The waiting…
For some reason, trying to grow a second harvest of mushrooms has been even more of a challenge to my patience. It’s almost as if I kind of know what should be happening so I get attached to what is supposed to happen and I never got accustomed to the waiting. However, I’m still checking it everyday to see the minuscule growth of the mycelium. My lack of patience transforms into an insatiable desperation for growth. Even though I do acknowledge on an intellectual level that this will takes weeks and months to finally harvest the fruited mushrooms, but for some reason I emotionally have been attached to the idea that it will be a shorter time period. I peak into the Martha tent with acute anticipation that some sort of magical transformative process will have happened. When I finally get that peak through the droplets of water on every piece of plastic, I realize that growth takes more time than I anticipate it to.
So what life lessons can I muse from this scenario?
I could practice pratipaksha bavanam, Sanskrit for “cultivating opposite thoughts” and in this scenario means that I wouldn’t focus on how long it’s taken to grow, but celebrate my moment of appreciating the time it is taking the fungi to grow.
Creating a solid foundation of the mycelium will ultimately create a living environment where the fungi will thrive and I will benefit from the abundance of mushrooms.
Okay… so I cultivated the opposite thoughts…. And the immediate thought that comes to mind is I don’t often take the time to appreciate the smaller, incremental changes. I want the big and glamorous growth to show that I’ve succeeded. The idea of just existing in my own growth is accepting the vulnerability I present and feel in my own process of growth. It’s almost as if this in-between space, the gray area, the space between being asleep and awake, this place of meditation, is scary to me. The unknown of whether or not the dream or outcome that I am attached to will come to fruition.
So let’s say that this harvest isn’t real and I have to start all over again. I would have to suffer from the shame of failure. But why suffer? Why not just experience the loss? I would be mourning the loss of time, money, and confidence in myself. The confidence that I think other people have in me. If I were to take a step back and observe, I would still be attached to the outcome of succeeding. It’s not about the learning or the growth, it becomes about the anticipation of success that is directly related, in my mind, to my own self-worth.
What if I disconnected the assessment of my own-self worth from the fruiting of mushrooms? What if I celebrated that I’m simply trying something new?
