just be it Just Be It is a practice of presence that recognizes the limits of language. When aware of silence there is a state of inner still alertness. You are wholeheartedly present.

I know so many friends who are deep in their suffering. There’s tremendous stress that comes from their restlessness to be somewhere else or to have a different situation. For some it’s unemployment, giving rise to much space to feed the restless mind. For others it’s a serious illness that challenges their notions of ‘forever’. In all cases, it’s the mind wrestling with the Law of Impermanence. Everything changes, moment by moment. The quality of my life revolves around my willingness and capacity to embrace what comes, to breath in gratitude for the gift of what’s given, and eventually fill with joy and enthusiasm fed from the opportunity to participate within this next arising moment.

When I was young my parents taught me a prayer that forced me to face the reality that some day, I too, would die.

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
And if I die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take

This simple prayer really, really worked for me. I woke with joy and enthusiasm for the gift of another day, no matter what. It gave me the ‘felt’ sense that I am more than my body, that I’m more than this limited time in it. Today I have to ask my friends, “Is what you’re doing to face your suffering working for you?” Most of the time they’re not curious about what’s worked for me. I’m now living sixty years in this body and feel somewhat obligated to share what’s been discovered in truth through 100% working for me. I don’t mean 90% or 80%. This is learning that goes to the core of the soul, touching flesh and bones, resonating with every cell within the body. It’s learning that deepens with every breath, moving in alignment with the belly and the heart. It’s learning verified through aware doing in full alignment to Being. So dear friend, “Is what you’re doing working for you?” If affirmative, I suspect you’ve stopped reading this. If not, where’s your curious mind? Here are a few things that always work for me.

If I want to make space for something new to come in my life I have to be filled with acceptance for what ‘is’. This means filled with acceptance for what I have, do, and experience within this moment.

My life is about ‘waking up’. My awareness to this moment requires work. There’s a practice that commands focus, precision and obedience. My mind is continually creating thoughts of ‘not wanting’, of ‘dis-ease’. I have a choice of trying to avoid this moment or ‘trying to fix’ this moment. Yet, peace comes when I face and accept this moment as opportunity to participate. This gratitude work yields a higher vibration, one of joy. The higher vibration removes obstacles and I can embrace life with energy. By accepting this moment as it ‘is’ I’m no longer separated and a huge space opens to receive what’s new. I’m pulled to be around those who accept, are in joy and especially those who are enthusiastic about the next arising moment.
Be amazed for the grace we’ve received. I’ve had several experiences where my life in this body should have ended. This brush with an end to my time in this body has made me more aware of life. I think anyone who’s lived sixty years has seen how precious our time is within these bodies, has seen or faced death, and now realizes our work is to ‘wake up’. Amazing Grace has become a very special song for me as I fill with joy for waking to the gift of this moment.
Sometimes you may not know what your instrument is. In my early years I thought I knew what would make me happy. My desire mind created a craving. I deeply desired to play guitar and to fly jet planes. I was gifted the trumpet, harmonica, hang gliding, windsurfing, and kiteboarding. I didn’t know how much I wanted children and grand children until I had them. They now feed my joy beyond imagination. My deepening relationship with my wife, mother and grandmother to these children, has found new territory never expected in my early years. It’s softer and more tolerant, and much more accepting to the ‘new beginning’ within this second half of life. Whether it’s family, boardsports, or music, this life is richer because of the joy I find in deepening the rhythm and harmony of our song. Again, it takes focus, precision and obedience to a ‘practice’ that cultivates the bigger sense of belonging. One of my teachers called this Big Hope. A famous trumpet teacher said, “When the mind leaves the tone, obstacles appear.” A Zen teacher said, “Life is about removing obstacles and going deeper.” I now know that intellect knowledge is very shallow. The real learning comes from dedicated attention that absorbs into the flesh and bones, touching every atom and cell within the body. The joy found in this learning is beyond the imagination, limitless, and filled with curiosity/mystery.
In the midst of the restless mind, patience is huge. I’m finally improving my capacity to pause. ‘Hot’ emotions have generally followed a restless, reactive mind. Things always go better when I embrace the ‘feeling’, let go the growing of negative as I witness ‘change’, aim to ‘stillness’, and eventually move to action that at the minimum does not harm. This requires letting go the need to fix, to be right, to defend, and to change a situation or person. It’s once again refining the capacity to rest in uncertainty, seeing the delusion of resolution. It requires returning to the matt for deepening into reception of the ‘rising moment’. Poof! Here it is. Yes! Thank you! Joy returned.

