Skip to main content

This is it

Back when I was guru hopping, I went to see yet another visiting, living saint in my hair-on-fire pursuit of... what was I pursuing? I don't even remember. Enlightenment? Freedom from suffering?  Some hoped for supreme good-enoughness. When I arrived the sanctuary was draped in flowers and shrouded in silence.  All the devotees were gnawing on greens and clad in white with a sort of pained, trying-hard-to-be-spiritual expression that looked more like constipation combined with penitent guilt and sadness, overlaid with a thin smile.  In a very short time I realized I needed to leave before I began stripping down to sexy nothingness, swigging whiskey and cursing like a sailor in some existential rant to balance the multitudes.
For all the seekers out there, I have a gentle and groundbreaking reminder... there is no spiritual journey...
no far shore on which to arrive...
T H I S   I S   I T.
I know that pisses the mind off.
F**k you Angelina!
Minds are conditioned to be dissatisfied with what IS... our dissatisfaction keeps our attention chasing the next almighty carrot.  But are we ever really dissatisfied with the moment or just our ideas about it and all the thoughts that swirl around it.  Sometimes it gets so damn twisted its hard to see which way is up.
The spiritual bug bit me when I was a wee little thing and I shudder to think of the years I walked around trying hard to be good enough and feeling utterly miserable and unworthy.  I cringe at how many people got the, "Fuck you I'm on a spiritual journey" message. It takes some of us a while to realize that how we show up in this moment and as this moment IS the whole shebang.
Does that mean our shit doesn't stink and our face beams with beatific oblivion? 
No thank you.  
It just means we are showing up as fully as we are able, moment-by-moment, right here where we are and dropping the bullshit of "who I am" that interferes with that honest arrival.
It's like being a lover in love for the first time, with the teacup steaming nearby, the sing-song bird talk out the window, the clickety-clack of a keyboard under fingers and the tick-tock clock amidst the warmth of a summer breeze. Fully present we are simply a lover in love with this moment... the journey is secondary... 95% of our attention is consumed by the breathtaking, simplicity of here and now and 5% is aware of our left foot on the ground.
This is it... clad in white or stretched out in primal nakedness... this is it.

Comments

Nancye said…
You said it girl!
Love you,
Nancye

Popular posts from this blog

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...