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.

This is a common phrase in Appalachia that gets more to the point than, “How you doing?”.  We usually answer the ‘doin’ question with an automatic affirmative response, even when we’re swimming in the negative.  ‘What’s working you’ gives an opening to really explore the current situation of your world.  Most of our responses may better be analyzed not from ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’, but from ‘peace’ vs. ‘restless’.  We could also respond from a sense of ‘being supported’ or ‘belonging’ vs. a sense of ‘not being supported’ or ‘alone’.  Given the accelerating nature of the universe, we all seem to be getting worked more now than we did in what appeared to be a stable time.  The platform seems less stable as uncertainty seems to grow.

I’m now in my ’60’s and what’s working me is much different than what was working me a few years ago.  I used to be very concerned about others’ good opinion of me.  I used to aim for more ‘stuff’, and I used to think success in life was about personal achievements and accumulation.  It seems more and more that my work is to cultivate gratitude for this gift of life, even in the face of an apparent lack of response from others.  It seems that intention to ‘not cause harm’ and ‘to reduce others’ suffering’ fosters a better sense of place, a deeper cultivation of belonging.

While the first ten years of life were about moving from nothing to a sense of somebody, this decade seems to beg a humble response as we learn to let go our need to be defined by others.  It’s a time to diminish the illusion of two, of me here and you there; a time to cultivate the felt sense of our Oneness, of our interdependence on one another outside notions of separateness.  It’s a time to cultivate a sense of grounding, of a Ground of Being, that’s always there, even in the most turbulent of times.  This is a time to once again visit the deeply curious mind, relishing the mystery.  This is what’s working me.

In America today it’s fascinating to watch the political contrasts. The Tea Party stands up to their perceived loss of freedom from what they think is a government grown too big. The Occupy Wall Street movement stands up to their perceived loss of freedom from what they think is private enterprise run amuck from lack of conscience.  Both sides would seem to agree that the system is broken, primarily from money’s influence in the political arena.  The Occupy Wall Street people are calling out greed, claiming the top 1% of the people who control 40% of the wealth of this country have invested heavily in their own self interests at the expense of the country and planet’s health.  Both would agree that it takes being in the 1% or heavy affiliation with that 1% to get elected, hence our broken system.

Abe Lincoln once noted that the Republican party was always known for taking better care of man and his money, noting that with conscience, man was always before money.  He also noted that the country’s demise would come from extremes in wealth distribution.  Today the bottom 80% control about 10% of the nation’s wealth.  Abe did credit the Republican party with always putting man before money, however.  Somewhere, this got lost.  Today, as we try to implement budget cuts at great harm to many of our citizens, we’re placing the power of money over the care of our citizenry.  More and more people are now against the wall with no hope.  When ‘life and death’ programs are called optional ‘entitlement’ programs, people’s survival skills kick in.  What was apathy turns to anger.  That’s what’s working a lot of folks around the world today.

So how do we move to a more ‘common sense’ approach?  How about by listening to each other to better determine what we have in common?  How about stopping the whine and exploring what we’d agree on for the health of one another?  How about exploring policies from ‘best for all, with harm to none’ intention rather than the heavily backed self interest lobbying that’s broken the system today?  How about diminishing the poisons of greed, fear and ignorance to our global interdependence, and increasing our generosity, gratitude, hope, faith, and compassion for one another?

The bottom 99% will never be able to ‘steal’ the wealth of the top 1%?  But can’t we compassionately explore their deeper suffering from hoarding wealth in full knowledge to the massive suffering in the world?  If we truly are here to ‘reduce suffering’, it’s no wonder we eventually meet deep pain as we end our time in these bodies, knowing our fear and greed kept us from loving others.  All spiritual traditions promote a life of moderation.  A simple life gives us more space to cultivate our ‘great fullness’ for what we have.  The more stuff we have to worry about, the less space we have.  It’s why those in third world countries smile much more than those in the top 1% of this country.

When we look at life as the pursuit of happiness, peace, and joy, we can see our grasping, restless mind is our biggest obstacle.  We’re heavily trained to feel thirsty for the next advertised thing, bombarded by advertisements through multiple media channels.  We’re told we can’t be at peace until we ‘achieve this thing’ or ‘purchase that thing’.  Yet, our happiness is grounded in cultivating appreciation for what’s been given rather than feeding our never-ending desire for what we’ve been trained to think we want.  Our lasting happiness is found in grounding to joy for the opportunity to just be.  It’s grounded in knowing we did what we could to not harm others.  We did what we could to alleviate the suffering of others.  We cultivated the truth of awareness to being each other.  We walked in humble confidence to the beat of our heart’s knowing, committed to show up, pay attention, tell the truth, and softly hold our vulnerability in not controlling the outcome.  Hopefully, we’ve come into our integrity, better knowing when to stand up, when to hold silence and when to step forward.

