(This one's from the vault - from 2006!)
I walked in the rain up Cascade Canyon, above Mill Valley in northern California. The creek tumbled with rivulets pouring into it from the flanks of Mount Tamalpais. I looked down and saw a whirlpool of water spinning in an indentation in the bank of the creek. Bobbing on its surface, circling around and around, was a colorful beach ball. Water was rushing downhill next to it, but the ball was caught in the eddy current. The colorful, spinning ball was a brilliant sight in the dim grey light.
I stared for a while and mused that I, too, was something like a beach ball trapped in an eddy current. I was reminded of the charts that depict the biochemical pathways of the human body. Each of the metabolic processes that regulate the body is a whirlpool of interactions. Together, these processes keep us intact. Biochemical eddy currents whirling within me enabled me to stand in one spot and watch an eddy current in a swiftly moving creek.
And I mused further that my mind, contemplating the ball in the whirlpool, had itself formed an eddy current. My spiritual challenge is to channel the torrent of ideas that blasts through my consciousness into hollow spots in my mind, where some of this overwhelming flow can spin in place long enough for me to contemplate it. Long enough to sort out its contents and make creative use of them. Long enough for it to become meaningful, so that I am not swept away and drowned by the sheer volume of what passes through my mind.
If the eddy current can last long enough before wearing away the indentation in the bank that holds it in place, and if I can pay close enough attention to it, perhaps something wonderful will happen. Perhaps something remarkable - a colorful plastic beach ball, for example - will find its way onto the surface of a gently-turning whirlpool in my soul. So many times, when I have been able to keep focused in meditation or contemplation, some idea or sensation will appear, unbidden – and grace me with an unexpected insight or solution. The eddy current - the relatively steady state created by focused contemplation - makes a place for that insight to be observed and appreciated, instead of being swept downstream and out of mindfulness.
The next time I walked up the creek, the clouds had blown away and the creek’s level had subsided, and the whirlpool was gone. The ball had re-entered the still-powerful current and was swept out of my sight. What other wonderful flotsam might I find, what other colorful, joyful surprises might delight me, if I carved out more detours in my life where such eddy currents could form?