Get Out Of The Way [David’s blog on KS Friday]

“Our mind is like a cloudy sky: in essence clear and pure, but overcast by clouds of delusions. Just as the thickest clouds can disperse, so, too, even the heaviest delusions can be removed from our mind.” ~ Kelsang Gyatso

I’ve heard for years that energy follows thought. It seems an obvious truism to me and though I have practices meant to dissipate my cloudy thoughts, I confess that I too easily bite my thought-hooks. Imagine my pleasant surprise, when poking around to find some fodder to write about, I found Energy Follows Thought, a song by Willie Nelson:

Imagine what you want
Then get out of the way
Remember energy follows thought
So be careful what you say…

Imagining what I want is the easy part. Getting out of the way is the challenge.

I once read that our thoughts are the motherlode of comedy. I suspect that it is true though there’s a catch. Few of us are aware that our thoughts are funny. If others heard our thoughts they’d howl with laughter. We have the unfortunate delusion to be the only audience to our thoughts and so, thinking we are more important than we actually are, we take ourselves seriously. We don’t get the joke.

Don Miguel Ruiz wrote as his 5th Agreement that we should doubt everything that we think. Doubting your thoughts is a strategy for dissipating them, for not biting the thought-hook. For getting out of the way. I try to remember his 5th Agreement when I am too adamant or somehow come to think that my thoughts represent truth.

Poor Kerri. She is often subjected to hearing my oh-so-serious-thoughts and has to work hard to suppress gales of laughter. She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. 20 regularly asks her, “Did you know about this before you married him?” She shakes her head in mock-despair.

“You really had her fooled,” he says to me.

“I only had to keep my mouth closed until she said, ‘I do,” I smile. “Now, who wants to hear what I’m thinking?”

Angel You Are © 2002 Kerri Sherwood – this piece is not jazz nor is its copyright or publishing right owned in any capacity by rumblefish.

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read Kerri’s blogpost about CLOUDS

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Invite The Humor [on Two Artists Tuesday]

The sun at last. We pulled on our snow boots and walked the neighborhood, arriving at a place sacred to us, the Southport Beachhouse. It’s the site of our wedding reception and candlelight anniversary dinners on the beach.

Kerri packed a snow ball and another and another. She made a tiny snowman. We scrounged the snow for sticks, small cones for eyes. “He’s so cute!” she said. And then, “Do you think he knows the world is off its axis?”

“No.”

“Lucky snowman!” she sighed.

Horatio had me laughing during our call. He told me that the story of Job was meant to be a comedy and, in his telling, it was hysterically funny. He has me convinced. Grim circumstance is fodder for good humor. It’s why the classic slip-on-the-banana-peel is so funny. I told him that Kerri and I are waiting for the whale to burp. Despite what it seems, our time in the belly of the whale is temporary. Sooner or later, every good comedy comes to a happy ending.

The trick, I suppose, is to recognize that you are living in a comedy and it is better to laugh than shake your fist at the sky.

Sand paintings, like snowmen, are temporary. They are meant to invoke healing. They are meant to provide protection. “Do you think he’ll be here tomorrow?” Kerri asked as we walked away.

“No. He’ll enjoy his day in the sun and that will be it,” I said. She looked at me sideways.

Impermanence. A day in the sun. A snowman made for fun and not forever. In making it, we found an ounce of perspective, some tiny snowman healing.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE SNOWMAN