Be the Clean Air You Want to Breathe

Disturbances In The Atmosphere - Storms
How is the weather where you are? Is it clear and sunny? Perhaps it is cloudy. Or is today a stormy day where you live? How can we tell if it is a stormy day? What conditions or clues can we look for? What is a storm?

A storm is a temporary disturbance in the atmosphere. Storms are transient, meaning that they generally do not stay in one location for very long. They move with the flow of air
KidsGeo

I read a NY Times review of a new, first novel by a “young M.D. turned M.F.A.” – Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances, and somewhere in the review is this line, “No, this is not chick lit.” Hmm. The novel’s interweaving themes of this fussy 51-year-old psychiatrist whose Argentine wife, he believes, has been taken and replaced by an exact replica, seem to me one more wonderful example of how we are, collectively, creating new images of ourselves as human beings not so fixed as characters of flesh and blood (only the matter of us), with only a certain barometer of feelings, emotions, and actions or reactions in the dynamic interplay of life as we have known it. I haven’t read this novel, but I sure do love these twists of turns of our ways of creating these images of ourselves.

What do these twists and turns really mean to us as an “evolving mind,” and thinking human beings? Thinking and speaking are the two senses that primarily distinguish us from other life forms on Earth, aren’t they? Reading this review gave me one more clue as to how I have lived this belief in separation – i.e., competing mostly with my own old thoughts that jump up and use my thinking energy in ways that don’t feel as productive as they might if I changed them. This belief shows up everywhere in the world as I observe it. This is the classic “conflict of interest” model, which begins within my own mind! Still, at times, living this belief that I am a spectator of life, i.e., that if I show up, do what I’m told, encourage, support, all will “fall into place.” What an amazing revelation. Lately I have been thinking a lot about “atmospherical disturbances,” so when I came upon this review, I laughed out loud. Mine have been certain disturbances in my energy fields that have gotten my attention, if not seriously disturbed my function and overall feelings. I’ve been getting irritated easily, and finding myself impatient with explanations at times, wanting to hurry people up, to move on. I laugh at this mostly, because I have learned enough Spiritual Philosophy to recognize the “game” in this, the charades of myself that I am making myself aware of. I’ve been thinking of what I am creating as my life – as I listen to others’ joys and sorrows, as I feel the pull and tug and recession of energies I interact with, and as I am more conscious of my own constantly changing frequencies of communication. What call-to-action am I hearing? Simply to love, to think with love always and forever, as I do anything? As I’ve been reading Spirit Consciousness again, I have been dwelling on a few paragraphs in which Kathy describes the growth of the thinking mind into the loving emotions:

“The growth of the thinking mind into the loving emotions becomes a dance, two steps forward and one step back as the loving emotional self dances to and fro to capture the thinking mind’s attention and the thinking mind flows right along the stream of fear thinking as it barters for attention and fame as the “power of love” by using old thought patterns of manipulation and seduction that it refuses to release.” (pp. 69-70)

When we use an external focus of manipulation and seduction to live as an energy human being in a physical world, we do not recognize that we are an Intelligent Design of Spirit Consciousness! Kathy and I were talking about responses people have shared from their doctors or health care providers – their sometimes lack of interest or dismissal when a patient actually begins to heal using some way other than what they deem is the “right” (only) way. I thought about this and realized, again, when medical providers get irritated when someone brings up something they think is ridiculous, this is the same pattern I live when I feel impatient and want to “hurry someone up.” I’m closing my mind to more “fresh air,” to the breathing that feels so good as if on a mountain (though not too thin!), and sticking to the tunnel with the grind and blast and whine of machines and slow going that accompanies such a project.

I am no replica of myself, as the fussy psychiatrist in the debut novel tries to figure out through his scientific means. He is trying to use the available science to validate his feelings. I am no replica, yet as I live I create images of myself with each thought and action, and as I create memories, these memories haunt the corridors of my mind, or they drift easily, making their way in their unique chemical stream, adding their own combinations to the Me I am as I create. As I become the cloud of disturbance (the Pigpen in the neighborhood), I’m feeding on what wants to become old baggage, debris, decomposition (compost), rather than seeking fresh nourishment, building productively on what was, and is as I feed it. This doesn’t affect just Me! This dance Kathy Oddenino describes in the above quote suddenly comes home to my thinking mind in a new way. The love in me agrees to do this dance, to help this impatient mind laugh and trust that it is indeed the vehicle through which I create daily. The guide that has the deepest trust, the maestro of the music is the Spirit within, always loving, saying, Just love, feel the music!

What a beautiful gift it is to begin to appreciate all that makes up a mind, and a Trinity of Consciousness. I remember that the energy of all knows itself, and patiently urges me, as a mind, to acknowledge this truth – there is no impatience within the spirit, only love, and the Ethical Value of integrity of Intelligent Design, which always supports love, change, and the vistas that open to insight, whether microcosm or macrocosm. The dance goes on. Just pump up the volume, and invite others to dance with you!