Lunch on high

 Up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, that is...

While waiting to go to the dining room at the Pisgah Inn, we strolled on the viewing area where many rockers invite people to enjoy the view. There weren't that many people, but we never sat in rockers. We had a reservation and had noted (can't have anything but a request) that we'd like to be by the windows.

This is the very small Lodge with rooms for overnight visits. 

So we climbed the stairs up to the dining room a few minutes before our reservation came...and had time to browse a bit in the gift shop.

And we got a wonderful table looking out at the bluish tinted mountains in the distance.

Helen and I had worn our masks the whole way driving there, and didn't take them off until we started eating.  Unfortunately though the distance toward one direction to the next table was almost 5 feet, the one behind us was only 3 feet and apparently had a reservation for 3, with one person just a couple of feet from us. So we moved to the far side of our nice big round table, which provided enough room that we weren't breathing on anyone, nor were they. This was the first time I'd eaten in a restaurant "inside" as a COVID avoiding person, and I sure wanted my distance. So did Helen.

We enjoyed our salads, and our desert of French Silk Pie, and forgot to take photos of them. I fell off my diet with the pie, but avoided the dairy of a scoop of ice cream with it. That didn't used to get included. But Helen had hers.

The Pisgah Inn is located above 5000 feet, (as shown above in a photo from their site on line) and the mountain can be seen from many places in Asheville. There are also hiking trails, and a campground, which we weren't interested in.

TODAY'S QUOTE:

If we live in the moment, we are not in time. 

If you think, "I'm a retired person. I've retired from my role,"

 you are looking back at your life. It's retrospective; it's life in the rear-view mirror.

 If you're young, you might be thinking, "I have my whole life ahead of me. 

This is what I'll do later." That kind of thinking is called time-binding.

 It causes us to focus on the past or the future 

and to worry about what comes next.

Getting caught up in memories of the past or worrying about the future

 is a form of self-imposed suffering. Either retirement or youth 

can be seen as moving on, time for something different, something new.

 Aging is not a culmination. Youth isn't preparation for later.

 This isn't the end of the line or the beginning.

Now isn't a time to look back or plan ahead. 

It's time to just be present. The present is timeless. 

Being in the moment, just being here with what is,

 is ageless and eternal​.​ 

 Ram Dass

At the end of the road

Walker St.

And I've not been up to the very end of the road but a couple of times. It means stopping and resting several times to catch my breath. I'm not walking it this evening because at 7 pm it's still 78 degrees out. I'm happy to post blogs for the future (since I wrote this back last Friday.)

 Looking up at the end of the road...two driveways invite people up to houses which I could not see. And on the far left is a driveway of a house very close to the road. You can see the black post of a mailbox on the far right, for a house which has an electric gate across their drive (not shown). If you look closely in the middle of the photo, you can see a tilted mailbox that stands next to a drive up through all the greenery (not the one with two tracks that has light towards the end.

And looking down the hill from the end of the road, you can't see much except that fire hydrant. I'm glad the town of Black Mountain is protecting these homes.

I must add this photo and my feelings about Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying yesterday. We all know the people who are ruining our government will try to replace her and take away many of the rights which she fought to keep for women. So I and all the women I know have a duty to do whatever we can, in our small ways, to stand for justice as RBG showed us...that her strength didn't rely upon physical size, that her words were well chosen and thoughtful, and that this heroine of American Justice will have dedicated her life for a cause which will continue.

Today's Quote:

We often think that vulnerability is a kind of weakness, but there’s a kind of vulnerability that is actually strength and presence.

RAM DASS

Walk Sunday morning

 Today's quote:

The first being one must have compassion for
is oneself. 
You can't be a witness to your thoughts 
with a chip on your shoulder or an axe to grind.

Ramana Maharshi said, 
"If people would stop wailing alas I am a sinner
and use all that energy to get on with it
they would all be enlightened."

He also said, 
"When you're cleaning up the outer temple
before going to the inner temple,
don't stop to read everything
you're going to throw away..."

