Spring Is In The Air

The skies spit snow earlier this week, but there’s nothing but sunshine in the forecast now, and spring is springing.

I saw the first flowers last week - dandelions waving in the wind. I don’t recall seeing those bloom so early in the past, but there they were, as cheery as could be.

Monday a hummingbird checked out the bird feeder. This worried me a bit, as our nighttime temperatures are still well below freezing, and there’s nothing blooming that hummers can feed on. It’s much too early for them to be this far north. I made syrup and hung out the hummingbird feeder in case it returned, but I’ve not seen it again. I fear that the little thing either starved or froze. The syrup in the feeder has been frozen every morning.

Tuesday, a sunny yellow crocus poked its little head through the mulch. The subsequent snowfall didn’t keep it from being bright and perky.

Many of the winter birds are still coming to our feeders, but the spring and summer birds are making an appearance also. We’ve seen three goldfinches and a pair of Western bluebirds, two of our favorite species. There’s been several robins as well.

If this year is like past years, we’ll still have snowfall, but for now, we’re enjoying flowers blooming, birds signing, and sun shining.

Ouspensky on Knowledge, Part I

I’ve started Chapter One of "Tertium Organum: A Key to the Enigmas of the World," by P D. Ouspensky.** He begins with assertion that "The most difficult thing is to know what we do know, and what we do not know."

He says we can start with knowing two facts. The first is our inner life, which is the subjective fact of our existence. The second is the existence of the outer world, which is objective. He maintains that we cannot prove these two basic facts, that we must simply accept them as given. Everything else is an unknown.

His conclusion: we learn about what exists outside us by the sensations generated within our inner selves. The mistake we then make is in thinking our sensations are the cause of what we experience in the outer world.

For me, Ouspensky’s insights resonate with the idea that nothing is good or bad in and of itself. Our attitude, our thoughts, our experiences, our sensations combine to make something seem good or bad. We always have a choice as to how we regard any particular object or action, although it may not seem so in the heat of the moment.

Thoughts happen so quickly that it seems impossible to control them in any way, but I’ve learned from others that there is an instant, an infinitesimal space, before the thought forms. The trick is to become aware of that instant, that space, and in that manner gain awareness of our thoughts. Then we can start learning why we perceive the outer world the way we do.
But for starters, I think it’d be helpful if I’d just pause before I say "I know this or that" and wonder whether or not I truly know it. And if I know it, how?

**Refer to first Ouspensky post for more info on him and his book.