What is a Hippie to do without other Hippies to be Hip with? No Festivals, art raves, smoking circles. I’m sorry, but virtual dance parties are just not cutting the mustard.

We are lonely Hippies in the Woods. We have our vegetables and our gardens. We can always talk to our house plants. I guess we need to look for the rainbow in the clouds. What can we do? What would Confucius do?

When I met Confucius at a meditation conference on-line in the 2500’s BC, he told me personally to, “Turn time off, lower your eyes; the Earth will be yours”.

What does that mean? Let’s think deep thoughts together…

Turn time off- Not running around from one event to another being busy, busy bees. Doesn’t mean don’t do anything. There is a special space when one has to do a menial task for hours. Time does widen and is not broken down into minutes. Time can slip away when we take a hoe in hand or weed our gardens. Maybe in this time of crisis we need to just pick something simple to do and do it for its own sake. This time we have now will slip away.

The Earth will be yours- With 7 billion humans that’s a lot of carving up of the Earth. Maybe we don’t exactly get a piece of earth, but it means the Garden of Eden reveals itself to those who pay attention to the simple pleasures of life. Like John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when we are making other plans.” We are all saying to ourselves, ‘When this pandemic is over, we will be happy again…” Some of us had some good times but were we really happy? Maybe like Buddha said, happiness is elusive because we think it is outside or ourselves when it is really a state of mind. Cultivating our minds for peace is something we never have time for. But with Covid- now we do.

Meditation feels really good once you get the hang of it. Like starting to jog, it is painful in the beginning but feels great after some practice. How to begin?

Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey have a great beginning meditation series. It is easy and accessible.

This meditation site is a bit more serious.

There are many good teachers on-line. Reach out for help. Helpers are all around us. We need motivation and a good teacher can really inspire. Many retreat centers offer online access to amazing people.

But let’s just deflate this balloon. It is easy to get pumped up and then just not do anything because, lets’ face it, depression is a downer. Nobody wants to do sh*t when they’re down. It’s hard to pull ourselves out of the hole. So back to Confucius before we get confused. Pick something simple, and not complicated, lower your eyes, turn time off and let the Earth be yours.