consciousness – REDEFINING REALITY

Once again its spring and I’m getting my front garden ready for planting. It’s not a big patch, but I always like to take the time to make something unique and unusual out of it; something unexpected. But even the simplest of changes requires some hours of work turning over dirt, removing weeds and getting the patch ready for the seeds or bulbs or plantings that I’m going to add.

The earthworms are out! I giggle quietly as I turn over a large chunk of dirt and expose the roots of the grass to the sun and turn half a dozen of them out of their homes. There is even one on my shovel! The worm on my hand spade quickly wriggles off and burrows back into the dirt, anxious to be out of the direct sunlight.

Even more amazing to me than the worms (And why is it that worms seem to hate direct sunlight so, anyway, are they really vampires in disguise? Does the sun dry them out too fast? Are they afraid of robins?) is the complex world that I find just below the surface of the earth.

Think about it. We tend to take what we see in our world for granted. Even in pastoral settings (come to think of it particularly in pastoral settings) the grass, the trees, the flowers – they all tend to mix together into an impression of “countryside” or “garden” and as lovely as any one scene is to the eye, how often do we really think about just how much is going on just out of our sight?

I still remember a child’s book that I stumbled across once that showed cross sections of a city street; everything that was beneath a city street’s paved surface. It showed the layers of the road itself (packed dirt and gravel and pavement) as well as water pipes, sewer pipes, drainage systems, electrical work. I stood there, amazed, flipping through the brightly colored pictures and thinking “who would have thought?” I mean, I always knew that they were there – those layers – but I never really thought about it.

But as complex and layered as a man made city street may be the world beneath the level of an acre of countryside is ten times more amazing to me for one very important reason; it’s alive!

All of it is alive. The roots of the grass, the roots of the trees, the roots of those damned pesky weeds, and man do those have some amazingly complex root systems! But it isn’t just the roots, it’s what lives within the roots; the wriggling earthworms and the ants and the burrowing mice, the moles, the rabbits, the chipmunks (did you know that chipmunks build underground nests?) the bees. Yeah, I found out about the bees the hard way; stepping into an underground nest when I went to clip my hedge a couple of years back. It wasn’t pleasant.

But it goes far deeper than the roots and the nests and the burrows. Dig down deeper and you’ll find underground rivers and reservoirs that feed the roots of all the growing things. Dig even deeper and you will find the coal and the oil that we use to heat our homes and run our vehicles; the iron ore on which so much of our industry is based; the gold and silver and gems that so many people hold in such high regard.

It’s very much like our lives, isn’t it; like reality in general if you think about it. So often we get caught up in the pretty packaging; in the colorful flowering things and the way the greens contrast against each other, when all the time everything that makes this color fest possible is actively getting on with its business right below our feet; a whole world that we tend to not even think about.

How many times a day do we stop to actually pay attention to the thoughts that are generating our actions? How many times a day do we actively consider why we are saying what we are saying and doing what we are doing? How many times a day do we voluntarily and consciously touch that deep inner core from which our true strength and beauty comes and express our gratitude for everything that makes us who we are?

Does it make us better people – to pay attention to our inner workings and the source of our strength? Of course not; we are still exactly who we were before; exactly who we are when we are not paying attention. The only difference is that when we are paying attention; when we allow ourselves to be consciously aware of those multitudes of layers; those complexities that make us who we are; we open ourselves to a depth of reality that can lend richness to our lives that most people lack.

In fact, most people go through their lives feeling as if there is something missing; something that they can’t quite put a finger on; something that should be there; something that they should be aware of. Just like the active world beneath our feet, everything they are looking for is just under the surface – if only they would take the time to get their hands dirty and do a little digging…

I sit back on my heels and grin as the earthworm wriggles frantically off of my spade and dives for cover in the cool, smooth earth. He’s desperate to get below the surface of things; down to where things cease to simply look pretty and start to get real in earnest. Can I blame him? Maybe I can join him. Maybe we all can.

I am haunted by moths.

All summer and autumn long they find me. Every time I enter my bedroom after sunset I am greeted by moths fluttering against the outside of my bedroom window; clinging to the screen; drawn by the promise of the warmth and light inside. They fling themselves against my window pane casting lopsided shadows on my walls; their wings a perpetual thrumming against the glass.

Once my light gets turned off, most of them are leave; drawn off by the promise of other luminaries; real or imagined, but some remain. Some continue to cling to the screen even with the absence of the light within. They caught a glimpse of it; they know it’s there. They’ll wait thank you very much, even if it means ignoring the greatest luminary of all that floats over their heads, turning a world of dark and shadow into a silvery fairyland.

Needless to say, with such a great gathering of moths at my bedroom window, the outside panes have become a favorite haunt of spiders and other nighttime predators for whom an energetic, single-minded moth would be a welcomed meal, and every so often morning will break to show a hapless specimen caught fast in a spider’s web; fluttering feebly as its lifeblood is drained to provide a meal for another creature.

Here where I live, January is one of the coldest times of the year. The moths are long gone; the spiders have crept off in search of more hospitable climates (probably my basement, but I’d rather not think about that at the moment). But last night I flipped on the bedroom light and was startled by a moth’s fluttering shadow against my wall. On closer inspection I found that it was just the husk of a moth; what was left of its body and wings; caught in the tattered remnants of a long deserted spider’s web; the fluttering caused by the whipping of an unrelenting northern wind; wings still beating against the hard reality that kept the moth from its goal. And without warning I found myself in tears.

This poor moth wanted nothing more than to reach the light. For days; weeks maybe, it had gone from light to light; from window to window; searching for the answer to its driving question: “Where is the light that was meant for me? Where is the light that will welcome me home?” And yet, time after time, it was met with the solid reality of an impermeable barrier between itself and the light it had found itself drawn to; the artificial brightness that had blinded it to everything else; that promised the world, but would not – could not – follow through. Like thousands of others of its kind it had expended itself in a desperate attempt to reach its goal; even if that goal was unrealistic at best; an illusion of welcoming warmth; a mirage of belonging.

And all the time it had ignored that greatest of luminaries; the source of its instinct; a light source that gave freely and equally to all that turned their faces up to her; dispelling shadows and turning even the drabbest landscape into a silvery realm of enchantment. Ignored her free gifts and giving up who they really were; their inheritance as children of the night; to pursue the starkly fake brightness of those artificial lights.

And I cry for the life she could have led; flying free in the open air, with the cool silvery light of the moon on her wingtips; the life she gave up in order to pursue a dream with no substance; a dream whose unobtainable promises blinded her to the beauty and meaning that was right before her eyes.

And so I opened up my window and swept the cobweb from the outside of my pane; letting the wind whip the remains of both web and moth out into the night; into the moonlit night of hope where what is, what was, and what will be have not yet been set in stone, and the dreams of another summer’s night with all its attendant possiblities, is still waiting to be born.