I think what’s really working us in our ‘knowing’ we’re all One, yet our acting like we’re two.  The upcoming 11/11/11 event is a symbolic reminder that we’re all One.  We can continue our dysfunctional ways or we can wake up to this.  It’s in hope, faith and love that I stand in gratitude to more and more of us waking up to this truth.  For effective leadership, we need those who live from One, outside the illusions of ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’.  We need leaders who can take the shift to collaboration, deeper listening, and momentum to a higher vibration.  Our political debates need to be turned to dialogs.  Our candidates need to be tested for active listening skill and for their understanding of all spiritual traditions.  We need to end the pointless rhetoric and violent persuasion and test our candidates with hypothetical situations. We need to know how they’d handle them based on their spiritual background and world view.  We need to explore their deeper wisdom.

Dysfunctional government run from the influence of money over people’s interests will eventually fall.  Corporations without a moral conscience, aimed solely at profit and pleasing shareholders, will eventually fall.  The health of our family, community, nation, and planet will depend upon our capacity to love one another as ourselves, to steward a deeper care for the impacts of our thoughts, words, emotions and actions.  If our policies and political rant clearly show potential to harm others, it’s time to pull back and cultivate deeper ground.  It’s time for our real spiritual leaders to call out the poisons of greed, self interest, fear, and the temptation to ignore our interdependence upon one another.  It’s time for us to all pause, to ask what we’re here for, and to let this be what’s really, really working us.

It’s pretty easy these days to feel like the sky is falling.  Actually, the news is filled with stories about space debris falling to earth today.  The global stock markets are falling.  The state of Georgia just executed a man who’s guilt was in doubt, turning a deaf ear to the Pope and to former President Jimmy Carter.  Our summer weather events have smashed records since before we started taking record.  Our elected leaders seem less capable of holding a conversation than any time in previous history.  Our church leaders seem more committed to holding silence to this turmoil.  And here we are, facing the next moment, directed to find our solid grounding.  Economic turmoil, war, health care crisis, and on and on it goes, change works its way and deepens us to find our spiritual strength.  These are all very big problems, but I’ve always liked the hope found in the statement, “When the problems seem big, you’ve got to get bigger than the problems.”  So how do we accomplish this?

I’ve found great relief in discovering the fact that there never is any such thing as complete resolution.  Tempted as we may be to ‘do’ what we think is ‘fixing things’, the risk of mucking it up further through our efforts is great.  As soon as we think ‘our map’ is the correct one, we’re tempted to persuade others to agree with us.  We can adopt a notion of being ‘right’.  Yet, the actual territory is far too complex to ever lock into our notion of understanding.  It’s why I like education and religion that always speaks to deeper questions rather than to fixed answers.  It’s why I like moving from the heart rather than from the head.  In the midst of big problems, we’re humbled to the mystery of life.  In the throws of trouble, oftentimes the best thing we can do is simply ask the question, “What can we do?”, and then deeply listen to one another.

After studying interpersonal communication for forty years I’ve seen how our refusal to listen to another is often in reality a violent act.  Our attempts to fix, change, and persuade another to our view of the world most certainly have an underlying dimension of violence.  In times of big problems, it seems best to deepen to faith.  This is a deeper faith that gives us grounding to support that’s far beyond our limited scope of perceptions, thoughts, emotions and consciousness.  It’s a deeper knowing that goes from small hope to Big Hope.  When the surface of the ocean is thrown about by wind and wave, can we hold our grounding to the floor of the ocean?  Can we find our strength and solidity in knowing we’re all interdependent on one another?  Some amazing things happen when we can shift from our perceived cleverness of mind to the humble confidence of the heart and deep spiritual confidence, knowing we are each other.  Suddenly we get bigger than our differences.  We get bigger than our nationalism, political party, social class, religion, race, gender, etc.  I’ve heard several friends recommend silence when tempted to conversations about religion or politics.  This often is a best course of action in the presence of someone addicted to their particular map of the territory.  Yet, in the throws of big problems and deep fear of a falling sky, we must start the conversation.  We must move from the nonproductive format of debate to honest dialogue.

Last night I watched a TV show I hadn’t seen before.  ‘Modern Family’ had received five Emmy’s last week and my curiosity got the best of me.  The dominant theme was showing the tragedy/comedy found in our attachments to a sense of being ‘right’.  I hope more artists can help us cultivate humility to our false sense of knowing.  A deeper sense of wonder and awe will help us move more mindfully, dedicated to minimize the harm we may cause from holding to our beliefs.

I admire people whose love and compassion are palpable.  There are great spiritual beings walking amongst us who seem to do better at smashing the illusion of duality.  They raise my vibration.  I’ve briefly touched the deep heart, finding a peace that dissolves the pain from a restless mind.  And then, I get frustrated because I want more of this and the pain grows.  Fortunately, I’ve learned that you can’t stay in this space.  Katagiri Roshi says we can just bounce.  Touch it and bounce.  He says we grow our faith through the return to the dualistic mind from that deep peace.  The very knowing that we are One gives us the faith to handle big problems.  The very knowing that we are One gives us strength to face imminent change.  It gives us the power to let go, to make space to find the gift in the given.

This work of holding stability in the face of a falling sky is courageous work.  It commands the strength of vow.  The more we practice the more we extend the experience of the bounce.  It’s beyond words, thought, emotion and perception.  It’s re-membraning back to the Divine within all.  It’s what drives us to find our common sense.  From here the questions change.

