to pick! I was amused. And it suddenly hit me that they were all perhaps reflecting our collective fear of not having enough. That was the fear which was driving them to stand near the veggies that they most wanted!....too scared that there might not be enough if they stood elsewhere! But I wonder if they realised that they couldn’t possibly stand everywhere and that they had already made a choice of what was it that they really wanted! 

And then a little later, we were standing in the line for the veggies to be weighed and billed. One lady left her bags in the line, told the woman standing behind her that she would be back in a few minutes and disappeared. The woman behind her waited for some minutes, looking out for the lady, and then decided to move ahead as she was nowhere around. Very soon, that lady arrived and was upset that the staff was billing another person, when she had left her bags in the queue.

“I had gone inside to get oil. I had told her and gone. How can you bill someone else?”, she argued.

“Because you had gone off somewhere inside and we didn’t know where you were...”, said the staff, gently.

“You can’t do this. I have been waiting so long. I don’t want to raise my voice,” she threatened.

“Ok, so what do you want me to do?”, the young man asked her, calm and composed.

“II want you to bill this first. I can’t wait. I am already late. I need to go to work”, she replied with a smile breaking into her face.

He obliged. And she walked away. I loved the manner in which he had dealt with the situation and diffused the anger. An irritation and anger that stemmed out of the same fear that ‘I don’t have enough’. A valuable little lesson for me.... A lesson that a pause and connecting with ourselves, brings us back to the state or feeling that we always have enough.

A little later, after I had finished billing the veggies I had picked and went inside the store to pay for it, I saw the same lady talking to another person there. She didn’t seem in a hurry then! She was looking at something and standing there asking a whole lot of questions...and she was still around after I had finished paying up and left! Suddenly, she seemed to have ‘enough’....all the time in the world! 

And I realised how I am that way too. I certainly have a long way to go too. This fear comes up in me so many times also. And all that I can do is to see it, watch it as many times that I can catch it. I still buy veggies for the week and hoard it in my fridge, because I am worried that I may not be able to step out of the house at will. 

What is it about ourselves that makes us feel that we are never enough; that we never have enough, I wonder? Will we ever get out of this survival mentality and learn how to thrive instead in life? I am learning by slowing down when I can. Perhaps that is a good place to start.

Being Present

Being present is like being with a pot of milk on boil.
Your mind knows deeply what will happen if you don't keep watching it.....
That it will boil over, and you will have an even greater mess to clean up :)
And yet, it is the nature of the mind to wander as you are waiting and watching. It cannot rest. Until you rest. Because it is caught in a time warp.
But if you watch the pot with your heart, your whole being becoming the pot of milk on boil, you are present in the moment.....every moment.....from the time it is put on the stove, up to the time it rises up to boil over. And you don't have to do a thing.
You will know what to do and when to turn off the stove.....in that moment when it is needed.
And you can rest in the knowing that you will have no mess to clean up :)

The Water's Edge

I stand on the water's edge.
My footprints are but a smudge
on the contours of the dry sand -
an invisible trail
to where I am now.
My eyes dance towards the horizon,
trying to make sense of its elusive existence.
Where does the earth meet the sky?
Where can that invisible place be?
Blue waters and white foam
lap around my sinking feet,
bringing me back
to where I am now.
Rooted, grounded,
in the wet sands
of infinite possibilities...
I see foot marks now-
soon they will be washed away
by the endless waves of time,
to leave no trace of today.
There are no footprints
to leave behind or follow,
when I soak in the presence
of endless abundance
as I stand on the water's edge.