Dear Universe (God, Source, Love)

Thank you for this restless mind and the struggles I’ve engaged to settle you down. From that struggle I’ve come to where I am now. Thank you for showing me the silliness found in attaching to ‘my story’. I’m so happy to rest in faith, love, and the felt sense of Big Hope. Touching the infinite, it’s all dance, letting go the critical mind in joy that I’m better than I was. Thanks for showing me that judgement is my biggest obstacle to love, to the felt sense of belonging. This has given me the strength to stand in the presence of another’s suffering, the courage to move into unfamiliar territory. It’s given me the wisdom to find new space when thoughts arise creating negative emotions. It’s shown me the power in tasting the future ‘now’. Why wait when heaven is here, in ‘this’ moment. The ordinary is no more, nothing taken for granted as all becomes perceived as extraordinary. Thank you for the joy found in cultivating awareness to your Presence within my Being. I am not my stuff. I am not my achievements. I am not separate. I am the tone. I am the breath, the dance, the harmony, the rhythm, the Divine. I can not be separated and consequently relish this moment free from the fear of eventually surrendering this body. Thank you for what Carols Castanada calls ‘the active side of infinity’. Thank you for the taste of peace.

No body— before I had a body and after I let this body go

Some body— I have this body

Some body else— I am aware that I’m connected to more than my body

Take nothing for granted.
You’re entitled to nothing.
Don’t complain.
Cultivate your relationship to this moment with obedience to a diligent practice.
Meditate from the heart or belly.

This work, cultivating depth through deeper living, stewardship and good food, helps slow energy dissipation so you can progress along the way in this body—being/doing to your fullest.

Trees want to grow old and strong and then a beetle comes…or drought. The chances for slowed entropy increase for the tree who’s paid most attention to stewarding those around him, roots reaching out for mutual support.
Mountains exist because their rock was slower to dissipate. Yet, erosion happens, but it’s slower with the commitment of a mountain.
Nothing dies. It just changes. Nothing disappears. It just changes. Nothing stops. It’s forever in motion. Change varies according to our vibration. It’s either fast or slow, high or low.
It’s good to cultivate a higher vibration that smashes our restlessness. It’s good to cultivate space to strengthen our felt sense of Unity. It’s good to break our addiction to busyness, our ‘too busy to Be’ mind set.

More on your body.
Your somebody is your body.
Give it your dedicated stewardship.
Never criticize it. It’s doing everything it can to help you catch up to the beauty of response for the gift of your materialization.
If you have any sense of lack-ness, not enough-ness…Stop it!
This is a ‘dis’ on the grace you’ve been bestowed. It’s a disgrace.
Rather, cultivate gratitude from the grace received to manifest in this body.
Our work is to be in joy. Enjoy is tied to pleasure and the consumptive mind. We’re forever left in the vacuum of desire. Joy is sustainable, even as we move through the earthquakes of life. When ‘in joy’ I make my best effort to love all life, to leave a gentle wake with minimal harm.

Quality living is about cultivating first hand information from the Divine. You can function with second and third hand information, attached to beliefs and dogmas. I want to taste the direct experience, outside the thought mind, aiming to reduce my felt moments of separation.

I have found ‘to be/do’ my best requires opening to the nonverbal/nonlinguistic experience…beyond thought. Best performance of an action commands commitment to steer from thought, any thought. A thought removes us from the power of flow (from coincidence/co-inciding) which is purely nonverbal surrender into the receiving of ‘this’ arising moment in 100% fullness.

For sure, this requires thought, practice, rehearsal, vow, obedience, commitment, etc., before we can surrender in flow, grateful for the unity of action outside of time and space, outside judgment from the critical mind and all its birthed obstacles.

There have been so many wonderful souls who’ve come in and out of my life. This last day of the year is a special time to reflect on them and the gifts they’ve given through their presence. Auld Lang Sign Syne is a beautiful tune that captures the sentiment.

Auld Lang Syne

Having maintained a meditation and yoga practice for the past forty-four years, I have such deep respect for the benefits of these practices. This video, with a focus on the transformational aspects of yoga, captures some great commentary on breath, balance, awareness, and peace. Thanks to those who put this video together.

