Today was a beautiful day. After quite a few weeks of rain, clouds, and cooler temperatures, it was nice to have sunshine and a perfect 75℉/23℃.
I took my bike out for the first time in a week — the bike trail was covered in mud and debris last time I rode — and I was hoping it was clear by now.
I decided to play a game of ‘This moment is perfect’.
As I rode, I moved my mind to the back seat, letting it appreciate the sun, floating warmth, nods of passersby, and the thrill of downhill sections. I aligned with awareness and focused it on the raucous parts in my head, the thoughts that, out of habit, wanted to rest in lack.
A thought said I’m not sure if Ojai or Southern California is for me and I let my attention sink into that feeling. Mind said that moment sucked, and I let it go because that thought violated the game.
Another thought floated by and said I wish my happily-chosen, non-sociable phase ends soon, since Ojai might be enjoyable if I made a few friends.
Resting my awareness in that feeling, the game continued. I tried to find what in that moment was imperfect, and nothing was coming to me. Mind was saying that lack, aloneness, or uncertainty over my future, were all bad, but yet all I could see was the deeper me coming from beyond to hold and love the imaginary with reality.
Lack was being held by a wholeness, and so I could not say that that moment, even with lack on the surface, was anything other than perfection.
As I continued to ride — even on the way back as I huffed and puffed for the uphill sections — I could not find a moment that was not whole and complete, no matter how much my mind tried to wrest control.
When I was loading my bike onto my bike rack, I caught glimpse of my entire past, from childhood to now, all coalesced into a single flash of energy and emotion, and everything felt perfect.
Even the spots I cried and pounded against when I first went through them —that I wished would be gone or I would be saved from — even those were simply the dance of the deepest me.
That me, that energy that creates lack and it’s dissolution, or contains the potential of the universe in every simple inhale, that was the same me that appreciated this perfect day, and also gave birth to it.