This is a phrase used by one of my teachers recently, and it got me thinking, rethinking. In my youth, I read the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. What I remember of it is that Siddhartha learns that his spiritual journey is a personal one, and he spends most of his life by a river that becomes his primary teacher.
As a young adult, I read Be Here Now by Ram Das. The title says it all.
And thirdly, I was never successful at meditating until I learned about walking meditation, where you focus all your attention on one thing you are doing. So washing the dishes can become a meditation, or writing in a journal, or playing with your dog.
Or gardening.
Your garden can be your teacher. Close to the earth. One plant can be your teacher…or one bird…or an insect. You can focus solely on the one thing you are doing right now, be it watering, harvesting, weeding, transplanting.
Or you can rest in a chair or sitting on the ground, listening, watching, smelling, feeling the breeze and the sun, opening your heart and soul to the place you are in. No to-do list nagging at your mind; no thoughts of a phone call or a video game; nothing other than opening to being here now.
The other thing I think of today is listening to the birds and remembering how their song tells us that we are safe. We are home.