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Showing posts from 2015

Creation and Fly fishing

From the bank of a river I watched my partner fly fishing with the fluid movements and rhythmic motions of a longtime fisherman.  I realized then, that he was meditating with eyes open, fully present and aware.  Amidst the cadence of water flowing over well worn stones and the soft whir of a rod in motion, I understood fly fishing as an ideal metaphor for conscious creation.  In fly fishing, the weight of the line carries the fly to the fish. In manifestation, the weight of our focus carries our intention to the field of infinite possibility.  In fly fishing, the fly rod and line (and thus the fly) go in the direction that the rod tip is pointed during the cast.  Similarly when we create, it’s the clarity of our focus that determines the aim of our intention.  Attention is flexible, giving us the ability to focus the mind or soften and widen it. When we center our attention on what we want and feel it in real time, NOW , we are building the energy and frequency necessary to matc

ghost in the mirror

I had a conversation with a dear friend about the limiting views we have of ourselves and the voice in our heads that serves no purpose other than to perpetuate the past and our outmoded perceptions and beliefs.   I had obviously trespassed too far into bliss and the mind needed to assert itself with alacrity and gusto.  I spent several days grappling with the unpredictability of this body and wrestling with the fierce demon of dysmorphia that assured me in no uncertain terms that I was horribly unattractive, flawed and therefore unlovable.  I knew, as I often know, that the voice was just a symptom of pain arising and nothing more.  The shadows don't need my stalwart efforts to shove them back into the recesses of unconsciousness, rather they are arising in order that they might meet with the full weight of my love and fade in the light of my awareness...but holy hell the ghosts in the mirror can be terrifying in all their pomp and circumstance.  It's laughable when we

Perspective

Sometimes life gives you wide vistas and sometimes small gems, but all of it, no matter how ordinary or sublime, is an expansive invitation into this beautiful moment… a gentle mirror (or occasionally a slap in the jaw) reminding us, in a million subtle and bombastic ways, that we are the capacity to experience it all. Now that is something to be grateful for.

God seeds

We are all God seeds.  Cells in the infinite body of consciousness.  Not separate and apart from that which we are but intimately one with all life everywhere.  In the dream of separation we float in the great waters of truth but imagine a ME separate and apart, longing for more, longing for other, longing to wake up, longing for home.  Not knowing, in all our reaching and contriving, controling and predicting, that the me so intent on waking, never wakes up.  It is awakened from.  Not in some violent transcendence of self, but in the same innocent, eye (I) open, waking from sleep.

seeking

Seeking. At some point, along every great journey, we come to see that it is not the destination that matters but every step along the way.  We remember that there is no "path", no grand design sprinkled with glitter  and marked by a giant neon sign announcing "my purpose this way". We lay down our path by walking. Seeking, with all its incumbent strategies of fortune and fame, youth and vigor, me and mine, meditation and austerity, enlightenment and greatness, is simply a distraction from this one and only Now.  It's a subtle aggression against our life, as it is, in this moment.  It isn't another something to be overcome.  That would require a great deal of tilting at windmills with Quixote inspired absurdity. No. When we see this moment as it is, complete with it's vulnerability, uncertainties, unknown variables and obtuse horizons, we arrive in the only place we can ever truly call home. Now.

hiking

When my mind begins it's whirl of thought and constricts my heart, I take to the woods.  The moment my feet hit the trail, I experience a softening.  I don't mean to suggest that I leave my chatty companion back at the jeep.  No, she comes along, but conditioned thought is no longer the object of my attention; my eyes are too busy beholding beauty, my ears too rapt with the song of bird and the rustle of wind across the horizon, my nose is held captive by the smell of sunshine and earth, pine tree and sweat and my hands are too busy caressing the tall fronds of grass and rolling sage.  With so much beauty and grandeur, the little rumblings of a busy mind just don't garner a lot of hype. And as I walk, my breath slows, my mind clears, my heart opens and I surrender, again and again, to this moment, as it is, right now.

Love

  For those of you who know and love me, it will be sufficient to say that I am happy.  Not superficial, moon-eyed happy, but a deep resevoir of happy that overflows with contentment.  It tastes like gratitude. “The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.” -Rumi

You are it.

