Reflection

something happens to the mind when a person slows down.

the mind goes into recycling mode.

some people never have or make the time for this very special thing to happen,

called mental reflection.

As I was walking on the beach yesterday with Ned my mind wandered and the past several months, the past year, flooded to my attention. It's like these memories and experiences had been waiting for me to make a time for them to present themselves.

Buddhists have a spiritual practice of letting the thought arise, and observing it, but not acting on it, or judging it.

I'm trying to have a Buddhist mind and let those thoughts come and go like the waves that lap my feet.

It's amazing what comes to mind...random conversations, emails, past emotions, worries and excitement for the future, past doubts, random wisdom, broken sentences in Spanish and Mandarin. The monkey of my mind is busy banging his gong.

and this is a good thing. processing my exciting, changing, unsure what's gonna happen existence is good, and through all of this processing I know that God is looking out for me.

Here's proof.

Yesterday, I bought this book at this random Thai bookstore.

notice how there is plastic wrapping around it. I couldn't open it up to read anything until after I purchased it.

I had no idea what this book was about. I only knew the author Zadie Smith through an article I read in the CNM reader when I worked as an English tutor. I liked her writing and she seemed spunky.

When I open the book, the first page I open to is this:

I've been thinking a lot lately about Judaism, about Israel, about maybe one day converting to Judaism, and I've been corresponding with a Rabbi, so I definetly have Judaism on the mind.

Now I open up to find the 10 Sefirot, and the foundation letters of Hebrew on these pages. No other page in the entire book is graphic or pictoral like this. The rest is all writing.

So I take this as a sign that God is watching out for me, as far away as I am from home, in a strange land, where people eat fried cockaroches and my mind is going hay-wire.

all will work out I believe. sometimes it's just hard to stay part of the process.