Mood Recipes: The Inner Kitchen

Mood Recipes: The Inner Kitchen
If a flower has ingredients, so does a feeling.

I was reading the simple phrase:

A flower is made of its non-flower elements.

Rain from the sky.
Earth from the ground.
Sunlight.

For years I would stop there—sunlight—as though sunlight were somehow the final ingredient.

Then a question arose:

What is sunlight made of?

Sunlight comes from the Sun. But the sun itself is made primarily of hydrogen. Hydrogen is made of smaller and smaller relationships—protons, electrons, particles, energy, vibration.

So even sunlight is made of its non-sunlight elements.

And then it hit me:

Maybe moods work the same way.

A mood can feel solid.

I’m peaceful.
I’m irritated.
I’m sad.

But what if a mood, like a flower, is made of its non-mood elements?

A thought.
A memory.
A sensation.

And when enough of those gather under the right conditions, they begin to radiate as feeling.

Just as hydrogen under pressure gives off light…

thoughts under pressure give off mood.

The interesting part is this:

Many thoughts come and go on their own.

But just like the breath, we have some say in it.

We can add a thought.

A grateful thought.
A humorous thought.
A loving thought.

Not to fight the mood that is here—

but to add an ingredient.

So the next time a mood shows up, instead of asking:

Why am I feeling this?

Try asking:

What are the ingredients in this mood?
And what one ingredient would I like to add?

Because if a flower has its recipe…

and sunlight has its recipe…

perhaps peace, joy, sorrow, and wonder do too.

And perhaps, little by little…

we learn to cook from the inside.