Kirsten Mustain, Author

Yesterday during my ongoing attempts to clear last autumn's debris from my garden, I discovered three hibernating frogs beneath a cache of dead leaves in the rose bed against the house.
They were sluggish and sleepy, unlike some of their cousins who are already vibrating the deep woods with their primal chants. I apologized profusely, put them back where they had been, and covered them again with their wan wood leaf meal blanket.
I love frogs – not only for the sleekness of their skin, but because they are so inscrutable. Their eyes reflect an alien consciousness and one may never know what they are thinking. I find it most beguiling.
My first knowledge of frogs came from a story book in which they wore waist coats, embroidered vests, short trousers and stockings. Probably those frogs carried pocket watches, as well.  Even in those fanciful Victorian pictures, elegantly turned-out amphibians had eyes that were impossible to fathom.
Even as a small child, I knew frogs didn't wear waist coats. Perhaps it is a matter of practicality – one would hardly swim well in a waist coat.
The thing is, I always wished to see a frog in a waist coat – perhaps hopping across the yard as if he had an important engagement - his tails flying out behind.
When I was a young child, someone told me that perception was in the eye of the beholder.
At that time, I thought that was a silly idea. I was certain that the world must be comprised of an objective reality because if I were in control of what I perceived there would, for instance, be frogs leaping about with waistcoats on. Ten-year-old logic.
I have been reading a fascinating book this week written by Edward Malkowski and entitled, The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt. (Malkowski wrote another brilliant book called Before the Pharaohs, which I also highly recommend.)
The first part of The Spiritual Technology of Ancient Egypt deals with quantum physics and consciousness. Without getting into too much technical explanation (please see Malkowski for that), one of the basic theories of quantum physics is that atoms and molecules are comprised mostly of empty space and they do not take on real form unless they are observed.
In other words, the observable world is only fully formed if someone is observing it. Furthermore, as is easily demonstrated simply by asking several people about the same event, what is observed is highly subjective and appears differently to different people.
However, if the observed world was too different in the eyes of different people, it would, obviously create nothing but utter chaos.
There are things that most non-schizophrenic, non-psychotic people agree on – such as the idea that we live on earth. Of course, that very idea has evolved with exploration and study from flat to spherical. So clearly the collective worldview is mutable, which makes eminent sense.
All this to say that, just as it is important to clean out one's garden beds and prepare for new growth, it is also important to keep one's perceptive tools cleared out.
I know I touched on this last week, but it appears that perception, unfettered by negative and destructive thoughts, such as rage and anger, will solidify a far more pleasant "reality."
Perhaps in this lifetime I will never find a frog in a waistcoat, but then again, somewhere out there in the quantum "field of all possibility" (as Deepak Chopra calls it), perhaps there is a frog in a waistcoat just waiting for the right eyes to manifest him.