Bean Sight

I've recently discovered previews of an upcoming trip playing in the theater of my mind. These film clips include scenes in which I sit in a garden, one I've sat in multiple times surrounded by birds and trees, hike the local trails then enjoy another sit by the stream that runs through the quaint little complex of rooms. The only antagonists in my scenes are those who come to the garden for an early morning smoke or chat on their cellphone at a level where I hear word for word their conversation. Hopefully this time I'll not judge as hastily these characters in my cast but be open to seeing them in me and vice versa.

These scenes running just beneath the surface of my consciousness suggest I already know how my vacation time is going to unfold. These scenes, suggest I, one who considers herself fairly good at living in the present, carry a quiet, unconscious attachment to following a former script. This script creates blinders so I'm not as open to events and possibilities on the periphery of experience or right before my very eyes.

It's a bit like looking for beans in my three little raised beds. Actually one of the beds was for beans, one for tomatoes and one for squash, but this year the beans and tomatoes have intermarried their vines twining and mingling, hugging one another all over the little space.

When I hurriedly look for beans, my vision narrows, a rigidity sets in visually and bodily. I am 'hunting' beans as I hastily seek the little green pods that I know are there. I've seen them usually as I walk past while watering something else or walking to the mailbox. I'm certain they've not vanished, yet my focus or seeing with such certainty causes me to miss them.

When I relax, stop trying so hard and breathe, my focus softens. I always find the beans hanging where they've always been, right where I've been looking.

How often does this happen? How many times does knowing what's next keep us from seeing and experiencing what's possible? How often do our filled schedules, repetitive travel routes and always being available via technology and now texting keep us from seeing the more that is available in the deeper text of these times? Even now as I write surrounded by trees, thinking I 'know' trees, keeps me from more fully experiencing them, listening and seeing.

I want bean sight, the soft, open way of seeing what's beyond what I think I see or know so I can appreciate what's growing in front of my very eyes whether in my little garden of raised beds or the garden in which I hope to spend some vacation time.

Bean Sight incites love and awakens us to the raised beds of growing consciousness in the Garden that is Earth. Imagine that Shift!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse at imaginetheshift.com
16 September 2010