Three Tomatoes

Despite last summer’s Horn Worm revelation I again found myself tending to tomatoes this year.  A seed from the same untended planter began to sprout — young and full of potential  With no expectation or attachment, I watered the pot and watched as tiny yellow flowers turned into little green fruits.  I realize that true gardeners would cull the crop so that the most nutrients could flow to the more promising specimen.  But I could never play god in my garden, and deciding which fruit would live or die seemed beyond my sensibility.  So it was that this trio of tomatoes came to mature through their own organic flow of life in the unfettered fray.

There was an urge of course to pick the immature fruit before they were fully ripe, in concern that the horn worm would return and devour our summer bounty.   But after all, I did not plant these seeds and as the mere hired hand, who was I to say who could feast upon the succulent flesh!

Who indeed.  As the Teachings again take me to the core of the inquiry, I am faced once again with Who is having this experience.  And so once more this morning in the grip of pain and intense sensations of heat and cellular memories, I stood still in space and turned the light upon myself to examine Who-ville.

There was an awareness of the primitive brain that stores all of the fear responses and deeply rutted patterns of old neural networks.  This egoic based me-thought appeared as a huge data warehouse with memories and unquestioned beliefs (as we old programmers would say to a queue … garbage in <-> garbage out.)  There were certainly neurons firing and chemicals flashing through my blood in this bag of flesh and bones … but the bricks and mortar did not appear to house a Who.

At the same time, perhaps apparent because I was in inquiry, the Witnessing Presence was also in attendance during this side-show of pain and pieces.  I could apperceive that at the same time there was body sensation and rutted reptilian brain prattle, there was also a non-judging awareness that was taking it all in.  Yet, the vaporous quality of the witness still did not appear to imbue a quality of Who.

However, as I continued to heed the voice and course of the inner-guru, the inaudible notion in a whisper that everything was perfect just as it is instilled a sense of deep knowing that all that was happening was in the hollow of the hand of God.

Perhaps not your garden variety trilogy … the egoic mind, the witness and the Divine … it was yet clear in the moment that this was what was present.  Each may have felt separate, yet the façade of the ego and body-consciousness of the witness left the Divine standing alone.  Not only as the ultimate Author but the Divine was the final Who that was concurrently experiencing the many facets of Eden.

Tonight, the three tomatoes nourished my family as we sat at the dinner table and gave thanks for simple gifts from the garden.