Awakening - Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

June 21 - The Presence of God

~I looked a hundred times and all I was saw dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air.~

Consider how the sun continually lights our daily world, yet we cannot see light except in what it touches. Though the sun burns constantly and holds everything living within its pull, though it sends its power across millions of miles, it is unseen for all that way, until it hits a simple blade of grass or makes the web of a spider a golden patch of lace.

In the same way, the presence of God powerfully moves between us unseen, only visible in the brief moments we are lighted, in those enlivened moments we know as love.

For just as we can look at that spider web and never see its beauty until it reveals itself in sudden light, we can look upon the nearest face, again and again, never seeing the beauty in each other, until one or both of us is suddenly revealed. Spirits show themselves in just this way, or rather, our gentleness of heart allows us to see and be seen.

It makes our search for love a humble one. For what is there to do but grow in the open and wait.

 

June 22 - Spiritual Fishing

~Honesty is the net by which we fish the deep.~

Though we are taught to make plans and keep to them, and though we work our way through predesigned courses of study to receive credentials and degrees, our attempts at real living don't happen this way.

For me, finding where I fit in the world feels a lot like spiritual fishing. The vast, mysterious ocean of experience keeps calling, and whether it is by buckets of question or nets of honesty, I keep hauling up food from the days. I keep hauling in shells and pearls and seaweed from a common depth that no one can see, and then I spend time cleaning what I've found and hearing what it has to say.

In this way, everyone alive must fish, and this requires stillness and patience and a willingness to drift. For we never know where deep things live. Even our effort to know ourselves resembles this process, for much of who we are lives cleanly below the surface, and we each must be nourished from what lives below, if we are to survive.

Paradoxically, our essential feelings and personal truths live below like fish, not wanting to be caught. But spiritual fishing yields spiritual food, and the secret nourishment of eating what lives within us is that to eat what lives in our shell we must open that shell, and eating what swims below our surface lets us see with the perspective of the deep.

In truth, every person I have ever loved and every path I have been called to has shown itself to me after fishing in the waters of my spirit, which, entered deep enough, is the ocean of all spirit. I believe we are all connected there, and only by this communion - of bringing up and taking in what lives within us - can we hope to uncover our common purpose of being. In committing to this honest practice, wisdom becomes that very good net of mindful heart, through which we rinse and claim the smallest of shells, those hidden casings that hold both food and pearls.

 

June 23 - Fame or Peace

~Rather the flying bird, leaving no trace, than the going beast, marking the earth.~ - Fernando Pessoa

Much of our anxiety and inner turmoil comes from living in a global culture whose values drive us from the essence of what matters. At the heart of this is the conflict between the outer definition of success and the inner value of peace.

Unfortunately, we are encouraged, even trained, to get attention when the renewing secret of life is to give attention. From performing well on tests to positioning ourselves for promotions, we are schooled to believe that to succeed we must get attention and be recognized as special, when the threshold to all that is extraordinary in life opens only when we devote ourselves to giving attention, not getting it. Things come alive for us only when we dare to see and recognize everything as special.

The longer we try to get attention instead of giving it, the deeper our unhappiness. It leads us to move through the world dreaming of greatness, needing to be verified at every turn, when feelings of oneness grace us only when we verify the life around us. It makes us desperate to be loved, when we sorely need the medicine of being loving.

One reason so many of us are lonely in our dream of success is that instead of looking for what is clear and true, we learn to covet what is great and powerful. One reason we live so far from peace is that instead of loving our way into the nameless joy of spirit, we think fame will soothe us. And while we are busy dreaming of being a celebrity, we stifle our need to see and give and love, all of which opens us to the true health of celebration.

It leaves us with these choices: fame or peace, be a celebrity of celebrate being, work all our days to be seen or devote ourselves to seeing, build our identiry on the attention we can get or find our place in the beauty of things by the attention we can give.

 

June 24 - Questions Put to the Sick - II

~When was the last time you danced? - Question put to the sick by a Native American Medicine Man

The beginning of dance is giving gesture to what we feel. While this is very obvious and basic to most children, it remains for those of us schooled to live in our heads.

The ongoing effort to dance, to give gesture to what we feel and experience, is ultimately healing because, as riverbeds are continually shaped by the water that moves through them, living beings are continually shaped by the feelings and experiences that move through them. If there is no water moving through, the riverbed dries up and crumbles. Likewise, if there is no feeling moving through the body, the being at the center of that body will crumble.