Be Present? In enlightenment teachings, you may hear the phrase, “be present.” But if you look around, ‘you’ are the present moment. ‘You’ are not separate from it. ‘You’ are life itself. The only thing obscuring this realization is mental and emotional activity that continuously tries to move away from this moment into a dream of past, future, and resistance to now. The notion that you are separate from life is a creation of thought. The personal will who tries to ‘be present’ and bring about a personal awakening is the dream. Instead of doing anything, including trying to be present, gently notice what is already being done. A dream of self is already being told. Thought is replaying the past, searching into future, and resisting what is in this moment, all for the benefit of a “me.” That mind movement is a dream of control. It is a dream of personal will. Suffering and searching arise when you buy into the illusion of control and personal will. When the personal will is

falling in love with life

In nature, I find myself standing in awestruck amazement before the craggly, twisted, worn and weathered aspects of life.  Their seasoned journey through time tends to bring me to my proverbial knees. As I pass through check-out lines, I see evidence of our cultures limited notion of beauty, with it's deification of the unmarred, slender, frizzless, lineless ease of youth.  We internalize these messages but seldom seem to ask ourselves on a foundational level if that has been our experience. I see beauty in the bud, fresh with promise.  It's easily discerned in that springtime rush. But it is no less apparent in life's fading from fullness, when the passage of time is discernible in the history on the surface of a tree, a face, a stone, a faded bloom. In that wide embrace, nothing is outside beauties door and my heart breaks open, time and again, falling in love with life itself.

gratitude

 Gratitude.

Blooming

This dance of life has long been a conundrum to me, the ultimate zen koan. I tried hard to make sense of it all...to understand...to comprehend...to manage...ah yes... and to control... until something quite wonderful happened.  I came to the undeniable truth that I can't.  Whew!  In fact, that's the great comedic relief to the whole dog and pony show.  It's beyond our thinking.  We can lean into life, trust it and surrender. Not in some great sweeping, once-and-for-all enlightened " Aha!   I got this"  but in the ordinary moment-to-moment, leaning back into life. We can drop the opacity of self and embrace the unknown with all the hot messiness of our own misplaced longing. After all this time, all these books, all these workshops, all this practice and all this seeking it's humbling to admit that it's just not that complicated.  It doesn't require years of ascetic devotion or my poetically, pious pretense masquerading as " I'm gonna get

True love

True love is like the love of a parent for a child: even though you feel frustrated at times, this love is constant. It is similar to life, which might drive you bananas at times or be really nice.  This love is beyond the good moments and the difficult moments, which continue to happen. When you have awakened to this love that transcends every good and bad moment, a radical revolution occurs in your relationship with life itself.  This is a love that has no opposite, such as hate, but is present through everything, in all moments.  When you realize this, it is a revolution because, when you see that this love that you are loves the unlovable, loves what you're not supposed to love or what you were not allowed to love culturally, and is not paying attention to the separating rules of ego, you realize this is a different kind of love.  ~ From:  Emptiness Dancing , by Adyashanti. 

Now

“Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.”     - Eckhart Tolle

light

We can experience countless sunrises and still fear the unknown darkness, lurking in the hidden recesses beyond our visible encounters.  Every day we experience the sun's birth afresh and fears are relegated once more to the periphery.  Yet in the dark of night, when our senses are blinded by the limitations of our perception, is it possible to lean back into the unseen, unknown and trust that all is well.  All is well. Gautama Buddha is credited with saying, "Be a light unto yourself".  Perhaps if we linger in that uncertainty, when all our senses are screaming for proof, and rest, even in the midst of our fearful imaginings, we will find ourselves self-luminous.  Lighting our own way in the dark. Perhaps.