Why We Breathe – A Yoga Documentary from BackToAwake on Vimeo.

Shine On

What are those things you do that give lasting joy? Our consumer driven society works us all day long trying to sell us on pleasure. Yet, this inevitably has short term effect, yielding a vacuum and increased desire for the next thing. I’m talking about those activities we engage in that feed a lasting sense of well being. So often, when we’re filled with restlessness, we may resort to unhealthy eating, shopping, various spectator entertainments, intoxicants, etc. Yet, after engaging these pleasures we feel worse than we did before. We know this restlessness is part of the human condition. No one is immune. We’re either pulled to wanting what we had or pushed to desiring what’s not in front of us. Yet, our real joy is to fully engage the moment with a gratitude orientation for the opportunity to just participate in this life.

I wish someone would develop an app that would quantify our sense of restlessness vs. our sense of well being. The more we cultivate our awareness, the better we get at sensing this felt sense of well-being. We’re repeatedly directed by our spiritual teachers to do what we can to move away from negative emotions and thoughts. We know that the more we attach to negatives, the more we suffer. The more we put attention to the moment and to gratitude for the opportunity to participate, the less we suffer. For some people, this process comes naturally. For most of us, it’s hard work that requires daily practice. Making a ‘joy list’ is an essential part of this practice. When negative feelings come up, do we go for short term pleasure or mindful practice of those skills that increase our awareness and sense of well being?

For me, I loved chocolate, ice cream, beer, crusty breads, and candy. Sometimes I’d try to comfort myself with these foods. Sometimes I corrupted any experience of the present moment because my thoughts were entangled with my addiction to these foods. For me, these were pleasure foods that had negative consequence. I enjoyed them in my mouth, but later my body was confused from my lack of awareness. I shifted my food consumption emphasis from the pleasure sensation of the mouth to the feeling of well-being from the nourishment of the food. I’m continually amazed at our lack of regard to the ‘feeling’ of well being or pain following our consumption of various foods. Some call my abstinence from chocolate and ice cream ‘will power’. It is. It’s my will to nourish my body for a long term felt sense of joy.

So when the restless, complaining, ‘not enough’ mind turns on, what do you do? Do you go for the short term pleasure, or sustained sense of well being? Do you increase your suffering or reduce it? Do you move from pain to numbness, or pain to awareness?

Some people have asked me about my ‘joy list’ as an example. Here’s a list of some of my favorites.

Review photos of my family, recalling gifts of the past, recognizing the fleeting moments in this live and just making space to acknowledge how so many have been such great support to my joy and sense of well being.

Meditate daily. The mind is a very dangerous thing as we’re so often entangled in negative thoughts. It takes tremendous discipline and skill to pause, to cultivate the silence between thoughts, and to allow the presence of that which is much bigger than our ego’s attempt to identify us as separate from the Divine. While I practice at least thirty minutes each morning, whenever restlessness comes upon me with negative emotions, I know I can meditate to once again discover lasting feelings of well being.

Yoga. This body that gets me around is the only one I have or will have. It’s huge mystery and performs so many functions beyond my awareness. A daily practice of yoga provides lasting joy as I develop greater awareness to the body, deeper listening, and cultivate a stewardship to lasting health. I consistently find a greater sense of well-being from all moving meditation practices, but have particularly found a place for yoga.

Breath instruments. A deeper sense of well-being is very much dependent upon breath and our awareness to it. Centered, balanced breath that comes from deep within the diaphragm provides great stability for meeting ‘what comes up’. My primary breath instrument is the trumpet. Even though I started playing at the age of eight, each moment the mouthpiece touches my lips, it’s new. Breath is the most important element. This awareness of depth, balance, and centeredness transfers to my secondary instruments, harmonica and voice. Whenever negative emotions and thoughts seem to be grabbing me, I know I can go to these instruments for relief.

Engaging in an activity with intention to relieve another from suffering. I know my healing from suffering is best fed from doing what I can to make myself available to others for the purpose of easing their pain. I’m particularly filled with a sense of well being when meeting pain and suffering of those who’ve been oppressed. When I can actually do something that creates opportunity for someone who’s freedom to participate has been obstructed, my sense of well being soars. When I can feel their imprisonment as mine rather than taking a ‘fix it’ attitude, my sense of participation leads to lasting joy, just for having met their suffering. In short, compassion yields deep joy when we have the courage to engage in it.

