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.Her feelings of guilt eventually subsided, but thenshe went through a period where she was feeling mostly sad and stale.For thepast month or so she had felt her life was boring.Sarah said nothing excited her.She would do various things to distractherself, but couldn t really take an interest in anything.She was unable to work onher art (though she continued sketching).The men she met were eitherintriguingly mysterious (but unreliable) or stable but dull.She had a vision of lifebeing either monotonous or, if she sought to escape that (as she sometimes did, inless than wise quests for adventurous liaisons) frenzied.Sarah was annoyed at herself for feeling this way.She wondered out loud:was this some flaw in her? Would she always become dissatisfied with anyrelationship she was in, find it tedious after a while, be unable to renew it and flyoff to some adventure? Was she doomed to oscillate between frenzied, brittleexcitement and flat ennui? Was she doomed to never feel satisfied, always beyearning for something else?At the same time, she admitted she had moments where something feltdifferent.The other day she had seen a hawk in the sky, and felt very present: content just to see the hawk circle and feel the breeze on her face.I said, And you can just hear that hawk thinking: circling round and round,nothing new here, how boring to be just circling.is there more to life thancatching the next air current?.Here I am looking for a mouse.Mouse forbreakfast, mouse for lunch, mouse for dinner.I m so tired of mice.there mustbe more to being a hawk than this! Sarah laughed.She thought the hawk wouldn t be able to fly very well, letalone be able to swoop down and catch its dinner, if it kept doubting its life thatway.I wondered if it might not be a good idea for her to try something boring onpurpose, to discover how to renew her interest in the midst of mundane existence.I suggested maybe she should decide to eat the same dinner day after day for aweek or two and see what happened. She blushed and said that she already did that.She was a bit embarrassed,since in California what you eat is often judged as being politically correct orincorrect.But Sarah confessed she really enjoyed Australian tea muffins.Shewould go for periods where she would eat them three times a day for many days(supplementing her diet, of course, with other foods for nutrition).She told meenthusiastically how she appreciated each detail of the muffins: their biscuit-liketexture, the way they took butter, the way they toasted brown.And, Sarah said,whenever she ate the muffins as a mainstay that way, when she ate somethingdifferent, it really stood out: it tasted so wonderful!I asked her whether it was possible she could apply this ability to appreciatesomething over and over, each time seeing it differently, in other areas of her life?She paused, and thought it might be.We discussed ways of extending this muffin mind into ways of relating to her self and to the people around her.Sarah described how sometimes she could just enjoy the moment; she could bedriving her car and just enjoy driving, rather than driving to get somewhere.Instead of going from point A to point B she would just be she was.Still, for some time Sarah kept asking herself: Is this all there is? Sheworried she was missing out on something; she still kept grasping at trying tounderstand, seeking excitement, looking for something grand.She had to practicefor a while to find a way of being calm in the midst of thrilling novelty, and joyfulin the midst of her ordinary activity.Sarah started to find the basis of her life in an Australian muffin.Proust found a world in acup of tea and a madeleine; Blake found a world in a grain of sand.These bits and pieces are thestuff of our life, and of the universe itself.When we look for something beyond our immediateexperience, we miss IT.The thusness of existence is always available to us, but we often havetroubles seeing it, hearing it, and accepting it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]