Mindfulness/Living in the Moment

You may remember a recent blog post of mine about attending a mindfulness retreat.  I had what I learned there in mind when I recently traveled on an airplane.  So, I guess this is "mindfulness flying".  I challenge you do this the next time you fly.

As we're waiting to taxi down the runway, I hear the engines rev up.  I watch the other planes come and go.  As our plane starts to taxi to and then down the runway, I watch the scenery passing by. 

Then we stop and wait.  All of a sudden, the engines rev up again, but more powerfully than before.  It's a powerful feeling as the plane accelerates.  As we become airborne, I watch the ever changing scene out the window, gazing at the horizon and noticing how beautiful it is. Now we're airborne.  I'm looking out the window, seeing the blue of the sky, and the white fluffiness of the clouds.  Do they look like cotton balls or maybe cotton candy? I wonder how they would feel if I were able to reach out and touch them.  There, up ahead, is a break in the clouds.  I can see down through the clouds at the terrain below.  It looks like a topographical map.

I'm seeing patterns in the clouds  Remember when we were little, and we would lay on the grass and state up at the sky?  We would find shapes in the clouds.  That one might look like an elephant, that one a whale.  We can do the same thing when we're above the clouds, too.  

Now some time has passed since we've taken off.  It's getting darker outside.  On the particular flight I'm on right now, we're flying from Las Vegas to Baltimore.  Our flight left at around 3:30pm Las Vegas time with partly cloudy skies.  It's now an hour later.  I've closed my eyes for a bit, listening to the sounds around me.  The chatter of conversations around me, the pop of the tab as the flight attendant opens a can of soda, the fizzing sound it makes as it spills on the clinking ice cubes in the plastic cup.  The soft snoring of a fellow passenger.  Now that I'm looking out the window again, the clouds are significantly darker.  They're a beautiful shade of gray,  and the sky above is an amazing blue.

It's full dark now, with just under two hours until Baltimore.   I'm not sure what town we're flying above, but as I look out the window it is so pretty.  The lights of the towns below.  Some more densely populated than others.  Twinkling.

Now the lights of Baltimore, and we're close to home.

Baltimore