7.10.11

My DailyOM horoscope gets read about once a week. It's usually on Sunday mornings when I have a few extra minutes in bed before all chaos breaks loose. Chaos in our house comes in the form of three dogs and one closer-to-two-years-old-than-I'd-care-to-admit tot.


Today's said I should try a listening meditation. It "helps us become aware of the richness in the world." Well, Universe, okay. That seems pertinent. 


In a listening meditation, you quite simply listen to the sounds around you and absorb yourself into them, until you are essentially not aware of anything.


So technically, one could meditate anywhere. This morning's gym workout was not going to be that place. The guy next to me was grunting too loud and I did not want to absorb myself into his grunts.


The silence of Chaos during Will's nap this afternoon would have been perfect. Except absorbing myself into silence seemed to defeat the purpose. And since I chose to mow the lawn instead, absorbing myself into Lady Gaga on my iPod seemed odd (although I am digging the reemergence of 80s electric sounds in songs like "Edge of Glory." And yeah, I just said "digging").


Alas, my last chance for the day: the pool. I plopped myself into the fish raft we got for Will, and with one foot holding on to Greg's leg (and his eyes on Will), I closed my own eyes and let myself be absorbed into splashes. Laughter. Whistles. Warnings. Shouts. Screams. 


Summer.


The rest of the horoscope went something like this.


"In our lives we can easily go through the day not noticing the world around us. When we do notice things, it is often because we are irritated by them. Learning to listen to sounds allows us to become attuned to what happens in our environment. By listening without judgment, we develop the sense that everything in this world has its proper place."


There's a richness to Summer, isn't there? Sounds we hear that are only reserved for this time of year. We have to soak them up, savor them, store their sweet memories away for those cold nights Winter brings. We shouldn't hurry through these long days, shouldn't rush through the heat to this vacation or that get-away. I suppose the true lesson here--the one that everything seems to boil down to--is stay in the moment.