Seeing the lens or through the lens or without a lens...

There is this: living in the past will keep a person from having a future...and yet, if we forget our past we are destined to repeat it. Living in the past vs. acknowledging the past...a fine-tuned difference...and understanding that memory only is as accurate as a clouded lens. Perhaps time is best spent not cleaning the lens to see the past but rather to see what is now.

The philosophy major in me enjoys about this much of the inquiry as I know all too well that philosophical inquiry is a never-ending process that often keeps a person bound by mental processes at the expense of the heart and body.

So here I am, enjoying a moment in the morning in a a nest among trees that I have not seen since childhood. With a morning practice of Qi Gong, I breathe in and exhale with the earth and know that seeing is not believing, that seeing is just one aspect of being, and that the experiences of all the other senses are guiding me, are expanding me, and that I am beyond what I might ever at one time or another "think" myself to be...and for this I am humbly grateful.

The choices I have made, both large and small, of consequence and inconsequential, have led me to this very moment which is filled with life...such a contrast to the moments that were so certainly filled with the promise of death....

Knowing this not with pride, for pride comes before a fall, this knowledge comes with a deep, simple gratitude that I practice to remember with humility, with humbleness, and to remember not to take this very moment for granted. There is nothing humans are "entitled" to. We live and we die. We choose so many things...and yet this act of choice is still not an entitlement. It's just something we do. And yet, so much of our lives are guided on instinct...not to be considered a lesser experience than those of our "choice".

The "animal" of my "self" is purring. And I "choose" to follow this...and to remember that like a cat, we don't always purr. But when we do, it is good. But the hunt, the flight, the sleep, the eat, the observing, the prowling, all will come and are necessary to flesh out the experience of life. One not better than the other; each complimentary of the other.

This moment is certainly a much needed respite and compliment to the moments that weren't filled with purring.