Meet my House Guests

I have three house guests I'd like to introduce.  They've been with me...well...forever.
 
Say hello to Mind, Body and Spirit
 
On a daily basis, Mind gets most of my attention - Mind helps me at work.  Mind is often my companion when I read, which I love to do.  Mind likes clever puns and learning.  I'm most comfortable with Mind.  If I had a picture of Mind, it would be that of a young student with a slightly furrowed brow, one who is somewhat distracted except for whatever has her focus at the moment.
 
Spirit visits me every day, roaming around the house unless I insist that she sit for tea. Spirit knows how to expand my thoughts and patterns.  Spirit helps me reach out to others and connect.  Spirit's power to open me up can be a little intense sometimes.  Her full attention is best savored in smaller doses of consumption.  Spirit is hard to look at directly; her embodiment is of a brightly lit, yet ephemeral, being.
 
Poor Body.  She's the most neglected houseguest.  She's not enchanting like Spirit and not as interesting as Mind.  She's the scullery maid of the three.  She does her essential work of keeping me on this earth, connecting me with human experience.  She provides her intuitive knowing as well as the mechanics of survival.  I've been ignoring her.  I haven't given her credit for years.  Last year at about this time she'd had enough and went on strike.
 
Mind, Spirit and I realized we couldn't cope without her or at least not as well.
 
This year Body's getting the attention she deserves and needs.  Mind is learning to give up some of her time and learning that when Body feels better, Mind works better.  Mind is getting inspired by Leo Babauta at Zen Habits to make small changes and grow into them so that Body can take her rightful place in the house guest triad.  Spirit is giving Body the honoring and nurturing she desperately needs by taking care of her in daily and weekly rituals.  
 
Me?  I'm working at listening.
 
How do you treat your "house guests"?
 
Majeeda Rosa
Just Be
 

Lazy Days of Comfort

I love the unfolding of spring into summer. Sweet scented orange blossoms caressing the evening breeze and floating through the window. Lilac blossoms bursting out in a brief frenzy of perfume. The return of the butterflies. Sitting in the garden and feeling the warm sunlight kissing my skin. My lullaby into warm darkness: hearing the comforting drone of a lawnmower in the distance as the last vestiges of evening sunlight slant across the yard and porch.

These are golden moments when time stands still.

Tick Tock Tick Tock,
Jumping over the hands of the clock
Grabbing the moment and hanging on
Gently, gently…drawing an eon…
Out of the well of time.

Is time flying for anyone else? I’ll be taking an extended leave from work toward the end of the month to recover from surgery. I’ll be suspended from my usual pursuits – work, household chores, walking around the city, meeting friends. I’ll be in suspension while I heal, a cocoon of gestation as my body emerges from limitations and pain to…recovery and discovery.

I’ll have plenty of time to experience the abundant nature we have in our yard. We’re at the end of the suburbs, not quite rural, but with fields adjoining our property. Our neighbors include mother horses with their frisky colts, jack rabbits and pheasants, garden snakes, bees, mice, a scrub jay who returns every year to our yard, hummingbirds and woodpeckers and many more feathered friends. We enjoy vegetable gardens, citrus and nut trees, grapes and berries, and a beautiful new maple tree my husband planted last month that will explode in crimson color in October. Things are usually pretty busy around here. I try to stop and actually take in the abundance we have rather than flying by in passing with an afterthought of “I should spend more time with this.”

Life finds a way of giving me what I want, in this case time to enjoy what I have, even if the method is unexpected and long and painful in manifesting. Oh, if you could only hear the sigh of relief and acceptance for what is unfolding drowning out the natural anxiety that accompanies injury.

How will you enjoy your summer?  I hope you'll slow down, if only for a moment.  You can find an eternity in a moment.

Beloved One, you who made this beautiful abundant world for us to enjoy in all its sensuousness, I surrender to my body, this instrument of experience my spirit resides in while here on this earth.

Majeeda Rosa