Walking On the Right

Sometimes at dawn the new day calls so entreatingly that to deny the urge to go listen more closely is impossible.  I answered the call and went out for a very early walk.  I took in the day while mulling over recent conversations with friends, the fleeting thoughts of world news, all the while looking at changes in the neighborhood but not really seeing them.

Eventually, I felt a quiet change from walking automatically while still thinking and not noticing much to noticing quite a lot and walking more calmly.  In other words, the walk integrated my whole self eventually:  Body, mind and spirit.  I wouldn't go so far as to say it was walking meditation; I've done that before.  But, I did at least notice the shift from unawareness to integrated awareness and creative observing.

It felt like I woke up all over again.

Much of what I do involves automatic behavior, based on habits and old patterns developed over years.  Sometimes when I'm driving I'll realize I hadn't really been thinking about driving and that the car seemed to have driven itself.  My mind was fixed on some problem or past situation that I was reliving, and whatever I'd passed on the way I'd never even noticed.  It's not a very satisfying feeling, and it can even feel unnerving, being so distracted by worries and mundane details of the day.

That's the way my morning walk started out on this particular day.  But, little things were capturing my attention and holding it briefly, long enough to make my feet slow and my eyes linger and even take a photograph.  At some point, perhaps after 10 or 12 minutes, my looking became more deliberate and the present time finally required all my attention.  It was that mind shift I've written about before - when interest and creativity are more available because the mind shifts its function to a different neural area that allows for creative thinking and functioning.

At that moment, I was present but relaxed, and I could notice things without analyzing them.  I could now see flowers as form and color instead of a five-lobed subspecies of the pea family or something.  One is not better than the other; it's just a shift in brain function that is manifested as "creative, right-brained thinking."

So, my pace slowed a bit, I let my feet and eyes determine my destinations along the way, and I got more into photographing.  Logical thinking in which I had been reviewing work from the night before gradually faded away and I "forgot about it."  Which is to say, my mind let it go and let me imagine possibilities and see objects in new interesting ways.

So, on this walk I left thinking on the left and came back home thinking on the right.  Perhaps that's the call of the wild - at least to me.  Set aside tasks and lists and let the juices flow to see what might become of your imagination.