Monday, July 12, 2010

The View From Here: About Last Night Edition

I was inspecting my rooftop garden last night. There is a small overhang above my front door with a wrought iron fence around it. When I moved here it was the beginning of my gardening. Since then, I've taken over the whole yard. This remains my favorite place to garden. This year I have three different types of basil, three different kinds of coleus for color, rosemary, nasturtium, a stray pumpkin (I think!) that self seeded from an Autumn scene that I created last year, and a single morning glory plant that self seeded from last summer's window boxes.

Anyway, I was greeted by this glorious cloud. As I stood there watching it grew an arm as if to wave at me. Apparently I wasn't the only one looking up into the sky yesterday: Last Night's Sky.


Cloud watching makes for a useful activity. I frequently use it as a metaphor for mindfulness. In mindfulness, I explain, our thoughts become like clouds. We certainly wouldn't try to control a cloud or fashion it into a particular shape. We can learn to watch our thoughts in the same way: not trying to control or direct them at any way but let them pass in and out of our  mind like a cloud passes through the sky.

No comments:

Post a Comment