Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus. I'm your host Thomas

McConkey. Thank you for listening today. I'm going to start off with another story, as I often do, and that story will hopefully

give us a little insight, a little spring on our step as we move into practice, and I'll

be sending you on your way shortly.

So I'm about 19 years old, maybe 18, 19.

I'm do-eyed and full of fear and wonder and have just moved to New York City.

This is the period of my life where I'm starting my walkabout, just drifting from city to city, not knowing what I hungered for.

And in this particular scene, I was at Central Park, just taking it all in, taking the world in.

And I think they discouraged this very actively now, and they probably did 20 years ago when I was doing this,

but I thought I would, you know, bring a handful of nuts and feed me some squirrels at Central Park, you know, kind of mingling with the native flora and fauna.

So I'm somewhere in Central Park, I can't remember exactly where, and me and the squirrel we we lock eyes we know we're

destined for each other and I crouched down and I do my best squirrel call I have

no idea it's grounded in any kind of reality but I start doing this kind of

thing and I'm teasing it with the nut and I'm just seeing if it's gonna come take a nut out of my. And I'm teasing it with the nut, and I'm just seeing if it's going to come take a nut out of my hand.

And I've reflected on this moment over the years, and it's occurred to me it makes a great metaphor, because once the squirrel engages me, it's just kind of locked into me.

And it knows I have food, and it knows it wants that food more than anything

else in this whole world. So when I get the nut out, the squirrel, it takes a few kind of cautious

steps towards me. It darts in a little bit, a few steps and then just stops. It freezes.

And I can feel the tension that the closer the squirrel gets to me, the more it loads its system with fear, potential threat, danger. So it comes in a few steps, it freezes, and then we just both hang in the stillness for a moment.

And then after that, the in the stillness for a moment.

And then after that, the squirrel backs off a little bit.

And then it darts in again a few moments later, this time a little bit closer than the last time.

...