September 1966, Birmingham, Alabama, 6 years old, I woke early and my mother cooked scrambled eggs in an iron skillet. There were real butter and real grits. I ate them with my father. He drank coffee and ate more of the eggs than I. My younger sisters still slept.
Then, I walked 1/2 block to the corner to catch bus #98.
An older boy at the bus stop, Bobby Campbell, sat with me during the ride. The older boys at the back of the bus “cussed” and seemed big and menacing.
That was my first day at school.
I also remember my first day of swimming lessons. I felt cold and the deep end of the pool was the bluest water I’d seen. The teacher seemed beautiful, and graceful in her one-pieced, blue, swimsuit, and black hair which reflected the summer sun, and her shoulders strong when she climbed from the water.
Six years later, age 13, night time, a cold Tennessee creek full of snakes, stars poking through a mountain sky in July, and me sitting on a rock with a pretty dark-haired girl from Muscle Shoals–Paula.
She gave me my first kiss.
Remembering those three teachers (of bus rides and swimming and kissing) and the attention I gave to those teachers shows me my best beginner’s mind.
Imagine the focus and eagerness to learn, the beginner’s mind, with the first bus ride, the first time to jump into deep water, the first kiss.
If I use that same mind, even now, when I travel, plunge into water, or touch my lover–then I learn.
Just a book? Then it stays closed.
Only water? I sit on the side of the pool while the children swim.
Just my lover’s mouth? Then I miss the depths of a different spiritual pool.
Traps that kill the beginner’s mind…
Trap 1: Letting a name become an explanation.
Naming it “gravity” does not explain why two objects are attracted with a force proportional to mass and inversely proportional to separating distance. Names do not explain.
Trap 2: Thinking the first answer is a real answer.
Ask “why?” five times in a row, and you’re always left with an unanswered question.
Trap 3: Not living with the question.
Most can’t tolerate the unknown. So they let a name or the answer to the first “why” become the answer. Get to the real questions. Then live with the question and your life becomes the answer.
That is the “beginner’s mind.”
Only with the beginner’s mind can you find your best health.
This is one of the lessons teaching the Law of Health (which never changes).
Peace & health,
Charles Runels, MD
Law of Health<–
3-Day Fat Burn<–