Boardsports. There’s something about putting my entire bodyweight on a single surface that alleviates my suffering. This activity takes great awareness, attention to the moment, and balance that challenges us in new ways. When caught in my mind’s restlessness, I always know that engaging in boardsport will bring me to greater sense of well-being, whether Stand Up Paddle, windsurfing, kitesurfing, skateboarding, wakeboarding, or snowboarding. The kinesthetic focus on ‘cultivating stability on an unstable platform’ is great practice and preparation for meeting the surprise of the next moment.

Engaging others in deeper conversations. While I get temporary joy from surface socializing with friends, the lasting sense of well-being comes from deeper conversations with those who are also exploring their spiritual journey. Conversations with curious, open minded and vital people feeds my soul and sense of well being in a very rich way. I find it helpful to have a list of those people willing to do this. It’s like going to church with an adventuresome mind, willing to ask deeper questions, forever humbled to life’s mystery.

Take a nap. Sometimes fatigue comes upon me. Taking a brief nap (about twenty minutes), can often change my sense of well-being, feeding me with new energy for meeting the next moments of the day.
Mindful consumption. I know I can improve my sense of well-being by holding awareness to foods and/or drinks which nourish and sustain. This is especially helpful when done with others from a sense of gratitude and community.

Engage nature. Taking a walk, ski, bike, or board into nature always improves the sense of well-being. Several in the mind/body health field recommend a minimum of thirty minutes in nature each day for a balanced life. When I’m particularly carried with negative thoughts and emotions, this is my ‘go to’. Get outside, breath deep, and just keep moving. It’s extremely effective at helping me to get bigger than the problem, even when the problem seems big.

Gratitude practice. Did you know that joy is a necessary consequence of gratitude? No matter how much pain and complaint we may be caught in, when we move to gratitude we increase our sense of well being. Try it. I was told this by a Benedictine monk when I was over fifty years old. It should be taught to every child at an early age. What parent doesn’t want their child to be happy? Well, here’s a practice that can do this. Yet, it is a skill that requires practice. When caught with feelings of ‘not enough’, ‘make space to find the gift in the given’. Some have said it’s not about getting what you want, but rather, wanting what you get. This practice at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day provides great momentum for lasting joy and sense of well being.

These are a few things on my list. They’re my ‘go to’ when negative emotion grabs me. No doubt, I’ve got my short term pleasures. Yet, over the years, I’ve seen how they’ve not served me, and so often, have harmed me. If this article has helped you think about your list, I’m happy. We all suffer. Our work is to let go and engage in practices that feed our sense of joy and well being. Throughout the day we’re tossed by the winds of change, moving from pleasure to pain, gain to loss, praise to criticism, fame and disrepute. We get ourselves in trouble when we step from our calm, joy and sense of well being. Life goes better when we can move from a sense of spiritual security, with balance and equanimity, holding a feeling of well being, no matter what. I hope you’ll consider your joy list after reading this. Do it when you’re feeling a strong sense of well being. Write it down. Make it your ‘go to’ when things get rough. Holding our light when an earthquake happens works better when we’ve cultivated our joy list.

This is an emotional topic. I’m not saying I’m ‘right’. I just ask for the courtesy to hear my life experience, beyond notions of judgment. I’m now entering my senior years and have had enough time in this body/mind to witness the impact of guns on our humanity. I suspect there are places for guns, but I doubt I or any in my family will ever have the spiritual awareness to use such a weapon with integrity. It really comes down to the exploration of meaning. Why are we here?

As we approach Christmas, I’m deeply moved by Jesus’ directive to love. It’s to love one another as ourselves because, in the Divine, we are each other. This is most potently brought home with the directive to even love our enemies. Another way to view our journey is to aim to ‘not cause harm’. This takes a great deal of practice, increasing our awareness and breaking free from the poisons of greed, fear and our tendency to ignore that ‘we are each other’. Some have said we’re here to just move to less harm than in a previous life. Many reach the end of life in this body with the most frequently asked question, “Have I loved enough?” Yet, in the relative world we’re continually teased back into the dualistic mind, ‘thinking’ we are here and others are out there. We carry our notions of separateness in our identities. Yet, no one escapes sickness, aging, surrendering of the body, or letting go everything. We try to ignore this, but our spiritual journey could be described as ‘fixing to die’, because that which outlives our physical bodies are the results of our actions. Poisons of greed, fear, and the ignorance from dualistic thinking are generally the culprits in the harm we cause and the lack of compassion we exhibit. We’re all effected. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, and in a dualistic mind, we all fail. The challenge is to learn, to vow to ‘wake up’ to our ignorance, and to practice forever aiming to ‘not cause harm’. This necessarily requires defenselessness, a virtue quite foreign to our notions of American pride.

