I used to live in the mind–there I worried, imagined, invented, played, and explored.

I went to the mind because that is what I was taught as a child: my parents revered the mind’s capacity and honored little else, including the heart, where I natively lived. Dutifully–in order to earn parental acceptance–I closed off my feeling capacity and took up residence in thought. As a survival tactic, it worked, although I didn’t grasp the price. Mind is so very, very small, and  always lags behind the present–the placeless place of reality.

I entered my sixth decade before seeing that I spent 99% of my time in the mind world. It took time to understand the addictive allure and, in loosening its shackles, to uncover delicious, ever-present abidance in that which is. Here and now. No mind required.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2014
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