Читать книгу Tamed By a Bear - Priscilla Stuckey - Страница 14

8

The ground of Tim’s and my lives was shifting in other ways as well. The friends who had rented us their home while they explored retiring abroad decided to stay in England and sell their Boulder property. The grip of the calendar tightened when I found buyers for the house—a couple down the street whom I’d met during early morning swims in the neighborhood pool. Late in the previous fall they’d looked at the house, loved it, and put in an offer. Since January, two months earlier, the house we were living in had been under contract. Though the final sale depended on the buyers selling their own house, sometime this year we would have to move. I began keeping my eyes open for another place to live.

Two weeks after my first meditative Journey, Bear introduced a new theme. “Keep looking forward to good things,” Bear said. “When one senses that change is on the way, it can be easy to slip into dreading it, being frightened of it. Keep anticipating it with great enjoyment.” Along with the words came an image of a bear standing up and shaking off, getting ready to go. My homework, Bear said, would be to keep steadying my mind in what he called “ebullient good enjoyment.” I smiled; the words—and the sentiment—were so unlike me.

“This robust good enjoyment provides energy,” Bear continued. “It also gives you a solid platform on which to move—the fuel as well as the foundation.” Bear said enjoyment was like a buffer, helping to strengthen a person so that one has the stamina for handling the more challenging assignments in life.

“How can I contact this enjoyment?” I asked.

No need to work for it, he said. “Just crack the door, and it’s there. It doesn’t take much encouragement. Watch Bodhi. Or spend time with a child. Or just look out the window.” This thought was accompanied by a picture of double doors in a floor, like a trapdoor or a chute leading downward. As soon as the doors cracked open, I spotted a cheery warm light down below. The idea, apparently, was just to drop into the warm light, into enjoying life.

“Just slide down the chute of enjoyment!” Bear said, cracking up. He was nearly beside himself with merriment.

It was April Fool’s Day.