Saturday, Jan. 28: Toes and Nose, Who Knows?

TOES TO NOSE
Sometimes we say yes, sometimes we say no, sometimes we are aware of ourselves from toes to nose. This is a lot. The toes are many, and the attention, our attention is usually wasted on trivial and petty nonsense, “Does so and so like me?,” “So and so doesn’t appreciate me enough,” “I don’t have enough…”

Fill in the blank. We never have enough money, or love, or time, or health, when we get into greedy mind. And sometimes it’s true: our health could be better, we have a lousy love life, we are so busy that we don’t ever really appreciate our life, we don’t have enough money to pay the bills and have a good time.

And, even in these situations, we have our toes and our nose. The nose is nice because it points our eyes to what we are seeing, and it sneezes when it needs to , and it smells if our food is good, and if the people we are hugging smell like people we really want to be hugging. The nose is a place of breathing, and breathing is a place of life. Life is moving and breath is a continuous moving that brings in oxygen and takes away carbon dioxide and other wastes, breathing in, breathing out, ha, ha, ha.

The toes hold us down to the ground. Wiggle the toes and suddenly we know how much of us there is, especially if we sense the air coming in and out of the nose at the same times as we are wiggling our toes.

Ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ears and nose. Wow, that fills up the old attention space, doesn’t it? Ten fingers, mine now typing, what are yours doing, can you sense all ten of them and sense your ten toes, and the belly involved in the breathing, the belly opening and smalling with your air moving in and out, and the eyes are seeing what, not just this page, what’s around this page, and how about the white spaces between the words, and your ears are hearing what?

This is a lot: ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ears and nose. Can you go for this? Can I? Can we join in, right now, this very now nowish of life with our ten toes, our ten fingers, our belly breathing, our eyes seeing, our ears hearing and our nose knowing whatever it knows? Who knows? It surely is great fun to give it a go, don’t you think? Does that make sense, and don’t think about it, just let the you-ness of yourself sink on in to this fullness: ten fingers, ten toes, belly, eyes, ears and nose.