Compassion has no interest in being #1. Compassion abandons the consumptive notion that more is better. Compassion meets the suffering of those harmed and the one who caused harm. Compassion meets the suffering of the murdered and the murderer. With compassion, the only motivation for use of a gun would be love. When the action stems from greed, fear or ignorance, the consequences are messy. As a youngster I was a member of the NRA. I learned how to use and care for a gun. I wasn’t yet aware that the pheasant was ‘me’. My first kill changed me and I’ve declined to use a gun since. Please, don’t stop reading here. I’m admitting that there’s no way I can understand the mystery of your approach to guns and I’m standing outside of judgment. That would just be me making another dualistic mess.

I’m just asking for your curious mind. Can you explore some of the recent news events of the day and openly, with a flexible mind, view the devastating results which came from greed, fear and ignorance? When we act from fear we seldom have enough information and we may pull the trigger too quickly. This happened with the Iraq war that has tremendously harmed the strength and well being of this country and the world. We entered a hornet’s nest on false information and were badly stung. Actually, this has been the case with most wars. With mindful actions, as now outlined with the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, we avert such massive harm. This mindful response to others takes tremendous patience, courage, and skill. It takes a spiritual integrity that values the life of all, with a strong emphasis on what’s ‘best for all with harm to none’. It takes a practice that moves us past greed, fear and our ignorance to empathy. Let’s look at just two recent incidents that highlight this.

Recently, a Rochester, Minnesota, minister shot his granddaughter. His fear led him to put a weapon in his house. Whether he had fear of people taking his stuff (greed), or just dualistic thinking, he acted from ignorance. His fearful mind imaged an intruder. He shot causing great harm and now suffers what I can only imagine would be the deepest of life’s pains. There are now those who are proposing laws to allow us to shoot one another from this ignorance. Recently, a mother stored her target shooting weapons in her house. Her mentally disturbed son acquired access to them, shot her, and then went on to kill several school children and teachers, before shooting himself. The grandfather and the mother did not intend to cause harm. The conditions that manifested from their fear and ignorance resulted in harm that now causes the planet to suffer. Most of the massive killing we’ve seen has come from greed, greed for power. This is most evident in the brutal killings now undertaken by Syria’s Assad.

More than forty years ago I diligently trained for a position with the Hennepin County Parks. The physical training was intense and I made it to the final selection process. I’ll never forget sitting at a round table with several interviewers when one of them asked me how I felt about carrying a gun. I was stunned. I wanted the job so badly. My mouth dropped and I asked why I’d need to carry a gun. They gave their ‘policy’ response and I said I’d carry it provided there were no bullets. There was no way I was going to carry a weapon, especially in nature where we’re going to find peace. I didn’t get the job. A few years earlier, I had been an exchange student in the Philippines. I saw the effects of viewing life as ‘cheap’. I witnessed shootings and violent acts carried out from greed, fear and ignorance. My foreign parents had me carry a weapon and this bothered me deeply. That summer greatly deepened my appreciation for life and the deeper harm we can cause one another.

The gun debate so often centers around regulation. Those who have guns claim that they’re responsible and they know how and when to use them. I’m sure there are those who use them mindfully, killing from love and mindfulness as they hunt for necessary food or take another’s life for the benefit of that person. Yet, for me, killing any living being for pleasure feeds from greed and ignorance to our interdependence. Killing from fear never works out. As you can see, I have huge respect for the potential harm that guns can inflict. Anyone looking at the number of guns sold in this country and the number of senseless killings can see this. The mother of the Connecticut shooter thought she was responsible. The grandfather thought he was responsible. For me, I’d rather live without fear, spiritually sound enough to meet an intruder with defenselessness than spend fifty years armed and in fear, imprisoned in my mind. Taken one step further, the biggest question of weaponry can be pointed to nuclear arms. It wasn’t long ago when we made complete nuclear disarmament a top priority. Today we spend all our time arguing about who gets to have them. Healthy use of this technology surpasses our current spiritual awareness. This is a potential mistake from ignorance humanity can not risk.

