‘Mercy, walking with your hands open.’

March 7, 2017

In a world that lives like a fist

mercy is no more than walking 

with your hands open.

-Mark Nepo

‘So much more can happen with our hands open. In fact, closing and stubbornly maintaining our grip is often what keeps us stuck, though we want to blame everything and everyone else, especially what we’re holding on to.

There is an ancient story from China that makes all this very clear. It stems from the  way traps were set for monkeys. A coconut was hallowed out through an opening that was cut to the size of a monkey’s open hand. Rice was then placed in the carved-out fruit which was left in the path of the monkeys. Sooner or later, a hungry monkey would smell the rice and reach its hand in. But once fisting the rice, its hand could no longer fit back out through the opening. The monkeys that were caught were those who would not let go of the rice.

The trap worked because the monkey’s hunger was the master of its reach.

The lesson for us is profound. We need to always ask ourselves, what is our rice and what is keeping us from opening our grip and letting go?

The truth is that food is every where.’

[The Book of Awakening. 2011.]

This land is our land. ✿

We are members one of another.

-Ephesians 4:25

Right thought, constantly poured into consciousness, will eventually purify it.

-Science of Mind

Think now of an open field.

This open physical space is a metaphor for how we are affected by others through a unity of relationship (Ernest Holmes). ✿ Consider someone has divided virgin land into one-acre plots, and given an acre apiece to a number of individuals who are free to raise whatever they want.

“After years of cultivating our individual gardens, what will we fine” (Holmes)?

We will find much in our garden that we did not plant. Seeds from nearby plots of land have blown onto our plot, or birds have brought seeds. ✿ Those seeds have produced plants we do not want, yet we were not able to prevent their growth.

No matter how well we have tended our own garden, it is affected by other lands nearby. ✿ All pieces of land are affected by the others. Similarly, our individual consciousness is not separate from the Universal. There is only one Mind and each of us is part of this unity.

The consciousness of each person influences the collective field. ✿ Other people experience that which we cultivate in our consciousness, and we are affected by the consciousness of others.

We contribute to the overall well-being of the world when we cultivate a beautiful garden in our mind. ✿ We can do so by eliminating unloving thoughts and by planting instead only those ideas that generate condition we ourselves desire to experience.

[Science of Mind. March 2017. p. 42]

“I cultivate a beautiful consciousness.”