In the spirit of The Bonsai Experiment, I bring to you the progress of my blue fir seedlings, species Picea Pungens Glauca. This is day 15 after planting, and we’ve got quite a few seeds reaching daylight. On the edge of the photo, you can see other pots of seeds I’ve planted, slower growing varieties of pine, which have yet to reach the surface. May each of you grow tall and strong.

It’s a pleasure to watch these things grow, to give them love and care, and to witness the miracle of nature, of life left to its own devices. Growing anything, we come face to face with our own issues of control. It will germinate when it wants to, not when we want it to. And there are many other learning opportunities. Think about this: We may look at the pot there, with what looks like just soil in it. We may think that because there is nothing on the surface, there is nothing there. But the plant is not just the bit above ground, it is there underneath, growing roots. We would do well to remember that. Things are not what they appear to be. There is more to life than surface.

Birds in flight.
A gust upwards
And they glide gracefully on the wind.

Sometimes seeing is the purest form of art. There is no manipulation. No trying to get someone to react in a certain way. There are no attempts to dazzle or amaze with flowery words or descriptions. No attempts to put pride or cleverness on display for all to see. There is just the seeing, and whatever flows from that.

Down into the deep we go,
Down where no lights shine.
Down into the truth we go;
No ‘me’, no ‘my’, no ‘mine’.

Can you imagine such a state where is this no ‘I’ to speak of? No me, no you, nothing that’s mine? A state where there is no difference between my body and your body, my health and the health of a tree, my life and the life of a snail? A state where nothing is better than anything else, and nothing is separate? Unless you’ve experienced it, probably not.

But many of us have experienced it, at least for a moment. Most of us have had moments where life seems to expand and our sense of self diminishes, where we become so absorbed in something that we lose ourself to the action itself and there is nothing but immense peace. Experiencing it for a second is one thing, but for most of the time? Or all of the time? That’s a different matter. I certainly can’t imagine living that way. Yet this is what we are told is enlightenment by those who have experienced it. And, though I may not be able to imagine it, I believe it is possible, and so, like a scientist, I experiment so that I may test it, so that I may glimpse it. And that is all we can do: keep on working to glimpse it, to see the moment clearly, over and over and over again.

Earlier today I banged my head. I was just leaning up against the wall and then WHAM, I misjudged where the wall was when resting my head back. I reached out to sense the pain I was feeling, the sensation on the back of my head, when I noticed that actually there wasn’t much at all. The pressure of the blow spread all across the back of my head, protecting me (and especially my brain) from damage, and I smiled and was I thankful. My skull knew what it was doing. My skull did its job.

This showed me a simplicity that I rarely consider. Everything has a purpose, a job to do, a function, and for the most part, things perform their functions perfectly. A screwdriver unscrews screws, a hammer hammers in nails, a knife cuts. These are man-made tools, but things that have not been made or shaped by man also have their own jobs and functions to perform, from the cells and organs and bones of our bodies, to rivers and plants and clouds. It is easy to talk about a tree’s function: taking in carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen for people and animals to breathe, producing nuts and seeds and fruits for people and animals to eat. They produce shade, they can give wood for burning and making things with. Leaves can be eaten, or made into medicines. They act as home for ants and other small creatures, as roosts and nests for birds… the list goes on. But what of our function? As a human, what is our job?

In a way, this is what we are all seeking to find out. We want to know what to do with our lives, what sort of people we should be, what professions we should have. We want to know our purpose, because knowing our purpose we will have found meaning in our lives.

We ask this question of ourselves and each other in many ways, asking what we want to do today, or what we want to be when we grow up. But what we often fail to ask (or perhaps we ask but ignore the answer) is this:

What does Life want for me?

Seen in that context, we can see ourselves for what we are, and that is human, one man or woman of one species among a whole world of different animals and plants and rocks and space and stars. And viewed from that context, we can see that we are no different from anything else. We have our job to do, just like a cat does, just like the grass does, just like the river does. It’s life, and our job is to live.

Those of you that have seen the film The Matrix, you’ll no doubt remember possibly the most memorable line from the entire movie: “There is no spoon”. This is one of those wonderfully zen statements, one which can spur huge changes in reality just by the mere contemplation of it.

If you can bend the spoon because it isn’t really there, what else can be bent because it isn’t there?

If there is no spoon, then what else isn’t there?

And, I think most crucially: If the spoon isn’t there, are you?

My friend Andy keeps telling me this week: watch those thoughts. But I’m not interested in watching my thoughts. Who is? Sure, I can make an effort, sit for a few minutes, then I get bored. Suddenly I’m chasing after some fantasy, or I’m off elsewhere doing things without noticing. How many times have you driven your car somewhere only to realize you’ve arrived and you didn’t even notice the journey? If you weren’t there, who was it that was doing the driving? Who made sure you didn’t crash? Who steered and changed gears? Who broke and accelerated? And if it wasn’t you that was driving, then where were you?

So many questions, but things like this happen to us all the time. We miss out on our lives as they are happening, because we do not want to watch our thoughts. We do not want to pay attention to what’s happening in the here and now. We do not want to see that most of our thoughts are just garbage. Imagine if you met someone who just wouldn’t stop talking. How useful would what they say be? Talking and talking, they’d witter on about anything and everything. Who’d want to listen to that? This is what we do with our thoughts. We witter on and on, having thought and thought after thought. Who’d want to listen to that?

There’s a price to pay. It’s a sacrifice. But what is it that we are sacrificing? When we watch our thoughts, we can be in a position to know ourselves a little better. We can see what makes us tick, and we can be more discerning about the things we react to. Say we have a thought that “oh, she shouldn’t be doing that, that’s not right”. We might get angry, outraged that she would do something like that, angry that’s she’s doing something that is not right. But if we are watching our thoughts, we might think to challenge them, to see them a little bit clearer. Why shouldn’t she be doing that? Why isn’t it right? We might see that really, it is only our opinion that it is right or wrong, that she should or shouldn’t be doing it. We might think such a thing because we are comparing ourselves with her, thinking she shouldn’t be doing it because we shouldn’t be. Maybe it’s just right for her to be doing it. Maybe thinking that, we wouldn’t be angry.

So that can be the difference between the thought watched and the thought that goes unwatched. There are countless examples. What is clear is that attention changes things. Just watching changes the experience. Quantum physicists know that as well: the act of observing changes the thing being observed.

So I’ll keep on trying to watch those thoughts, and keep on trying to be aware of the journey, because that’s where life is happening, nowhere else.

If you happen to find yourself having a Bad Day, I present to you the following hints:

1. Breathe.

   Rarely is a problem improved by withholding oxygen from the body (unless your problem would be improved by such a thing).

2. Don’t worry.

   Contrary to popular thought, worrying is not a valid problem solving method. If you’re looking for an analogy, worrying is like peddling backwards on a bicycle when trying to go uphill. It feels like hard work, but you don’t go anywhere and then you fall on your arse and quite possibly roll down the hill.

3. Don’t give up.

   “No problem is so big and complicated that it can’t be run away from!”

   Linus said that in Charles M. Schultz’s comic strip Peanuts. And if you were thinking about laughing at any of this, something Lucy said in it was this:

   “Try not to have a good time…this is supposed to be educational.”