I hold my hands folded
Around a mug of steaming
Tea like a life perserver
Keeping me afloat
As the tears cascade
Down my face like
The rain outside my
Window,
I feel cleansed,
Clarity surfaces
In many forms,
I feel cleansed.

Train Brain

As I was reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, recommended by a great friend, I had this aha! moment where something inside me clicked making sense. I am reading the book slowly, taking it all in, digesting. This is truly one of the best books I have read, so profound, thought provoking, and inspirational. The book inspires me to apply these concepts to my own life.

Tolle says that we are not our mind, thoughts, and emotions. We can be the observer of these aspects of ourselves, which creates a gap where we can see the essence of who we are, vast and whole. After I read this section, I sat for a long while observing my thoughts as they went around and around. Some people say as they observe their thoughts it is as if the thoughts are on clouds floating by or bubbles, but my thoughts race, as I'm sure that many other's do also. I saw my thoughts as a train racing by. When I identify with my thoughts I get in the engine of the train, then the thought is linked to another thought, so I go to the next car in the train, then the next. At the end is the caboose, but my thoughts don't stop there because there is an engine of another train right behind, so I hop on that one too. These thoughts keep going and going. I visually stepped off the train onto a platform beside the train. At that point I was the observer of these thoughts and not identifying with them, therefore emotions were not attached to the thoughts. The train just passed right on by with the thoughts and I did not get caught up in them at all.

I am now trying to be conscious of my train brain. When I catch myself on the train brain I get off the train, disengage, then watch with non attachment as the train, with thoughts, passes me by. When I step off the train brain I do not fade into nothingness instead I emerge into the sunlight, free.

There are the first few twinges of Spring to air right now. When those first signs begin to show themselves then Spring fever errupts. I love the scent outside during this time of year, the scent of hope. Before our eyes we will see Spring blooming in full, vibrant color.

At the library on Sunday when I was browsing the mystery section, a man who was about eighty years old came over to the woman behind the desk. He began to talk to her and one of the first things he said as he made small talk was commenting on the weather. He was giddy with the sudden warm weather and said on his drive over to the library he got spring fever. Everyone was smiling because the man said what everyone was thinking. There is a happiness, love, peace, vibrancy, and hope about the first buds of spring, sprouting to beginnings that touches a part of each and every person. Maybe it is touching the youth, the child, in all of us that still lingers wanting to be set free again, to run down green hillsides with a kite blowing in the wind, hearing the whistle of a distant train getting closer in the first of Spring's warm breezes.

Sitting out in nature I was listening to the world and this is the poem I worked on.

There is something
About a train's
Whistle as it
Echoes out over
The late winter
Silence that makes
Me yearn for Spring's
Warm embrace.

This week has been so busy. There were times when I was rushed and caught up in the moment, going through the motion trying to get everything finished. Mid week I stopped when I had a few minutes at work alone. As I sat there to catch my breath I realized there is absolutely nothing to stress about. I rummaged through my purse looking for a piece of gum and instead I found a sticky note with quotes on them that I had scribbled during my last trip to Borders for mocha and good reads. These are the quotes that definitely put my mind in bliss mode and brought me back to the present where I should always stay, fully in the present because that is all we are given.

All quotes by Sri Swami Satchidananda
"The fact is, nothing outside you changes, you see only what you choose to see, your world reflects you."

"Life is a play. It was never meant to be a serious heavy thing, our own ego makes it that way. God just wanted to have some fun. That's why He created all of us."

"Happiness is our natural state when we are not doing unhappiness. Happy is what we are, unhappiness is what we do. Who would I be without my unhappiness?"

"Happiness is not dependent on circumstance. Happiness means meeting life as it is and not believeing our judgements and stories about how it should be"