Of a Certain Nature
An unusual place to find a Huntsman, atop a flower, in the morning.
A big Drone fly landed on a nearby flower. Standoff, in my mind …
But didn’t get caught by this spider, this time …
… gardening, and how not to do it.
Until recently my attitude to the garden has been of a minimalist approach; determine, sometimes intuit, location, plant a selection, water and feed – with little to no regard for the suitability of the earth it happens on and in. Lazy, yes, being a poor study of things I don’t ‘see’ the need for.
Then something happened, I stopped wasting energy in one area of my life, thinking I ‘should’ apply myself where I just didn’t fit, and that energy became available for other things. So I began to look deeper into where I do apply myself without the ‘should’.
The notion of growing a certain plant, for its wonderful flowers, slowly grew in my mind and I found myself thoroughly involved in researching how to do it the best I can – not unlike a root-bound seedling released from its constraining pot and transferred to fertile soil.
Of course, because nothing is certain in a world of change, it may not turn out as I envisage but I will have done my best – and that’s what counts, the doing, not the end.
I still love the little creatures, when they show themselves, but maybe I will focus a little more on the flowers that feed them – in all their ways.
When the garden’s soil develops and spring comes around.
… not the end.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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A Sleepy Dragon
It’s all … a gift, or a curse, depends on how you look at it. But the fact is whatever it is today is gone tomorrow, so there’s no point fretting it – whatever ‘it’ is. Making it less a curse, or a gift, and more simply what it is.
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I know, easy to say. But it can also be ‘done’ if done enough. Letting go is the key, not holding on to what’s inside – though it may appear outside – by thinking too much or getting emotional about ‘it’. Whatever it is.
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This sleepy dragon doesn’t give a … Lying there, resting in the hot afternoon sun, takes no notice of me – as long as I am careful, considerate of its sensibilities, discernible as what my own would be if …
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… I were a dragon.
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© Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab …
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Meditation …
Above is a native Australian Leafcutter Bee, I believe, getting ready to sleep in a local field of grass. They have a sting but never used it on me, really gentle creatures.
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Rarely do I write a post directly on this subject, meditation, but today I begin teaching once more, having taught a number of times before in different places. There has been a good response to the only ad I put out, a free one in the community column of my local weekly paper The Bayside Bulletin, which covers a large area of the SE of Brisbane.
I am grateful for that service as it allows me to gauge the local need for meditation without a significant, to me, cash outlay. Part of the arrangement is that I don’t charge for the meditation instruction, which suits me fine as I prefer to keep money out of the process as much as possible and my costs are reduced to a few phone calls and a bit of ink and paper.
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The key to the meditation I teach is to ‘recognise the need to slow down and relax the mind from the stress of negative thinking and emotion.’ It is the only prerequisite to learning this form of meditation really. Without it there is no ‘real’ need and it would be too simple and so boring to the mind that’s looking for another form of excitement or entertainment.
This is the very practical work of stilling the mind so living can be enjoyed in its simplest form, the senses. It is practical because it works. It works by the practise of some simple exercises that enable the transit from mental emotion living, or being, to being in sense – as the sensation inside where it is always a pleasure, and the senses that reveal the wonder of the earth. Anybody who is willing can do this.
Sensation is best described as grains of sand in space, inner space, seperate and immersed. It’s the actual feeling and not the image the mind would make. There is space between each grain and space in and behind. Look into it until there is nothing else but that.
Or it could be dots of light in the darkness inside, appearing and disappearing in inner space. A pressure, a pulsing, whatever it is for you is what you focus on – the actuality. The mental image is not the actuality.
Space, inside and ‘out’ – everything occurs in space, see it, sense it, allow it to be. Everything else passes.
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There is a distinction between the earth and the world. Earth is magnificent, where we can see the wonder of the stars at night and the beauty and magnificence of the flowers and insects of the garden by day, the clouds as they pass on by and the rain or sun on our skin, all forms of sense. Sense is simple, there’s no problem in it, it’s a pleasure that everyone experiences at some time, especially when young. The simple pleasure of sense only becomes eclipsed in time by the emotion generated by experience when the truth of the matter is not known or understood. This emotion, and the thinking it generates, which begets more emotion, accumulates until it is enough of a problem to do something about it.
Mind is where all problems originate, mind as rampant or unbidden thinking and emotion. Mind as seemingly endless associative thinking that stirs emotion which generates more thinking in an ever worsening spiral of negativity until it just can’t be tolerated any more. That’s when a solution ‘must’ be found and the realisation may occur; my mind is the problem, it’s not ‘out there’ at all – and nobody else can fix it but the one realising it.
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When this meditation is practised properly for long enough the transit from the occupation with complicated mind to the simplicity of sense is effected and living, what was once a pain, becomes a pleasure, or a love – and what other purpose is there to it ‘all’ …
That’s the beauty of it, once the solution is known nobody can take it away. It also eventually dawns; ‘I’ am responsible for my life – I do it or I don’t do it.
The way of stillness or ‘no-thing’ is difficult at times, and invariably rewarding.
© Mark Berkery … CLICK a link for more – Meditation – The Idea – Nature’s Place
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The Brothers We-evil
Three different individuals doing what weevils do, wandering around in the fulfillment of their nature, what else. Not a problem in sight.