More often, though, there is too much to give gesture to, and we fail to move these feelings through our bodies. In truth, much of our inner sickness comes from the buildup and pressure of all that is kept in. The ongoing act of releasing that inner buildup is what spiritual practices call embodiment.

There are many ancient practices intended to help us live more fully in our bodies, including the Chinese art of meditaion movement know at t'ai chi and the Buddhist art of space awareness known as maitri, to name just two. Once unlocked, giving gesture to our inwardness not only frees us from becoming pressurized, but the gestures, once allowed out, teach us how to dance further into our own lives.

Still, most of us learn to feel, trap, and snuff our feelings in our hearts, and if they won't go away, we try to hush them with our minds. If they still persist, we often feel them throb in our temples or burn in our gut.

In contrast to the painful layering of heart, mind, and body, embodiment itself is nothing more or less than feeling the wound or lip you touch in your hand and mind and heart at once. Embodiment is allowing our heart, mind, and body to exist as one miraculous skin.

 

June 25 - Stems and Roots

~The Love we show saves the Love we hide, the way a sprig in sun feeds its unseen root.~

Even though I believe in living in the open, parts of me hide. I can't help it. But what I can help is which parts of me - the open or the hidden - run my life. What I can rely on is this inexplicable knowing that when I am in the open, life nourishes even those parts so sorely hidden.

Just as green stems in spring stay connected to their darker roots, just as the roots grow when the stems do, my compassion soothes my fear where I can't see. Unknown to me, my love feeds the underisde of my confusion. The light I take in keeps the roots of my soul alive.

We become so preoccupied with what we are not able to address, what we are not able to mend, what we are not able to leave behind, that we forget that whatever we are in the light of day is slowly, but surely, healing the rest of us.

 

June 26 - The Gift of Prayer

~Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness.... And so, it is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.~ - Gandhi

This great spiritual teacher reminds us that prayer of the deepest kind is more a pledge of gratitude for what has already been received than a request or plea for something not yet experienced. Such an effort refreshes the soul.

Implicit in Gandhi's instruction is the need to surrender to our lives here on Earth. By admitting our weaknesses, we lay down all the masks we show the world and as we do so, what is holy floods in.

I once saw a blind man rocking endlessly in the sun, an unstoppable smile on his face. Not a word was uttered. To me, he was a priest, a shaman, and his whole being was praying and shouting in silence that the day, beyond his blindness, was happily enough.

This is what the heart knows beyond all words, if we can find a way to listen: that beyond our small sense of things a magnificent light surrounds us, more that nayone could ask for. This is what prayer as gratitude can open us to.

 

June 27 - The Monkey and the River

~It is said a great Zen teacher asked an initiate to sit by a stream until he heard all the water had to teach. After days of bending his mind around the scene, a small monkey happened by, and, in one seeming bound of joy, splashed about in the stream. The initiate wept and returned to his teacher, who scolded him lovingly, "The monkey heard. You just listened."

With the best of intentions, we often build false careers of studying the river without ever getting wet. In this way, we can ponder great philosophy without ever telling the truth, or analyze our pain without ever feeling it, or study holy places without ever making where we live sacred. In this way, we can build a cathedral on the water's edge, spending all our time keeping it clean. Or we can count our money or say our prayers, without ever spending anything or ever feeling God's presence. In this way, we can play music or make love skillfully without ever feeling the music or our passion.

The apprentice was brought to tears because the monkey, slapping and yapping its way in the river, had landed in a moment of joy, and the aprentice knew that all his reverence and devotion and meditation hadn't brought him the joy of a monkey.

The river, of course, is the ongoing moment of our living. It is the current that calls us to inhabit our lives. And no matter how close we come, no matter how much we get from staying close with a sensitive heart, nothing will open us to joy but entering the stream.

I once was on a screened-in porch on a lake I used to visit every summer for twenty years. My friend and I were watching it rain, as we had done countless times over the years. Suddenly, like that simple and beautiful monkey, my friend bounded up, slapped the screen door open, tracked his clothes, and jumped into the rain-filled lake.

I watched like the apprentice, feeling the pain of always being dry, and then I shed my clothes and jumped in too.

There we were: in the center of the lake, water from above in our mouths, in our eyes, pelting us, water entering water, lives entering their living. Each pelt of rain, on us and in the lake, uttering... joy, joy, joy.

