26 Apr Wild Strawberries
Below is a sweet email we received from our friend Stephanie and the story from How to Have a Match Made in Heaven she references. We find it inspiring that she keeps discovering things newly.
Enjoy!
Ariel and Shya
Dear Ariel and Shya,
I took this picture last Summer in Central Park and just remembered it. Since the last Living Made Easy Seminar, the image of the man on the cliff surrounded by tigers and enjoying the wild strawberry keeps coming back to me. I have always “understood” it, but I am currently experiencing it. No matter if what I am worrying about will happen or not, I have the present moment…Actually, the worry doesn’t exist in the present moment. My brain has relaxed. My life is not any different on the outside, but I do enjoy it!
Happy Wednesday, lots of love,
Stephanie
How Sweet It Is
How to Have a Match Made in Heaven, By Ariel and Shya Kane
There is an old story about a man walking through the jungle. Sensing a presence, the man looked over his shoulder and saw a tiger slinking through the foliage, following him. Quickening his pace, the fellow followed the path he was on until he reached a cliff. Looking back once again, he saw the tiger was still there and coming closer. Standing with his toes over the edge, the man noticed that there was a vine running down the cliff face, and he swung out onto the vine in order to escape the tiger. Just as he quickly lowered himself down, the tiger jumped. Slashing over the edge with her paw, the tiger narrowly missing catching the man as he made his descent. As the man started to work his way down the cliff face, he looked down to the bottom and saw yet another tiger, the mate of the one at the top. The tigers settled down to wait. Hanging there, the man saw that two mice, a white one and a black one, had started gnawing on the vine above his head. It was only a matter of time before the vine would give way. Looking off to one side, he noticed a wild strawberry gleaming crimson in the sunlight. He picked it, put it in his mouth, and tasted it . . . how sweet it was!
Worrying about the future and missing the sweetness of the moment seems to be a way of life for most people. Of course, there are plenty of things to worry about today, if that is what you are used to. There was plenty to worry about in our parents’ day also, and in our grandparents’, and so on back through time. And yet they survived. We are all a living testament to that. Perhaps we worry as a part of the culture we were raised in, as a survival strategy passed down from generation to generation. Have you ever stopped to think that worry is not an integral part of well-being but something extra, unneeded, and unexamined that we have absorbed from those around us?
You can taste the wild strawberries that exist around you in your everyday life by being here in this moment rather than worrying about things you cannot immediately do anything about, such as the state of the world, global warming, political conflict, wars, etc. Those things do exist, but in this moment so does the chair you are sitting in, the air you are breathing, and the floor under your feet.
Perhaps you tend to worry about something more personal, such as your finances, the state of your relationship, or your health. Well, does worrying actually accomplish anything positive? Worry is the mind’s projection of possible futures, based on what we have experienced or known from the past.
Being here in this moment is the great transformational agent. If you are actually engaged in being here, then life does not have to repeat itself. Previously unknown creative solutions can present themselves. If you are here, you are available to see them.
You are invited to join us for a Living Made Easy seminar. And if you haven’t already “leapt” and would like to be a part of this, here is the link to register for Leap into Life, happening this weekend, April 30th-May 1st.