Everything Is an Opportunity

Gassho,

Everything is a practice opportunity, isn't it?  I love contributing to IOP and it's an extremely busy time of year for me, so I've been watching ideas come and go relative to this issue's theme and also the feeling of urgency to come up with a topic because the deadline is approaching and perhaps gone by!

So here I am, breathing, typing, smiling.  Happy to be showing up and participating.

So what is going on in my practice?  DISTRACTION!  I'm looking at how I experience distraction. The thief is in the house and I'm paying as close attention as I can.

Here is an example. Tonight, I took some money out of my wallet to put in my pocket for contribution to the sitting group.  I noticed all of the receipts from the previous day's shopping.  About 30 minutes later, I was ready to leave the house and could not find my wallet! It is still missing 6 hours later.  I drove to group without it and my driver's license.  I do not have a clue what has happened to the wallet.  The money was in my pocket; the wallet has disappeared.  It's in the house somewhere, and it may be in plain sight.  That has also been happening.  What I'm looking for is often is plain sight.  That is quite a metaphor.

Not only am I noticing a lot of distraction, I seem to be really forgetful.  The other day, I was in mid-sentence and forgot what it was I was intending to say.  (It came to me a few minutes later.)

I also find myself moving from one thing to another, back and forth between projects, e.g., in the middle of hanging out the clothes to dry, noticing that the plants in the greenhouse need watering - leaving the clothes in an unconscious way to water the plants - and then after the plants are watered, notice that I've been distracted from the clothes hanging.

I could offer many more examples.

The thief that I referred to is from the story Cheri tells about walking into the kitchen and finding the appliances gone missing.  A wake up call to play very close attention.  How is it that the appliances disappear?  How am I being distracted?  I've still yet to discover that. 

Now it occurs to me to look up the word, distraction, in the dictionary. Two of the meanings: a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else; extreme agitation of the mind or emotions.  Now that rings true.  These days, I feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster; I wake regularly between 3 and 4 a.m. in an agitated state of mind - fears about the future and my inadequacy.  A familiar story.  I return to the breath again and again.  Sometimes I sit for a while and return to bed.      

One of the many reasons I love contributing to IOP is how I feel when doing so.  It's fun to show up and participate.  And it is helping me to feel a bit lighter about all of this.  Conditioning would have me get all serious and upset about the current state of affairs with this distraction thing.  Waking up in the middle of the night isn't so bad.  I would venture to say that conditioning is really working overtime to maintain itself.  A good sign from a practice point of view. It's all part of the mystery.  The detective on the case!

Life is giving me plenty of opportunities to see how distraction happens - Life has given me a practice with which to see.

Gassho.

PS.   It's the next morning. I saved this to proofread before sending.  As I was walking through to the kitchen, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the wallet lying in the chair at the dining table.  It must have fallen off the table when I got out my zafu and cushion, getting ready to leave for group.  I just love that I saw it out of the corner of my eye.   Gassho.