For me, we’re here to not harm one another. Weapons produce the most harm and the deepest suffering. In my view they fly in the face of our spiritual directives. The frequent deliberate and accidental shootings that fill the local and network news are testimony to our need to address this before we blow each other up. Life is sacred. Life is precious. We’re here to love one another, to forever aim to not cause harm. This seems to be Truth rather than my individual opinion. In this season of light, let’s move beyond our limited mind interpretations of ‘right to bear arms’ and sincerely ask Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Moses, etc. what their thoughts about guns and nuclear arms would be. Once again, I don’t own a gun, never will, and pray that none of my children or grandchildren will.

I spent my adult life studying language. I have a deep appreciation for how language influences our life experience, hindering or helping our spiritual journey. As a child, I was taught that Jesus loves me, not matter what. This gave me great peace, a spiritual experience that rose beyond the fear of the Old Testament words threatening judgment and damnation. Yet, the Christian tradition is filled with powerful words that people reacted to in such different ways. It was disheartening to see how people used the power of words to hold power over others, often blinding the all inclusive love of Jesus.

When I was nineteen I was introduced to the field of General Semantics. This linguistic study presented the truth that the ‘meaning’ of words was held within the experience of the person. The symbols of language were arbitrary. Yet, we continually encountered suffering as people argued about their ‘right’ meaning. General Semantics trained one to speak from one’s limited perceptual frame of reference (i.e. ‘The banana appears to be yellow’). The use of the verb ‘to be’ was discouraged in recognition to our unique perceptual experience. This practice opened the mind to the broader mystery of meaning. It clearly demonstrated how language could only point to our shared experience and humbled me to the complexities of the entire communication process. Most noted was the need for extensive training in listening.

Here’s how it works. Someone says something. The meaning of what they say is within me and my personal experience. I ‘assume’ I understand what the meaning was in the other person and react accordingly. My failure to more deeply explore the meaning held in the other person more often than not causes misunderstanding and faulty action. Compounding this, my ‘attachment’ to a particular meaning ‘within me’ causes suffering. Suffering diminishes when I ‘let go’ the attachment to the meaning within me, in curiosity and honor to the vast mystery of life. This is where the Buddha and mystics from various religious traditions have helped me.

To reduce suffering from attachment caused from shackling the mind with words, it’s helpful to cultivate the ‘word free experience’. This is the gap between thought. Given that all thought is linguistically based, this is that wide open field beyond judgment and opinion. While children naturally have this up to about nine months of age, once we’ve got the thought of object permanence in our heads and the naturally wired process of language acquisition on its way, we’re caught in the restlessness of ‘wanting’. The Buddha’s Four Noble Truths address this. He discovered that 1. Life is difficulty from our restless minds. 2. We suffer because we’re attached to this restlessness. 3. There’s a way from this suffering. 4. The way is becoming aware to the illusion of our separation. Stilling the mind, letting restless thoughts drift away, touching the experience that’s beyond words, is the way to ‘feel the Divine’. It’s not describable or definable, yet we know when we’ve touched that deep peace. We right many books about it and do what we can to share this with others, regardless of our spiritual tradition.

We use analogy’s to explain this. A favorite is the Zen story about the finger pointing to the moon. The finger is not the moon and we’ll miss experiencing the moon if we say the finger is the moon.

Our peace is dependent upon a very deep respect for the mystery of life, a cultivation of the ‘sense of the Divine’, and a practice that works to increase our sensitivity to the limitations of thought and language. This unshackles the mind, opening it for the creative experience. Giving the mind respite from thought (90% of which are just repeating) may be as important as the food we eat. It’s why a meditation practice may be the most important activity one could engage in.