 

June 28 - All That We Are Not

~Discernment is a process of letting go of what we are not.~ - Father Thomas Keating

I can easily over-identify with my emotions and roles, becoming what I feel: I am angry.... I am divorced.... I am depressed....I am a failure....I am nothing but my confusion and my sadness....

No matter how we feel in any one moment, we are not just our feelings, our roles, our traumas, our prescription of values, or our obligations or ambitions. It is so easy to define ourselves by the moment of struggle we are wrestling with. It is a very human way, to be consumed by what moves through us.

In contrast, I often think of how Michelangelo sculpted, how he saw the sculpture waiting, already complete, in the uncut stone. He would often say that his job was to carve away the excess, freeing the thing of beauty just waiting to be released.

It helps me to think of spiritual descernment in this way. Facing ourselves, uncovering the meaning in our hard experiences, the entire work of consciousess speaks to a process by which we sculpt away the excess, all that we are not; finding and releasing the gesture of soul that is already waiting, complete, within us. Self-actualization is this process applied to our life on Earth. The many ways we suffer, both inwardly and outwardly, are the chisels of God freeing the thing of beauty that we have carried within since birth.

 

June 29 - A Little Fish Story

~The instant fish accept that they will never have arms, they grow fins.~

I confess I was surprised to wake one day with this knowing about fish. It seems a koan or fiddle to decipher. After living with it awhile, I've come to feel that it holds another key to faith: that before we can be what we are meant to be, we must accept what we are not. This form of discernment asks us to let go of those grand fantasies that take us out of our nature, that make us work to be famous instead of loving, or perfect instead of compassionate.

Yet the instant we can accept what is not in our nature, rather than being distracted by all we think we could or should be, then all our inner resources are free to transform us into the particular self we are aching to be.

This act of acceptance is a risk that frees us because we can't find the growth that awaits us until we give up what is against our very nature. It is this surrender, without knowing what will happen next, that allows our lives to truly unfold.

 

Sorry for the delay in the postings for those of you still checking in here.

Events took me to a negative head space and I am worn down so it is definitely time to push the negative stuff out and start filling my brain space with more positive things.

So grab yourself a bevergage, get comfortable and we will get caught up. ;D

 

June 30 - Looking Away

~In exchange for the promise of security, many people put a barrier between themselves and the adventures in consciousness that could put a whole new light on their personal lives.~ - June Singer

The pull into the truth of things is very strong. Often the only way to resist it is to deny what we are seeing, to pretend our lives do not have to grow or change. Yet when we do this, our spirit, which doesn't know how to pretend, keeps moving. For as the Isa Upanishad says, "The Spirit is swifter than the mind." We are then, painfully, like a dog at the end of its leash, staked and running at the same time, pretending we don't know any better.

Interestingly, we tend to think of ignorance as an innocent not-knowing, but the Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa points out that to ignore someone or something is a willful looking away, a grave act of denying what is already conscious. Trungpa suggest that the willful act of looking away is a crime against the essence of things that costs us dearly.

When we find our spirit on the move when we are pretending otherwise, the tension can be ripping. It leaves us all with the need to learn how to discern between an innocent not-knowing and a willful looking away. This is an inner knowing that can determine whether we will live like a dog at the end of our leash or whether we will run free through the grasses of life.

 

July 1 - The Heart's Blossom

~Courage is the heart's blossom.~

All courage is threshold crossing. Often there is a choice: to enter the burning building or not, to speak the truth or not, to stand before oneself without illusion or not. But there is another sort of courage we are talking about here - the kind when afterward, the courageous are puzzled to be singled out as brave. They often say, I had no choice. I had to run in that building for that child. Or I had to quit my job or I would have died.

Despite all consequence, there is an inevitable honoring of what is true, and at this deep level of inner voice, it is not a summoning of will, but a following of true knowing.

My own life is a trail of such following. Time and again, I have heard deep callings that felt inevitable and which I could have ignored, but only at great risk of something essential perishing.

It was this honoring of what is true that guided me through my cancer experience: saying no to brain surgery and yes to rib surgery, saying yes to chemo and no to chemo. Each decision appeared both courageous and illogical to my doctors. Since then, I have been called heroic for surviving, which is like championing an eagle for finding its nest, and I have been condemned as selfish for seeking the Truth, which is like blaming a turtle for finding the deep.

Courage of this sort is the result of being authentic. It is available to all and its reward, far more than respect, is the opening of joy.