Laugh anyway

I used to live in  A cramped house with confusion  And pain. But then I met the Friend And I started getting drunk  And singing all Night. Confusion and pain Started acting nasty, Making threats, With talk like this, "If you don't stop 'that'--- All that fun--- We're   Leaving." - Hafiz

Find a Better Job

Now That All your Worry Has proved such an Unlucrative Business, Why Not Find a better Job. - Hafiz

eyes to see

When I was very young, I heard a story and it goes something like this: There are two birds that fly over the deserts of California, the condor and the hummingbird.  If you ask the condor what the desert is like, it will describe death and carnage, blood, rot and decay.  If you ask the hummingbird what the desert is like, it will describe flowers dripping with sweet nectar and an unspeakable beauty hidden everywhere. Life is like that.  We find exactly what we are looking for.  We think it's the other way around.  We think it's random and "happening to us".  But the lens of our particular perception changes everything we see and all we experience. We literally find what we are looking for.  But we can't trick the looker.  All our positive thinking-new age-psycho babble doesn't focus the lens, our beliefs do. Life isn't "out there" happening to us.  It is in here, happening in us. If that's the case, perhaps we can stop our victim

natures invitation

Nature is sanctuary... home... life. When I am surrounded by the natural world it is easier to discard my sense of pompous separation and acknowledge my interconnection with life's many disguises. When in nature it's ridiculous to assume a Pollyanna approach to its brilliance, waxing on about its kindness.  I know that I don't understand it. I know that I must remain open and alert to the possibilities arising in each moment. Nature demands respect and careful observation. Nature demands that we come to our senses. Literally. And practice once more our neglected sense of: smell as the scent of pine, wildflower, rain, moose, earth and wind speaks its olfactory dialog with our nose.   taste as our tongue receives the fresh tangy air of a pine forest.   hearing as we silence our cellphones and internal chatter long enough to listen and hear the rustle of wind in trees and the various sound each plant and tree and flower makes as it moves in conversation with

summer

Three of my best best reasons for smiling throughout the long days and warm nights are as follows: Bodhi, nature and our beloved little dog too... and then there is just the big joy of SUMMER.  Ahhh.

love-listen

Listening is loving. If we listened with our whole bodies, what might we hear?  With our senses, with our hearts and with our presence?  You can not actually deeply listen and think at the same time. Stillness and yet openess.  Spacious benevolence. Love.

letting go

Nothing good can be lost." - Steinbeck If that were the case, how might we live differently? I'll tell you one thing for certain, I'd sure as hell let go, lean in and rest back a whole lot more.

love

"What is love but the acceptance of the other, whatever he is." --  Anaïs Nin  to Henry Miller I have been contemplating love, real love and not just the "feeling" of love, for a long time now. Most of us are infatuated with an ideal of love or "mate" and not with human beings.  We set up arbitrary parameters saying, "I will love you if... or as long as...".  These parameters provide an artifice of safety from which we expect our beloved other to protect us from all the many unpleasant feelings arising within the scope of intimate interaction. When our ideal of other does not coincide with the fact of other, we unabashedly turn toward our beloved  with a vengeance, prepared to crucify him or her for imperfections and abandon our beloved, thirsty and trodden underfoot, along the dusty path of disappointment.  Joseph Campbell wrote,  "Perfection is inhuman. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love – and I mean love, not lust

growth

We are always growing.  I have decided that I prefer to grow without bystanders shouting their suggestions in my ear or throwing shit balls at me promising compost.  But we are always growing.

heart hiding

The heart hides in folds of thought, belief, protections and projections.  It hides its spendor in the dark of it own making and mistakes the darkness for reality and "necessary". Then we open, sometimes just the smallest fissure in the veneer of self, and our undeniable splendor breaks free.  

eight and a half

Bodhi celebrated his half birthday on June 26th (a fun bonus of having your birthday on December 26th).  To celebrate we hiked in our mutual wonderland of nature and enjoyed cake and Bodhi's favorite noodles for supper upon our return. As he ate his Ramen noodles and extolled the many virtues of said noodles, Bodhi looked askance at me, "I LOVE salad too!  I wonder what Ramen tastes like with lettuce in it?"  He tossed in a few chopped leaves of romaine, stirred and tasted.  "Nope.  No good mom.  I guess some things taste better on their own and not so good when they are mixed together." Bodhi was quiet for a minute, thinking.  Then he said, "Mom, people are like that too.  Some people are beautiful and fun but when you put them together...bleh.  Owen and I are kind of like that.  We don't mix well but we are both good on our own."  He quietly contemplated a moment longer, before turning to me, "Mom, you just haven't found a man tha

perspective

Sometimes we need to look after the flower of our lives by adopting a different perspective.  Tonight as I talked with two dear friends they shared a fresh vantage, full of love and respect.  It's easy to take for granted the impact we have on one another.  Don't.