Percy Wakes Me -Mary Oliver

Percy wakes me and I am not ready.
He has slept all night under the covers.
Now he’s eager for action: a walk, then breakfast.
So I hasten up. He is sitting on the kitchen counter
Where he is not supposed to be.
How wonderful you are, I say. How clever, if you
Needed me,
To wake me.
He thought he would a lecture and deeply
His eyes begin to shine.
He tumbles onto the couch for more compliments.
He squirms and squeals: he has done something
That he needed
And now he hears that it is okay.
I scratch his ears. I turn him over
And touch him everywhere. He is
Wild with the okayness of it. Then we walk, then
He has breakfast, and he is happy.
This is a poem about Percy.
This is a poem about more than Percy.
Think about it.”

― Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

Big mind

When you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm.  This is called Big Mind.  -- Suzuki Roshi

Leave your mind as it is and open your awareness to the world around you.  When was the last time you really tasted your food, or really heard the birds sing?  Do you really listen to the rain?  Do you really listen to your family, your friends?  Meditation is not just us alone on a cushion.  Meditation is us in a world of interconnection; us opening fully to the world as it is.  Our minds become calm enough to allow us to participate in the world around us.  We are happier when we feel connected to the world around us.  You are more than your to-do list.

Gratitude

When we're busy we become a small self: a small, doing self.  It takes doing to keep tight.

When we slow down and get quiet we expand and become a big Self.  When we are expansive gratitude just flows.

It takes doing to keep tight.  Gratitude is not doing, gratitude is a relative of Being, or Presence.

Live from a big, gracious space in your being.  Let your awareness expand to include the world around you.  Your awareness can reach to the snow on the Cascades and the water in Puget Sound.

What are you grateful for?

Positive emotions breed more positive emotions.  Positive emotions, like gratitude, lead to healthier bodies and healthier relationships.

Then intention with the sequencing on Thanksgiving Day was to ground us and root us in gratitude and what is actually most important to us.  To slow down the busy-ness and feel gratitude just flow.  To let the doing self just rest and the expansive Self breathe.