Second night: Diligence and discomfort

Sat in my tree tonight, for the first time in months.  It's a great white pine out in the small forest behind our house, just uphill from our chicken coop.  It's been my sit spot for the five years I've been sitting during the challenge - first sitting beside its trunk, then moving up into its branches.

Tonight, I had made a particularly difficult decision regarding a friend of mine immediately before my sit.  A decision that may hurt my friend somewhat but that will ultimately be more respectful of our friendship.  As I walked outside, my hair was up in two buns, and the cold air chilled my exposed neck.  It felt appropriate, the taughtness of my hair pulled into the buns, the mild discomfort of the temperature: When we  keep ourselves reined in in our attempt to live respectfully toward one another and toward the earth, there is a necessary tension about it.  This tension, this firmness, is required to keep ourselves from simply slacking off and indulging ourselves at every turn.  There is a discomfort about it that keeps us awake, alert, on guard.  One of my favorite gifts from Eckhart Tolle, his advice to "Be the ever-alert guardian of your inner space," encourages me to accept this balance between diligence and discomfort, helps keep me facing toward the direction I want to travel.

Robins, ever alert themselves and insistent tonight in their calls, shouted throughout a tree near me, then flew off to other trees across the clearing.  Traffic sounds, peepers, and a frog that I've been thinking was a wood frog but whose call doesn't match the recordings I've found on the web.  "Reeee!....Reeeee!"

The tree I sat in was so still, so motionless compared to the commotion and bulkiness of the thoughts in my head. 

I'm finding during this year's challenge that I've come to know myself better from these sits; there is a cumulative knowledge base about myself that I've unwittingly been earning during all these moments spent sitting.  When I am lost in thought and am struggling to pull my attention back to the moment, I am familiar with all of the nuances of that struggle.  I'm familiar with the patterns of my thinking, of my awareness, of my intuition.  This sounds so simple on paper, and yet what complexities are brought to light, what layers upon layers of self-knowledge we gain in our quiet moments.

Though I only spend a month on it out of every year, the limb I sit on might as well be a couch for how comfortable it has become to me, how comforting and familiar.  Even today, after so long a hiatus, I felt immediately at home when I arrived there despite how much growth has gone on since my last sit.  Life has continued to flow around and within everything at my sit spot in every moment that I have been away.