rowan berries

I am eating some berries from a rowan tree, or mountain ash. These bright red berries come in great abundance at this time of year. I have never eaten them in previous years, but this year for the first time I have decided to try them. They taste rather sour, or bitter, but at the same time they taste healthy, vital, full of vitamins. This bizarre combination of something rather distasteful and at the same time tasty, unpleasant and yet nourishing, this is a reflection of so many things in life. We feel often torn between a desire – a desire for something – and a desire against something, the same thing. So many things seem to be rather unpleasant and yet needed to remain healthy. This is the normal way people live in the world, rather torn, rather ambivalent.

But eating these rowan berries, I notice a strange phenomenon. My taste has changed so that in just a day or two, the berries taste delicious to me. I no longer feel them to be sour. I no longer have any negative reaction. No distaste arises when I’m eating them. So I’ve come to really appreciate these berries. I can eat them with total satisfaction, and that totality is an integration in the mind, an integration in the being. This integrated state is the way to be in the world, it’s the way we should taste everything, with the whole of our being going in one direction, no longer torn, no longer ambivalent, but with totality. This is the gift that these little rowan berries are giving me today.