Wind Swept

My mind is not happy today. Nothing I do seems to lighten the mood. The various practices I’ve learned  to settle an unsettled mind just makes my mind more unsettled. It feels like winter has fallen in the midst of summer. So I simply watch the dark winds blowing through my thoughts and do the next thing on my never-ending list of householder tasks—and notice the seasons change.

The seasons of the mind have their own urgings like the seasons of the year. Yearly cycles never happen in the same way. Sometimes winters are harsh; other times mild. Summers may be extremely hot or not. And don’t get me started on the newly arising fifth time of year I call ‘smoke season’. The mind mirrors all these changes and are just as unpredictable. One cannot rely on meditation practice to induce predictability. 

So I simply watch the winds blowing through the maze of thoughts. They have qualities to which I assign labels like unsettled, stormy, unhelpful—and I keep watching the one who is assigning the labels. That one is sneaky. He’s rooted in some very old patterns that seek to replicate like viruses. But as I watch this moment unfolding, something of a miracle occurs: I cannot find the one who is assigning the labels.

Those labels now collapse in realizing the creator of thought is just a fleeting thought. The designations no longer have a foundation and exhaust themselves in the space of pure awareness. So I muse; what is this curious waste of energy I just experienced? It was as fleeting as the dark wind that seemed to blow though my mind. Why did I not ride the wind to begin with? 

Watching thoughts become swept away the breeze, ascend into the sky, and disappear into the vastness of space; this is a way to gracefully negotiate the seasons of mind. That wind never ceases even in the calmest of times. It is an unseen companion, inseparable from thought. I can see an umbrella-like dandelion seed drifting on unseen whispers when the prayers flags remain still. Maybe my meditation practice is helping after all.