DAY: Sunday, but I’m a bit behind here…there was all of last week after Monday. Hmm. Where did those days go?

MORNING MEDITATION: Today’s was lovely. Calm. Ample. Do you know what I mean by that? As if the mind actually feels free to expand and knock down its own barriers. As if it dares to abandon center stage all together, leaving nothing much in its place but…space. The modules stop chattering between themselves. The thoughts of what to do next recede. For the past few days, the guide who is saying less and less as time goes by, has spoken about allowing the mind to be spacious. Such a lovely idea! When so much of life is closing in on us, in our heads we can be open. And free. I’ve struggled this past week with the idea. It seemed more a celestial concept than an achievable reality, and yet today, the clouds cleared, and there it was.

TDC: Spotted in the neighborhood furniture store run by the two tall sisters—the proverbial doggy (theirs) in the window. He sat propped upon the back of the chair which is—yes—for sale even though he seems to already own it. As I passed, just another character in this bewildering weaving of reflection and reality, I wondered: How spacious is an animal’s mind? How open and free must it be in that little skull where competing concepts are likely few? What feelings are arising in his canine heart? What urges lie in wait? How open, how free in that little mind…

And as I type that, I realize what an apt metaphor he himself is— in his glass corner— for the experience of mindful meditation. He is the mind, watching things come and go. Hearing the sounds of the world, slightly buffered, but there. Aware. Awake. Calm.