 

This is a nice one.

 

July 2 - Wrong View

~The mind composed of ignorance or wrong view suffers from spiritual disease; it sees falsely. Seeing falsely causes it to think falsely, speak falsely, and act falsely. You will see immediately that everyone, without exception, has the spiritual disease.~ - Ajahn Buddhadasa

In Pali, the ancient source language of Buddhism and Hinduism, the word for mental illness means "wrong view." We must be careful not to interpret this righteously, as in, if you see things differently than I, you are wrong. The wisdom here lies in the revelation that our wellness of mind hinges on how clear and true we remain to the pulse of life itself.

At heart, our mental health comes out of the sacred relationship between our deepest Self and the very source of life. The moment we distort, limit, or rationalize things away from what they truly are, we start to experience the spiritual disease that Ajahn Buddhadasa speaks of.

This Buddhist teacher from Thailand reminds us that these passages of imbalance and blurry thinking are unavoidable. They cannot be circumvented, the way you might drive around a pothole. No, these distortions can only be minimized and repaired. So we must accept that by being human, we will distort the gift of life, and thus we must commit to learning how to refresh our relationship with what is sacred.

Quite often, to uphold "a wrong view," we build and maintain "a wrong way." For example, when younger and sorely in need of approval and love, I hurt so much inside that I assumed that life was somewhere "over there," not where I was. Once believing this, I put all my energy into getting over there. But after a hard journey, I was blocked. The people over there wouldn't let me in. Now I had to figure out who was the gatekeeper and what were his rules, and now there was the doing of all these tasks to satisfy the gatekeeper, so I might be let in. It took me years to realize that no matter the pain, life is always where we are. Nothing is being withheld. All that misguided effort was built on a wrong view. As Buddhadasa says "Everyone, without exception, has the spiritual disease" while underneath, the undistorted life is softly waiting. Given this, we each must make a ritual not of seeing rightly, but completely.

 

July 3 - I-ing and My-ing

~The shore thirsts, but does not own the ocean that keeps it soft. So, too, the heart and all it loves.~

In the ancient Indian language Pali, the word ahamkara means "I-ing," having or making the feeling of "I." The word mamamkara means "My-ing," having or making the feeling of "mine." In Buddhism, the feelings of I- ing and My-ing are considered so dangerous and poisonous that they are seen as yet another cause of spiritual disease.

This tells us that as soon as we start to separate what cannot be separated, our mental health will suffer. This tells us that the dearest things in life cannot be owned, but only shared. In truth, we share this mystery called life the way sea creatures share the ocean. While each fish has its nest and small patch of bottom to gum, none can live without the deep that slows through them all.

We are no different. Yes, we can own a watch or a car, but no one can own the love or peace or energy of life that must flow through our hearts if we are to survive.

As soon as we devote ourselves to I'ing and My'ing, we are drawn into a life of distraction from what really matters. Once we commit to making things "mine," we unleash a career of gathering and storing. Now there is the need to wall in and maintain. Now there is an endless sorting through the things of the world that could be mine. Now the attaining. Now the insuring. Now there is possessiveness and jealousy and envy, and the need to protect, and the right to bear arms. Now there is the secret want to get what others have, and the right to sue. This I-ing and My-ing can sicken the strongest soul.

If often contaminates how we love. How many times have we all asked our lovers for the reassurance, "Are you mine?" Even as I write this, I struggle, like you, not to have things, but to make good use of them; not to guard and parcel out my care, but to let the love through. I am, that is for sure. But what is truly mine, beyond this vibrant sense of being alive, that I keep opening to?

 

July 4 - Here and There

~Here is always beneath There.~

I remember sitting for a long time on the edge of a summer lake, watching the far shore. I could see early light flood the water in the distance and this somehow made the other side seem exotic. Every morning I'd sit on my small edge of lake and watch the other side, imagining that a certain mystery awaited me. With each day its call grew larger. Finally, on the seventh day, I had to go there, and, up earlier than usual, I rowed across the lake, beached my small boat, and sat in the exact spot I had been watching.

As I looked about, the aura of otherness I had seen from my daily perch was gone. I was somewhat undone, for though this far shore was beautiful and peaceful, the wet clump of shore I ran my hand through was the same as where I'd begun.

I started to laugh at myself. For looking back at where I'd been sitting every day, I saw early light flood the water in the distance, and now where I'd been living seemed exotic. Now a certain mystery called me back to where I was.

