Explorer or searcher?

It feels marvelous to step a wave of the renaissance of our lives. We live in such mobile magical times of muses, museums, and music from all over the planet. Mystic words connecting the esoteric past toward an enlightened future. The joys of being present in appreciation with enthusiastic explorers.
As with 'this & that' there is a difference feeling between “exploring” and “searching.”
When young I explored new places and had new experiences. I decided where to go and how to proceed. It was an adventure, the thrill in discovering new places and seeing new things. But something strange happened. I discovered that my cub scout knife is Lost! Was it left behind or what? You search your memory, then your pockets (George Carlin searches in the frozen avocado dip for his lost keys-they just might have fallen in the freezer)You go back over the same terrain, retracing your steps, but now you are in the mental state of the searcher. You look here & there, your desperation brings you to the edge of tears. Perhaps you offer a prayer or two. (Dear Lord I’ll do anything...and then the begging and bribing if you just lead me to my missing…)
Your lost. Life is no longer an adventure. The thrill and excitement are suppressed by the anguish you feel. There is a filter over your eyes that turn everything into a disappointment. New experiences and potential opportunities present themselves, but they are not what you are looking for.
Even if you succeed in finding the item, the trauma of having lost it may persist. If it does, you stop exploring or searching and begin protecting. Until a person recovers the PLAYFULNESS OF EXPLORING, most of their deliberate actions will be motivated by a desire to find, to protect or to avoid something. We have become to motivated by fear.
Are we expolring or just searching, you decide.

For years I have worked toward having direct experiences and original thought(s). The concepts fed each other, or led to each other. They were not quite as rare as a unicorn.
Occasionally I’d have an original thought and voila’, I have a direct experience (DE). Or I free attention and have a direct experience, and an original thought (OT) pops.
Perhaps I am being over simple, I am Gary Smith, one of the thousands of Gary Smiths’ inhabiting the US of A, a simple soul, seeming cloned to consume in the media mainstream of the matrix, bred to do what has always been done. Nice likable guy, pretending to blah, blah.
“Gary, Gary not a bit contrary,” my eighth grade teacher wrote in my junior high yearbook. I didn’t know what contrary meant, so I got a dictionary; figured he felt I was ordinary, not different. I was like everyone else. I had wanted to be like everyone else, but that was boring, so I grew some hair, painted my tennis shoes purple and became a rebel seeking a cause.
I did a lot of seeking, some looking and much later, my seeking evolved inot exploring, and I defined my new treasures as Direct Experience and Original Thought.
DE has no cliché police or spin doctors commentating. DE can’t be a habit, or memory, or rerun ‘been there done that.’ It’s not pretending. If I experience without judging, categorizing, condoning, intoning, but DIRECTLY feel, see, sense, smell, hear, this moment, then its mine, I can create from here.
Presence becomes a present.
OT is more than ‘another way to look at a thing’, exaggeration, or plagiarism, but an epiphany, insight or breaking the bubble of ‘same old same old' (soso)It’s inspiring.
It inspired me to the Original Thought and Direct Experience new dance tune, with a great beat. You can waltz, tango or slow dance with a partner, or find a new buddi, or solo.
I have found the need to balance a rhythm in me.
How does my rhythm keep feeding DE and create OT?
My aerobic stepping class keeps me into the rhythm of direct experience. I play the balancer where the magic extra moment in each second, each musical beat, becomes infinity in which to practice and perform in the timeless moment of dance. This class is also a Checking Back Inn. Step class is a great place to work on attention.
The landscaping and gardening of our Crockett Lovenest keep me feeling the rhythm of nature. Weeding, fertilizing, watering as metaphor and care for(s) of the rhythm adding emotion too the physical. It’s caring for my animal and the planet. It keeps me in touch with others, creates results, and the sharing and caring of “work being love made visible.” The beauty and transformation form rhythms of change and a dance that counterpoints the contrary. I must think, decide, act, and spend much time listening.
My life does play to the muse of happiness. Playing with the arts, nourishing the mind and the body.

Our peach tree
feeds the two large bucks
who rule our street at 3 am,
leaving peach pits as reminders
of Stag Nation.
Playing peaches picker, pie producer, pitching peach pits, preaching peach poems, practicing prose, with a dollop of French vanilla ice cream, are a Direct Experience of bliss.
Writing Avatar Fry Days blogs keep me inspired by inspiring others. How else can Gary, Gary not be ordinary?
Namaste
Gary