The Grace Of Receiving

Something to do.  My mind pulls for something to do.  Is it pulling to get away?  I don’t know, but it has an early morning sense of restlessness.  My mind jumps around trying to latch onto something.

When the mind is searching, I can feel the physical tension; the cricky neck, and the tight right side.  When I notice it and become aware, it seems to open up physical space within my body.  In fact, when I think about receiving, taking in the moment as if I am a cup and each moment is filling and giving to me, I flinch from my right side, the tension releasing.  Things my eyes capture, are they gifts coming straight into my heart?

When I breathe, instead of getting air I can feel that the air is given.  Instead of being on the stoop, the stoop is giving me a place to sit.  The city sounds are coming to me rather than I am reaching for them.  There is an offensive feeling vs. a defensive feeling.   Life is unfolding in front of my human senses as gifts rather than things that need something to be dealt with this moment.  Once again, it’s the external vs. internal; I see the tree, is it healthy, do I like it where it sits, does it need water? In contrast to the receiving in through my eyes the image of the tree.  The way it moves in the wind, the color of the leaves as if it was given to me as a gift for my eyes to take into my heart.

There is a beauty, a softening, a gracefulness in the gifts of the magical unfolding within the moment.  There is a tension in the “what to do with this moment.”

(photo by Evan Kirby)