THE PINE CONE MIRACLE
Pine cones and pears. Mindfulness. The magical world of our inner child.
Have you ever watched a toddler outside? Everything is fascinating! Whether it's a pine cone or bottle cap, flower or weed. Some mornings, I sit in our front room and watch our 18-month old neighbor Delaney with her young mom as they walk through the neighborhood. Delaney has to smell each flower, and examine each and every thing that catches her eye. And after all, since she's so small, her eyes are close to the ground where myriad treasures await her discovery.
Like all of us, Delaney has a natural curiosity about things in the natural world. When we were her age, we probably picked up a shell or a pine cone and a well-meaning adult likely told us what we were clutching in our tiny hand.
Click.
Our brain snaps a picture of the pine cone and stores it in our incredible filing system. The next time there's a pine cone in our path, we cleverly retrieve the photo of the pine cone that we took when we were young. It is only with conscious awareness of our photo retrieval system that allows us to see the actual here and now.
There are miracles everywhere we look, but we stopped looking long ago. The good news is that all it takes is the desire to step back into the world of wonder, seeing everything through the eyes of your inner child.
It's not as hard as it may sound. All that's required is to take a breath while you look at something, really looking at it instead of the picture you stored in your filing cabinet. I mean REALLY look at it, as if you've never seen anything like it before.
But don't stop there. Use all of your senses in the present moment simply by taking a breath with your awareness on it. In other words, before you bite into that pear, enjoy its beauty first - its sensuous shape, pleasing to the eye as well as the hand. Then experience its softly sweet aroma. And finally, take a small bite and really taste it. That pear is a miracle.
And so are you. I just took a breath in the present moment and noticed …