This morning, when I accompanied our new pup Rocky on his morning constitutional in the backyard, I noticed a newly intensified chorus of bird song from every direction. They are advertising their genetic wares, claiming their territory, and preening for mating season. I stood on the wet morning grass and allowed myself to be immersed in the cacophany of life trilling itself out from everywhere.
The thing I realized, though, was that my attention could not stay with bird song for very long, even though there was stunning beauty happening so forcefully and musically. It was a sunny morning after weeks of dark rain, the birds were prolific in their cheeps, peeps, squeaks, and caws, yet there was a mysterious thickness between me and just listening, an impatience to get moving into something that must be important, although I couldn't really think of what it was.
Lately I've been experimenting with catching the subtleties of mental contraction as they begin to occur, and today I was gifted with the enchantment (and I literally mean enchantment -- what can be more other-worldly than how life funnels itself so enthusiastically through the tiny throats of birds, giving us constant ear blessings, if we will only listen) of that avian opera in my own yard, and I was having trouble softening myself and my agenda for the day, and my routinized misgivings, self-concerns, and underground rumblings of fears, to the simple beauty of that song, even for five minutes.
But here's the good news: I noticed I was standing in the blazing sunlight of aliveness, with the outrageousness of life flinging itself into the atmosphere around me, and I was a fretting little knot of mental tightness, rehearsing its varieties of concerns and possibilities. This may not sound like much, that I noticed this, but it is! Life was fluid and generous, little me was tight and contained.
It's like when I'm doing yoga, and I'm actually happy when I find a place in my body that is weak or tight, because I think: now this is something I can investigate, and transform. So, I found, or re-found, for the umpteenth time in my life, my tight little mental corner of the Universe, and I thought: now this is something I can investigate and transform.
So tomorrow morning I'll be out there again, this time with more intention. I'm not gonna try to do the Olympics of listening to bird song, I'll just see if I can close my eyes and take a good listen or two, with full heart and fluid mind. That will be my first yoga practice of the day.