The nightmare is Man’s alone to make and break, zombie dogs at the window, nowhere to hide. Vampires running the show.
Analogies, actualities or realities … What a strange world we have made, that has so little to do with our simple nature.
Phew! It was just a dream after all …
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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For the Life of Me …
We’ve had some rain recently and no shortage of sunshine, but today was a remarkable day for the creatures of the garden. The first visitor was a bronze lizard, about 4” long, which came into view as I was sitting at the computer, zipping along the floor. The second was a Snowy Egret, a tall slim elegant bird that landed in the garden looking for a meal, keeping an eye on me as it strutted around.
The third was a Blue Banded Bee that, while I was watering some plants, came and hovered in the spray from the hose – made me smile that. And the fourth was a Water Dragon that appeared from beneath a pile of broken branches from a tree and sat there while I sprayed it, elevating its rear body while dropping its head to catch the water that flowed down towards its mouth.
They all have two things in common. They appeared in (my perception) the house or garden and I didn’t get a picture of any of them – this time. I let the little lizard wander about the house, no point in trying to catch it – probably do it damage. When the Dragon had enough it climbed into the pile below the trees and disappeared, for now.
The bee, along with all its flying kind, buzzes around the garden supping from the many flowers and when I went to look where the Egret was investigating I found what I had thought might be the case. Death, what else …
The leopard beetle I saw tucking into the flowers heart yesterday was gone. I found a piece of its carapace on one of the sunflowers broad leaves. No doubt the Egret will be back, along with the rest.
It’s a pleasure watching the garden grow, the life that comes and goes.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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A Golden Meal
See the Sun rise through the trees, feel the wind blow all a-flutter, flowers reaching for the light, the smell of rain soaked earth, sounds of various birds a-stutter. It’s nice walking in the garden early morning in the still cool shade of the paperbark trees greeting, in a certain way, the emergents of my little patch.
It’s a matter of acknowledgment, if I don’t give my little earth attention it will surely die. As it appears to be on the grand scale by the world’s exclusive focus on making money, the acquisition of power and influence over people and things that means nothing ever really changes for the good, and means little to nothing in itself.
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The simple good that any man or woman can realize in their ordinary life, given time and reminded to – by words such as these perhaps. And that’s the simple truth, you can observe the utter insanity of ‘Our Way of Life’ – on the TV or inside, because ‘we’ made it, that’s just knowing your self – and still nurture the space of inner peace by deliberately giving the rest of your available attention to the reciprocal as the simple earth.
Knowing what you are doing.
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The garden and its colours and forms, the smell of flowering plants calling through the air, feel the elements of heat, cool and wind. And when that’s not nearby focusing on the simple sensation inside will make it easier to do the next time.
A reminder in a world of distraction, if you need it – Meditate.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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Residents of a Certain Nature
The garden is ripe with flowers for the visitors to feed on and some are taking up residence, as if it might be a place to fulfill their instinctive little lives, to do all the seemingly insignificant things they do, and reproduce.
That seems to be the fundament of existence, reproduction. Every thing and body does it one way or another, from the repetition of a single thought form, through the species, to the rotation of the planet around the sun, the sun around the galaxy. Everything that grows does so on a preceding cycle of events, from the small to the large.
The thing is we have to be more intelligent than merely instinctive, significant and intelligent as that is. We need to be able to step, by an act of cognition, out of the machine of repeating parts. Cause, if you look around you, we can’t go on reproducing – thought, emotion and things or bodies – in a finite world. Not if we want to enjoy peace of mind.
Peace of mind, from mind, such a simple though elusive state of being. It’s easy enough to make a start, when enough inner conflict has been experienced. It’s another thing to realise it and keep it real.
That’s all that really matters to me, and it’s done in all the ordinary ways of living a life – each a unique expression, then meditation – to start with.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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Golden Eye
Walking in the nearby woods recently I saw a fly that wasn’t inclined to take off. I don’t know why, maybe age or injury, but anything is possible within the gamut of experience.
I took some time to get a few shots while the fly moved this way and that, sometimes sitting still long enough for me to take my time, sometimes not.
You never know when your number is up until it’s already called, though you can sense it coming, the signs are unmistakeable.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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Be – Jewelled
I’ll add the rest of this series so they are on site for future posting.
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As I daily pass along the garden’s various coloured inhabitants I often notice the visitors. They can stand out and are sometimes camouflaged. It’s only when I get down to them do I really see what it is – another wonder of the earth.
It was late afternoon and this was the only one of its kind about so I took a chance and picked the leaf it was on and brought it to some more interesting background/s, to show it off – as it should be in these times of ignorance, of our beautiful nature.
The ‘trick’ to seeing the beauty of our nature is to spend time in and about it. That way its true nature grows inside while the other stuff dies off, fades away. It’s a matter of value, whether simple beauty or mental emotional activity is attended – because one is surely not the other, and two things can’t occupy the same space.
A jewel lingering in the minds eye, or repetitive mundane intellectual activity. It’s a choice, when it is.
Mark Berkery … CLICK any picture to enlarge in a new tab, they do look better bigger – FireFox – for me
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Nature's Place 
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