In search of common values, perhaps the biggest dialogue topic is that which deals with life/death. Whether it’s abortion, capital punishment, war, euthanasia, end of life medical decisions, hunting/fishing, trapping a house mouse, slapping an insect, etc.
Whenever we’re involved in terminating the physical life of a living thing, what values do we bring to the table. It would seem our own fear of surrendering our physical body keeps us from these conversations until it’s too late. I would consider myself ‘pro-life’ in that I’m always for placing great care into making these decisions from love. Within my core belief system, where we are interconnected as one another, action that comes from faith, flexibility, the open mind and empathy seems to work. On the other hand, action that comes from fear, inflexibility, the closed mind and lack of faith in finding the Divine in all seems to result in disharmony. So how do we come to the table on these highly sensitive topics? This is where dialogue comes in.

Willingness to dialogue is willingness to open to something bigger. There’s a humble confidence that may at first appear uncertain, weak and tentative. Yet, it really communicates the deepest of courage to suspend one’s beliefs/fixed thoughts to more deeply explore such a sensitive topic as mindful killing. Often perceived as ‘wishy washy’ and weak, in reality, when we can surrender our notions of certainty to the vast mystery, we all move closer to the Divine. This is the essence of what’s meant by placing ‘full reliance upon divine Providence’. So what does this language of dialogue look like?

If we look at those great leaders who’ve been able to enlist the confidence of humanity, we’ll find the phrases Keller and Brown reference in their book, Monologue to Dialogue:

“I may be wrong but here is the way I see it….”
“It could be…”
“What would you think…”
“I think what I am trying to say…”
“Isn’t there something here …”
“What you say might just be so….”
“I don’t know if…”

205

Obviously, these would be suicidal words in our polarized political arena where inflexibility and monologue are pushed to our detriment. Yet, in this crucial time of rapid change, deeper understanding and flexibility seem to be exactly what we need. Our consensus push seems to scream the mantra “jobs, jobs, jobs”, when in fact, if we want to save our democracy, it needs to be “communicate, communicate, communicate”. We seem to have become a nation of “agree vs. disagree”, often resulting in societal silence for fear of causing trouble. Yet, we all know challenge and trouble come with the inevitability of change, especially such rapid global change. So why not show our real courage and step into dialogue, especially into the pressing life/death issues that face us today?

The Christian faith places a call to renewed intelligence. In Roman 12.2 we’re directed to “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…that ye may prove what is…the perfect will of God…”. It directs us to continually transform our ways of understanding, of looking at facts, and examining the very process of communicating with one another.

So how do we face the difficult topic of mindful killing in a society that wants to hide from it? We’re directed to step from our ‘fixed’ notions because we’re always in movement. We’re directed to surrender to bigger actions that better meet present day conditions. We’re directed to listen deeply to each other and to the will of God. No spiritual tradition says we can live forever in our physical bodies and most recognize the eventual need for participating in the life/death process. The intention to which we do this is perhaps the most important. Is it directed from kindness or fear? Is it sensitive to all parties? Is there a better way to handle these societal decisions without getting into the inflexibility of legal language? How do we best dialogue with one another about inevitable impermanence and the interconnection of All?

This morning I set a trap for some mice that had entered our house. This torments me and I know I must find better solutions. Yet, at the moment my wife insists we keep them from our house. This morning I meditated in the middle of the lake on my surf board as shots rang out during duck hunting season. This morning I paddled by some ducks, mindlessly disturbing them from their haven as they startled to the sky to be shot down by some hunters nearby. My lack of mindfulness in keeping the mice out without killing is taking lives. My lack of mindfulness in flushing the ducks to the sky resulted in killing. I’m sure many soldiers are tormented by the loss of life to many civilians, often labeled ‘collateral damage’, innocently killed in a military operation. No doubt, we can’t ‘not kill’. However, we can increase our mindfulness to it. What’s our intention? Can we get bigger than our fixed notions of absolute action? Can we live more carefully, more alive to long term effects of our actions than short term pleasure? I suspect there are hunters and fishermen holding some remorse for the lives taken merely to have a trophy on the wall, just as there are many mothers in regret for having an abortion and many mothers in regret for bringing an unwanted child into the world. I’m sure there are those who regret the lack of courage to let a body release when worn out, just as there may be those who question whether a miracle of longer physical life was in the horizon when the plug was pulled.

There are no absolute answers to these questions. There never will be complete agreement. Yet, the degree to which we delude ourselves into ‘thinking’ absolute answers exist, that no more dialogue is needed, is the degree to which we whither as a peoples. Again, we can’t ‘not kill’, but we can aim to follow the will of God in love for one another, even our perceived enemy. We can aim to awareness and mindfulness to the results of our actions, always aiming to what’s best for all with harm to none.

