Читать книгу Tamed By a Bear - Priscilla Stuckey - Страница 18

12

April that year dipped frequently into cold and snow, six or eight or twelve inches of wet cement falling once a week, every week, throughout the month. A few days after each snowstorm, the ground would clear and the temperature rise to the sixties or seventies, the sun coaxing spring flowers into bloom and providing relief to residents weary of shoveling their walks. Then, a week later, more snow. The buyers of our house put theirs on the market, but I figured there was no need to think about moving just yet because no one would be shopping for houses in this weather.

Bear’s words on April Fool’s Day about “ebullient good enjoyment” turned out to be merely a warm-up for a whole series of conversations that snowy April about enjoying life. Bear brought it up in every Journey I engaged in that month. Every single one. I guess I needed a lot of reminding.

Bear recommended a particular flavor of enjoyment: “enjoying with no urge to change anything.” (Who, me? Wanting to change things? Like, maybe, heavy snows for starters? Then, oh, I don’t know, social inequality? And environmental madness?)

“There will always be things amiss,” Bear said. “Finding enjoyment is not a matter of finding what’s right in the world. When one feels that something is out of balance—and you will feel that, over and over—it’s a good idea to return to the inner state of enjoyment.” I kept wanting to use the word acceptance, but Bear wanted enjoyment instead.

“Go to that place of enjoyment, and start from there. Return to the place of no need to change anything, and then the ego is more out of the picture. It’s when you need something to change that the mind and ego can come in and try to direct what is being changed. And when you let go and sink into the deeper place of the Great Heart, which is often signaled by a great peace with no need to change anything—when you start from that great peace, which looks like enjoyment—then the most wide-open changes, the most freedom-creating changes, the most magical, transformative changes can happen.”

Bear said that such wide-open enjoyment is in fact love. “Root yourself in love,” he said. “It’s more about being deeply present to what-is.” He added that it was a good practice to follow with every person in my life, since people can sniff out instantly when someone wants to change them. If I wished to avoid setting off someone’s early warning system, enjoying them with no urge to change a thing was a good place to start. “The paradox,” he said, “is that love, or enjoyment, is where change can arise from. It’s one of the few places where change can arise from.”

On another day Bear guided me through reflecting on some experiences in the past that I wasn’t satisfied with—tough things that had consumed years of my life, the results of not-so-good decisions I’d made. Looking back, I wished I’d known better at the time. Bear said not to worry about any of it, adding quietly, “There’s no need for disquiet. No need.” This was accompanied by a feeling that I was being wrapped in an enormous blanket of comfort.

“The mysteries run deeper than human beings can go,” Bear said, bringing tears to my eyes. Better to regard each choice as a rung on the ladder taking me where I needed to go. “In this way one can approach even the past from that place of enjoying without feeling any urge to change. That is the best platform for living: to approach each moment—in the present, in the past—with appreciation. This provides the most resilience, the most elastic approach to living.”

Appreciation, he said on another day, was the same thing as enjoying. Whether one was giving it or receiving it didn’t matter; appreciation in either form worked the same magic. “It fills one’s being. It gives one a sense of joyful fullness inside.”

I asked, “What if someone is trying to practice appreciation for a situation that may not be good for them?”

He clarified: “Appreciation can be misdirected. Appreciating a bad situation is disempowering.” He added, “Appreciation is enjoyment, remember. And enjoyment of a bad situation is negating one’s own perception, tamping down and silencing one’s own voice.

“Make sure the object of appreciation is worthy of appreciation,” Bear went on. “The things most worthy of appreciation are living things.” One can practice appreciating oneself, or one can appreciate and enjoy nature. “When appreciation grows for oneself,” he said, “one grows beyond staying in a bad situation.” Appreciating nature can clear the windows of perception so that a person can see their situation more clearly. “One can’t go wrong in nature,” he said, “in the great mysteries of the animals and plants and trees. When one is opened by experiencing that awe, then one can see where action is needed.

“Appreciate the life-force,” he added, “in oneself, in another person, in a tree, animal, landscape, woods, the sea, mountains, rocks. Get in touch with that. Therein lies true life.”

On yet another day, after I’d worked on a talk I was scheduled to give—why, oh, why had I thought I wanted to do so many of these talks?—Bear urged me to sit back and relax a little more. “It’s mentally hard work to write a talk,” he said. Taking time out to sit back and relax would help my body come back into balance. “Do what the body loves. Whatever helps enjoyment.”

“Well, Bear,” I replied, “in a time of change like this, it’s a little hard to know what the body loves.” I used to love sitting at my computer and concentrating on words, but what did I enjoy now? “What the body loves is going out birding,” I added peevishly, “but it was too icy-windy-cold yesterday.” I’d driven to one of my favorite birding spots, hoping to see the bald eagles who often hung out there, but the biting wind had forced me back into the car.

Bear was ever patient. He reminded me what I did after that—turned the car’s heat on high while driving slowly along the country roads, scanning trees, birding by car. And that’s when I came across a pasture filled with cows and a few young calves. One cow in particular, standing quietly apart from the others, drew my attention. I parked beside the road and raised my binoculars.

The cow stood still as a statue. A string of dark bloody tissue trailed to the ground beside her tail. At her feet lay a small calf, shining with moisture. As I watched, the calf raised its head and looked around. The cow gazed down without moving. The calf tested one leg, then another, then slowly stood up. After a few moments it walked around Mama and pushed its nose into her udder. She allowed the calf to nurse and then, with the little one beside her, began drifting back toward the others. I had just witnessed the first minutes of a brand-new life.

“Soooo,” Bear said, “you found a way to enjoy from the warmth of your car, and you saw the freshly born calf. Modify the habits so that the body can enjoy. If being warm is what the body enjoys, then modify the habits so the body can feel warm—supported and cared for.”

A week later Bear reminded me again about staying close to the body: “Always check in with the body. Move in alignment with what the body wants to do. That’s the best basis for change.”

I’d just returned from a book-reading trip to find in my inbox a last-minute invitation to speak on a panel at a big writers’ conference in New York City that coming weekend. I would have to turn right around and board another plane. How could I possibly do that, already tired? But it was New York! How could I pass up an opportunity to slip for a few days into that buzzing hubbub of vitality?

Bear advised, “If it makes one ignore the needs of the body, the needs of the everyday, then it’s a taxing path rather than a life-giving one. Choose what is life-giving.”

He added, “If one doesn’t say yes to one’s own body, how can one expect to say yes to the world, to the body of Earth, the bodies of other creatures?”