So often we imagine that There is more full of gold than Here. It is the same with love and dreams and the work of our lives. We see the light everywhere but where we are, and chase after what we think we lack, only to find, humbly, it was with us all along.

 

July 5 - Beneath False Hope

~We need to stay current with each other.~ - Angeles Arrien

It has taken a lifetime to understand how easily I can secretly wish for things to change, and in my secrecy prevent true change from happening. For example, I loved a friend for many years who was unable to listen or be kind or patient, and rather than feeling just how much that hurt, I always "hung in there," secretly believing that he would change and grow and one day emerge before my eyes as the friend I always believed he could be.

Well, that didn't happen. I am not saying that change is not possible, but more deeply, that true change, the kind that is self-initiated and lasting, has more chance of happening in a relationship that doesn't hide its shortcomings.

As long as I could dream of my friend as I wanted him to be, it softened the true pain of how we were actually living. Without such truth, neither of us could grow - not he, for having to face the effect of his self-centeredness, and not me, for having to risk saying what I needed.

 

July 6 - To Witness and Hold

~Just as the warmth of summer can make a cricket sing, the quality of being held enlivens the heart.~

We have been battered by modern times into obsessive problem solvers, but as life pares us down into only what is essential, it becomes clear that the deepest sufferings of heart and spirit cannot be solved, only witnessed and held.

I have struggled with this constantly. Just recently, after being away for two weeks, I returned to a tender partner who lovingly uttered, "I really missed you." Instantly, I reacted by scanning for ways to solve the feeling - to limit my travel or call more often. I instantly tried to change my patterns of being away from the relationship, rather than just feel the poignancy of being loved enough to be missed.

Frequently, this reflex to solve, rescue, and fix removes us from the tenderness at hand. For often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from a living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being held, both emotionally and physically.

I'm learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies fail, the strength of love waits in receiving and not negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to change or fix those we love.

 

July 7 - Patience

~I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These are your greatest treasures. Patient with both friend and enemies, you accord with the way things are.~ - Lao-Tzu

Patience is the second of Lao-tzu's central teachings, and it is a hard bit of wisdom to accept, for the place of waiting is always trying and very difficult to live out. Yet, quite honestly, it is waiting that saved my life - clearly the most demanding and rewarding practice I have encountered.

Had I not withstood the confusion and indecision and ambiguity and the pain and alarm of imagining the worst during the endless diagnostic gauntlet, I would never have made it to the right course of treatment that carried me through my experience of cancer. Had I not waited - which is different than avoiding what needs to be done - I would not be able to write these very words to you. For I would have undergone unnecessary procedures that would have severed me from my memory and my ability to speak.

Fear wants us to act too soon. But patience, hard as it is, helps us outlast our preconceptions. This is how tired soldiers, all out of ammo, can discover through their inescapable waiting that they have no reason to hurt each other.

It is the same with tired lovers and with hurtful and tiresome friends. Given enough time, most of our enemies cease to be enemies, because waiting allows us to see ourselves in them. Patience devastates us with the truth that, in essence, when we fear another, we fear ourselves; when we distrust another, we distrust ourselves; when we hurt another, we hurt ourselves; when we kill another, we kill ourselves.

So when hurt or afraid or confused, when feeling urgent to find your place on this Earth, hard as it is, wait ... and things as you fear them will, more often than not, shrink into the hard irreplaceable beauty of things as they are ... of which you have no choice but to be a part.

 

July 8 - Moments, Not Words

~Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! And shine!~ - Buddha

When I think of those who've taught me how to love, moments come to mind, no words. As far back as grade school, when Lorrie wouldn't stop spinning when recess ended. Spinning to a deeper, higher call, she laughed, her little head back, her arms wide, trying to hug the world.

Then, the day Kennedy was shot, there was my choir teacher, Mr. P., crying for a man he didn't know, letting us go home, but I came back to hear him play a sad piano to what he thought was an empty room. And Grandma holding my little hands open on her basement steps, saying, "These are the oldest things you own."

Or the changing faces I would wake to at the foot of my bed while recovering from surgery. Or my father-in-law watering black walnuts six inches high that wouldn't be fully grown for a hundred and fifty years. Or my oldest friend who always listens like a lake.

Though words can carry love, they often point to it. It is the picking up of something that has dropped, and the giving of space for someone to discover for themselves what is means to be human, and the forgiving of mistakes when they realize that they are.