Cluttered Mind

#1 - Some fuel cleaner started leaking from a container in my garage this weekend, well I thought it was that but now I think it was actually windshield wiper fluid. Anyway, today I picked up some kitty litter to spread on it and it seems to be cleaning it up well.

#2 - I bought a massage at a nearby location on Groupon a while ago. It had to be used Monday-Thursday and to my surprise they let me choose today a holiday.  When she asked me to pick an essential oil I assumed I'd go for lavender, but I discovered that I also delight in the smell of honeysuckle. 

I biked there and #3 - packed a sandwich/dinner to go sit by the lake after the massage. There were too many people at the beach, so I found a quieter spot and sat and ate, and just sat for quite a while.

#4 - Over a month ago I bought a year long membership to the Eckhart Tolle website.  However I noticed at the beginning of May they were additionally charging me the monthly membership fee.  It took at least three separate tickets and an activated pain body on my part for the issue to finally be resolved today. I was aware I was not passing this test, but I was also aware of my pain body. By the time I opened the third ticket I was at least also laughing at myself.

#5 - Which means I could finally go back to a spot in the video I stopped at because I wanted to spend more time with..

"It's a continuous practice at first, to be thinking, and at the same time not being taken over by your mind. To be able to use your mind, not be used by your mind. When you are on the computer or any of these devices, also very dangerous because they pull you in. They are like an externalization of the mind. And the mind can pull you in, or the phone can pull you in. It has an addictive quality, as everybody knows. Your attention goes there and it pulls your attention out of you. 

Years ago I talked about television, how excessive watching of television does that. It pulls your attention out of you, and you enter a hypnotic state. Nowadays it's even worse than before, people don't watch television that much anymore but they interact with their devices. And the device is an externalization and an amplification of your mind. So you have to be very careful that... you do not live, with a mind that is continuously cluttered. And this is a dreadful fate, to live in this world, full of mental clutter, and there's no respite. Every time, you are continuously, every time you interact with a device you are taking in more mental clutter, a lot of it completely unnecessary...sometimes it's important, but Facebook, why do I need to know what somebody is eating at this moment? What is the point? Why do I need to know where somebody is having a good time on vacation right now? I don't need all these tweets. Why do I need to know what the President of the United States is tweeting right now? I don't need to know that. It clutters my mind. 

All kinds of continuous clutter is the mind that has no space in it whatsoever. Then you find these humans become very quickly, even youngsters already are in need of medication. They cannot, their mind is disturbed. They cannot focus on anything for very long. They have Attention Deficit Disorder. They're completely gone. It's a dreadful affliction. So we need to be very careful and then help our children too, but first you need to help yourself, so you can help your children too. Not to get excessively drawn into these, what the worst thing we need to be aware of is mental clutter. Do not tolerate mental clutter. Make sure there is space in your mind. Most important things, the simple thing, as I said before, conscious breath, 2, 3 conscious breaths, create inner space. Alert contemplation of nature or anything that is around you. Alert sense perception, creates an inner space. Feeling the inner body, creates an inner space. Listening to another person, in a state of alert attention. Inner space. 

So, there's nothing more important because that is the being of you, the rest is the doing. If you get so trapped, every thinking is doing, if you got so trapped in the thinking, you're so cluttered. Total loss of being. And that is the disease, the mental disease, that a large section of humanity is now suffering from. It's a true, it is very serious mental disease, and unless that changes, I don't think that civilization can survive for very long with millions of people suffering from that mental disease because how are they going to create anything truly new when their mind is continuously cluttered, when they cannot focus on anything for more than a few seconds? Because any creative act requires you to become still for a moment and then focus, focus your attention and look at the situation, look at the problem. And that focused high alertness, that's how the creative process happens. If your mind is so cluttered that you can't do this anymore. You will never find again a creative solution to any of the problems that have already been created by the cluttered mind. And so you create one problem after another but never any solution. And if you do think you have a solution, it came from your cluttered mind and it will create more problems than it solved."

April 2026 - Freedom from the Thinking Mind, Can We Be Present While Thinking?

Will the Milkweed Make It?

#1 - I have immense admiration for people that use their yards to create habitat. I'm not sure how much I can do with potted plants on a patio, but I bought one milkweed and a flowering plant they said would attract butterflies.  It doesn't seem like much, but if everyone with a patio planted one milkweed well...I forgot to ask though about deer.  I just looked it up and my experiment may fail. I bought

"Asclepias tuberosa (Butterfly Weed): Moderate-to-high vulnerability (69%)."

https://lifetips.alibaba.com/plant-care/will-deer-eat-milkweed-plants

whereas Asclepias viridis (Green Antelopehorn): has Very low vulnerability (11%)

sigh so it goes...I also planted one cherry tomato and one marigold that someone at work gave me. We'll see if any of it survives.

#2 - I was home sick the last couple days, I decided my nephew's track meet would be a pretty low key thing to motivate me to get out of the house today and besides some sniffles, I was fine.  I got groceries, I replanted these plants.  And I laid under this tree and read the new Elizabeth Gilbert book I'd just picked up from the library.

#3 - In the evening I wanted someone here to motivate me to walk, there was no one. So I asked life for motivation, and a bit later it came.  I was walking quickly when a robin kept skirting my path, finally it stopped a bit in from of me and pooped on the ground.  "Hmm what does that mean?" I thought. I looked around, a woodpecker. I was reminded of a friend who recently said woodpeckers were a sign he was on the right track.  So I slowed down and looked at some more birds, and then just sat for a while.

#4 - The Eckhart Tolle website is double charging me.  Yesterday I wrote them a message saying my pain body was being activated because I was being billed for something I already paid for. I received an email back they are looking into it, and I laughed at how strong my overreaction was yesterday.

#5 - "Do I have to?" My nephew's response to being asked if he'd go to the nearby frisbee golf course with me so I could practice my frisbee throwing.  The answer was, "No," so we didn't go.