Picture a stream of water pouring over the finely-sprouted surface of a broccoli floret, gracefully gliding off without a trace. Superhydrophobicity. It’s a quality of cabbage family members making them extremely difficult to wet. Known as the lotus effect, it results from the steep contact angles of droplet interaction.
In my youth I yearned to emulate that characteristic regarding life’s problems. To effortlessly repel issues, impervious to any infiltration or impact. In my naïveté, I believed this meant adopting the ostrich’s famed technique — burying my head in the sand, hoping troubles would magically dissolve. Denial and repression, I quickly learned, only exacerbate the trials we seek to evade.
Yet, there exists an exquisite alternative—a way to embody the resilience of broccoli without succumbing to the perils of wishful suppression. It entails a profound shift in awareness, a pivot from the confines of the name-and-body self to the boundless expanses of the mind.
I’m not referring to mind in a conventional psycho/physiological sense, akin to the brain. Rather, it’s an ineffable essence, a presence of being-ness that transcends the bounds of time and space.
In this state of pure awareness is found the real self. The body-based entity we call me merely a projected shadow from the realm of mind. Learning to shift perception from body to mind releases all sense of suffering. Gone is the incessant chatter of the ego, replaced by a wondrous experience of peace, from which life’s seeming tribulations are handled with grace, untethered by stress or strain. As the teachings of A Course in Miracles remind us, "I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt."
Join me in Thursday’s class where we’ll learn how we can "be like broccoli" and function from the "deep peace and tremendous release" of which the course speaks. I look forward to seeing you then.