Venturing out on my walk, I worked on staying in the moment. Worked is the opporative word, and I was not having too much success (because, for me, it's pretty much a mind game and, as we all know, the mind changes).
My dog finally brought me up short. She was sniffing at a bunch of weeds near the road. She's small, but she ROOTS, and even though I outweigh her by not a little, when she stops, so do I.
Anyway, I got out of my head and watched what she was doing (stay in the moment, good girl!) and right next to her inquisitive nose was a nickel.
Hmmm.
I picked it up and put it in my pocket, and when I got home I took a good long look at it. What was this simple bit of coin trying to tell me? It has to be a message from the universe.
A nickel. 5 cents. 5 sense.
I thought about our five senses, and realized how much importance I was giving to my external circumstance vis a vis my mood. I was letting what I could see, hear, touch, taste, and feel dictate my emotional landscape. I wondered if my involvement in the world of my senses was obscuring my connection with all that is.
An interesting idea, I thought, but it didn't seem to be the whole truth that I was seeking.
Then I thought about what we use coins for, besides paying for things. We use them to make choices. We flip them when we don't know the answer.
That led me to thing about the dual nature of the coins: heads or tails. When I think of heads, I think of the mental aspect of ourselves, and tails reminds me of emotions, dog wags for example. So I'm calling heads the mental process and tails the emotional one: two sides of our nature.
And on the coin itself are stamped the words "In God We Trust".
So, adding it all up: in this little silver coin we, symbolically, have the physical nature (the five senses), the mental nature (heads), the emotional nature (tails), and (of course) the spiritual nature (In God We Trust).
Then I saw this on the coin: "E Pluribus Unum". It's latin for "Out of many, one."
I realized that one of the reasons I was feeling scattered was because of my judgements about myself. I was looking at the many parts of me and thinking that this quality was "good", or that quality was "bad".
But all these feelings, sensings, experiences, emotions, mental processes, spiritual leanings, all of them are all part of who I am. None is good or bad. They all just ARE. I am I, and I am that which I am.
All makes one. All for one.
And it's about time for me to be one for all. No more parsing myself or my experiences. When I do that, I lose patience with myself and my life, and that's not a fun way to live.
I think I might have a better time living with myself if I chose to dispassionately enjoy all of myself more. Good behaviour, bad behaviour, it doesn't matter. It's me, but not all of me, and it's part of my changing nature, not a quality of my essential, fully loving and evolved self.
And yet, my essential self relishes it all.
Heads I win Tails I win. Only win/win in this game of life.
Love,
Kristine