Awareness and mindfulness may be the major motivation to meditation simply because we reduce our likelihood to mindlessly kill. I was told a story about a famous meditation master. He had written several books and was finishing a long workshop when a student asked him what he was most proud of through his prolific life. He had fame, thousands who listened to him, a great history in charity and healing, and so he took the question with deep thought. The audience sat in stillness for almost half an hour before he answered. His reply, “I’m most proud of the fact that I haven’t killed anyone.” It’s my sincere hope that we can all heal from those mindless moments where we cause harm to others, particularly when it involves life/death decisions. My heart says this is why prayer and meditation are food for the soul. Without stillness, we may risk hearing the voice of divine Providence, God’s willful command to love one another and faith’s contempt for the harm that comes from fear.

Our reasoning minds want answers. Language gives us the illusion of ‘knowing’. It certainly helps point us in the right or wrong direction as we travel our spiritual journey, our opportunity to ‘be’. So how does language play into this?

By it’s very nature, language is dualistic. If functions from a subject vs. object orientation that counters much spiritual wisdom claiming that separation is an illusion. So what happens when we eliminate the ‘object’, the notion of ‘me here and you there’? This seems to be the essence of our great spiritual teachers as they direct us to love others as ourselves, to respect the All in the all. I’ve struggled with this concept for many years, finding it difficult to break the dualism ‘me here, Divine there’. When we understand that meaning is in the person, that language triggers semantic reaction, whenever and whatever we name will somehow infect our experience of whatever we call it (i.e. God, Divine, Ultimate, Enlightenment, buddha nature, Awareness, Allah, Nature, etc.). Worse yet, our reactive minds are hard to still when another fails to hold reverence to these words.

Could it be that we can only use language to point to that which is too big to label? The command to ‘be still’ and experience the matrix, the interconnected fabric of all things beyond notions of time and space, seems quite universal in many spiritual traditions. To get to this place of the ‘preverbal’ or ‘empty mind’, I’ve found it helpful to not only abandon the ‘subject/object’ linguistic concept, but to also move from Divine as noun to verb.

I’ve always appreciated the phrasing that, “God is love.” Put another way, “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” So how do you read the word ‘love’, noun or verb? If you’re spiritual tradition is theistic/dualistic, I’d suspect it’s much easier to read it as a noun. There’s something quite unsettling to the dismissal of some centralized, organized intelligence we’ve tried to capture as a noun. Could this be the real message of ‘God is dead’? It’s not a denial of awareness to nature’s laws of impermanence and interdependence. It’s an invitation to go deeper, beyond the limitations of language. It’s an invite to surrender past our conceptual mind, to ‘feel’ beyond thought and words, and to experience God as verb, as the action of love and kindness.

As we advance as a human species, we deepen in understanding the futility of war. While nuclear disarmament talks seem absent this election cycle, we become more aware of the problems created from greed for power. Our international strategy seems to be moving more and more to diplomacy. Yet, we hold diplomacy hostage when we refuse to sit at the table together unless certain belief systems are conceded to. Diplomacy from such closed minds is seldom successful. Real diplomacy can grow when parties can sit together in silence. When we no longer argue about who has the right label or the right concept, we open to that which is bigger than us. This is where we water the seeds of the Divine as verb. This very process is kindness in action, even when we run the least risk of violence/harm. Today’s problems are huge and our challenge is to actualize the Divine as verb past our notions of huge, touching the very purpose to which we’re here, to love one another as ourselves, to reverently touch the All in the All.

Rather than the noun God, how about God-ing? If God is love, how about just calling it ‘big loving’? This breaking of the illusion of separation needs reference, but I suggest the reference is cleaner when presented as verb rather than noun. It’s more difficult to put possession to that which is moving. How many battles have been fought in the name of ‘my God’? We came somewhat close to an action oriented change with the statement, “God is love”. The more powerful, less confusing interpretation is found in the verb of ‘love’, rather than object noun.’’

When aligned with the divine, it’s an action verb. When caught in the abstraction of a noun, great confusion exists, further entangling us in the thicket of thought. The command to ‘love one another as yourself’ is the commanded selfless action. All of Jesus’ parables can point to this God-ing. As we go through our day, a continual examination for solid action would ask, “What would Jesus do?”