Ram Dass

Older ducklings

As I walked along one side of Lake Tomahawk the other day, I saw another family of Mallards, with ducklings that were a bit older than the first ones I saw (on yesterday's post).

 Mom Mallard led her 10 ducklings (I think) from the bank of the dam into the water.

 There was a male napping on shore...

 He didn't want anything to do with these kids, and chased this one back into the water, then disappeared somewhere else.

 The sluice that drains the water must have been full of goodies to eat, but I was worried that a duckling might get swept away. They didn't seem to have a care, and neither did mom Mallard.

I didn't watch for long, because I was actually there to capture a photo of the National Guard plane that was about to fly over. I did get some photos of it, and have posted them already.

Today's quote:

We often think that vulnerability is a kind of weakness, but there’s a kind of vulnerability that is actually strength and presence.

RAM DASS

Ram Dass said...part three

Astronut not tethered 

Time is a box formed by thoughts of the past and future. When there is only the immediate now – when you’re not dwelling in the past or anticipating the future, but you are just right here, right now – you’re outside of time. Dwelling in the moment is dwelling in the soul, which is eternal presence. When we’re outside of time, there’s no subject or object; it’s all just here. The thinking mind deals only with subject and object. But from within here now, you watch time go by. You are not being in time. You be, and time goes by, as if you were standing on a bridge and watching it all go by.

Ours is a journey toward simplicity, toward quietness, toward a kind of joy that is not in time. In this journey out of time to “NowHere,” we are leaving behind every model we have had of who we thought we were. This journey involves a transformation of our being so that our thinking mind becomes our servant rather than our master. It’s a journey that takes us from primary identification with our psyche to identification with our souls, then to identification with God, and ultimately beyond any identification at all.

Life is an incredible curriculum in which we live richly and passionately as a way of awakening to the deepest truths of our being. As a soul, I have only one motive: to merge with God. As a soul, I live in the moment, in each rich and precious moment, and I am filled with contentment.

- Ram Dass, excerpt from his book Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, published 2013.

Ram Dass said...part two

We are on an inevitable course of awakening. If you understand that message deeply, it allows you to enter into your spiritual practices from a different perspective, one of patience and timelessness. You do your practices not out of a sense of duty or because you think you should, but because you know in your soul there really is nothing else you would rather do.

In Sanskrit this is called vairagya, a state of weariness with worldly desire where only the desire for spiritual fulfillment is left. The spiritual pull is the last desire, one that really grabs you, but that dissolves on its own because you dissolve in the process. The Tao says, “In the end you will be like the valley which is the favorite resort of the Way.” You become receptive, become soft, become open, become attuned, become quiet. You become the ocean of love.

The soul is made of love, and must ever strive to return to love. It can never find rest nor happiness in other things. It must lose itself in love. – Mechthild of Magdeburg

Spirit Helpers, painting by Susan Seddon Boulet

- Ram Dass, excerpt from his book Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, published 2013.

Ram Dass said...part one

Photo by Stacy Redmond

A soul takes human birth in order to have a series of experiences through which it will awaken out of its illusion of separateness. The physical experience of being incarnated is the curriculum, and the purpose of the course is to awaken us from the illusion that we are the incarnation. Spiritual practices are tools to help us accomplish these goals.

You start from innocence and you return to innocence. A sage was asked, “How long have we been on this journey?” He replied, “Imagine a mountain three miles wide, three miles high, and three miles long. Once every hundred years, a bird flies over the mountain, holding a silk scarf in its beak, which it brushes across the surface of the mountain. The time it would take for the scarf to wear down the mountain is how long we’ve been doing this.”

- Ram Dass, excerpt from his book Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, published 2013

Ram Dass, uncut

Walk the Talk, Ram Dass interview, uncut, with the ocean and wind in the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fpyxBx0w-n4#!

I loved looking at this, though it took several times of sitting.  It took a while for my attention span to settle.  Kind of like sitting in meditation.

My favorite part is around minute 17, where he's asked what super power he would like to have.