Leading Light
Good Monday Morning!
As many of you know, I never know what will emerge when I sit down to write to you on Monday mornings. I love nurturing the moment with the fresh perception that can happen each day. Fresh perception is, in some ways, the heart of my medicine. Using just my senses, my eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin plus my thoughts and feelings, I dive into the reality of the moment. Each day is something of an adventure.
Today, as I prepare to be interviewed for a podcast about essential oils and Chinese medicine, I am appreciating the late summer light here in the North, a kind of warm low glow that seeps into the cracks and corners, illuminating huge orb weaver creations that hang from every door and window of my house right now.
Recently in a conversation with a colleague and friend, Michael Max, we explored the nature of perception and the question of whether you can even have such a thing as fresh perception. Michael wondered if our beliefs, our preconceptions, our ideas might get in the way of such freshness. And I’d have to agree, that, yes, often our ideas and concepts, beliefs and stories definitely get in the way of a fresh experience of the moment.
But I also have the experience of hearing, feeling, seeing my own beliefs, stories and ideas while also allowing in the light of day, so to speak. If I open, really just let my senses be open, things present themselves quite spontaneously. And things change, look different, fade, brighten, curl up or open according to the present conditions. I think we all have the experience of how profoundly light changes through the day, from day to day, from moment to moment. And how even the walls, the familiar walls of our own home, can change color through the day. Light changes things.
What is the light changing? What do you notice? If you are alive, you see, your eyes let in the light. But what you see and how you see is a matter of noticing. What you see is what you notice, what you are aware of. Same with each of our senses. We see so much but, in fact, we see, hear or even smell only that to which we bring our awareness. Meanwhile, factually, scientifically, we take in over 10,000 bits of possible things to see or hear or smell in every single moment!! Definitely we don’t see that many things!
It fascinates me what each of us does see. You could say that what we do see makes our reality. Then our beliefs, stories and ideas function like filters on what we see. They act to select, refine or even block certain perceptions. In some cases that constitutes survival. In some, it constitutes revelation. And in still others, a prison.
For fresh perception I let the light lead me. I follow the nooks and crannies of my perception, looking through the bars of the well-worn pathways and relishing instead the novelty, the moving parts that will open me to something new. I follow the light through the windows and doors, stumbling through silken strands, mumbling to the spiders to move out of the way.
Can you, will you, let the light lead you? Let the stories be the web you stumble through to catch the moment when the light shows you something fresh.
The freshness is there, waiting for you!