1. How do we work as a community, nation, planet to foster deep care and stewardship for one another?
2. How do we create programs that meet one another in our suffering?
3. What can we do to foster a deeper appreciation for our opportunity to walk the earth?
4. What can we do to not harm others’ opportunity to walk the earth?

The questions change dramatically when driven through love, compassion, generosity, faith and forgiveness.  They change when we move from the dualistic mind stuck in ‘win/lose’ maps.

So what’s the gift in big problems?  It helps us see the need for an open, creative mind.  It humbles us to the need for a deeper faith.  It’s what gives us confidence to face all our problems with the stability needed to move through them.  It helps us deal with the nature of uncertainty from grace and compassion.  Perhaps we need to change the names of our political parties to Open vs. Closed.  Then, perhaps we could call a spade a spade on those who refuse to dialogue.

How Do You Define 'Weed'?

It seems we’ve gotten ourselves into quite a mess through our American tendency to objectify ‘evil’.  Can we move to a more helpful definition of this word?  When we try to describe it as something bad which exists outside of us we naturally set ourselves up for increased war.  Our great spiritual teachers have implored us to see ourselves in each other, no exception.  Yet, we continue to compare ourselves to others, judging others as better or worse than us.  How would things change if we recognized we all have the potential to harm?  Actually, isn’t this a better way to define evil…looking at the action of harm as opposed to some idea of ‘evil doer’?  Such a definition would have us rename our current War on Terror and Terrorists to a War Against Harming Each Other.  Rather than pitting us against one another based on difference, we’d recognize our common capacity to feed the seeds of greed, fear and ignorance.  This is what feeds the internal pain we all carry.  This is what causes us to accept collateral damage without question.  This is what wants us to avoid the earthquake of human morality that’s shaking the ground beneath us.

Something radical happens when we smash through the notion of our separateness.  When we move from the felt experience of inner vs. outer, one vs. two, freedom vs. bondage, peace vs. suffering, the heart leads us to the very seeds we need to water, even in the most difficult of times.  We’re basically examining where we find our solidity, our foundation, our spiritual security.  It won’t be through unlimited expenditure on militarism.  It won’t be through grasping to our material wealth.  It won’t be through any of our grasping to stop change.  It will come through the cultivation of our felt sense of being connected with everything and our consequent vow to not harm.  It will drive not from our complaint and restlessness, but from our sense of gratitude and desire to steward a better life for those here and those who follow.  It will come from recognizing the Divine within the present moment, taking great care that our thoughts, emotions and actions at the minimum cause no harm.

In this definition of evil, we all recognize the potential for evil that lies within each of us.  We recognize the harm that comes from judging ourselves better or worse than others, in demonizing others, in failing to meet each other’s suffering mind in compassion.  This view looks at the actions fed from greed, fear and ignorance as seeds to our continued fighting and failure to touch God in felt sense of inter-Being.  It steps from the reasoning mind to the feeling heart.  It moves from love, gratitude and forgiveness in humble confidence.  It moves with solidity in the midst of the earthquake.  It’s where we integrate with All, where integrity lives.  It’s beyond need to persuade.  It’s just showing up, full attention to this moment, accepting this as this and that as that.  It’s not mind hope, but Big Hope, in full gratitude to the support of the Universe.  It’s beyond despair, feelings of overwhelm, and dissatisfaction.  It’s real peace.  It’s the cultivated feeling of arrival, of Home.  Rather than judging us vs. other, of focusing on difference and separation, it’s the embrace of all as One, even the two.

Supported in a New Womb

Today I celebrate the day I left my mother’s womb.  I know we call it our birth day, but really, this wasn’t the day I began.  I doubt I had thoughts of ‘not enough’, fears about losing what I had or not getting what I want when in the warmth of my mother’s body.  I suspect I met each moment as it came and I probably did this to a certain extent until I developed language.  In fact, before that moment of language’s separation, I probably had no sense of being a separate self.  Can I say I was ‘nobody’?

I’m not really sure when I became aware of this body, but I do know that in my first ten years of life there was great support for coming into this body.  You could say I was becoming ‘somebody’.  I had left the support of my mother’s womb to enter another womb, filled with support from those around me, the atmosphere, and other forms of nourishment that caused me to blossom into a certain sense of identity.  Now, here’s this body some sixty-one years later, recognizing that I’m not ‘some body’.  That was illusion.  There’s awareness and history.  Yet, as I traverse this decade of life within this body there’s a deeper cultivation of ‘let go’.

I’m still in the same womb, the womb I found when leaving my mother’s womb.  It just takes much more effort to nurture a sense of equanimity in the face of this ‘let go’ experience.  I can feel truth in attaching to something bigger than my body.  It seems absurd to get lost in thoughts of beginning and ending when it’s been such a mystery so far.  When I really stop to listen, to touch the stillness of the ultimate, there’s a deep sense of re-membraning.  I’ve never left the membrane, yet my thoughts would have me believe I’m separate.  When I quiet the active mind there’s a deepening of this felt sense.  It can’t really be touched by words since they’re the separating subject/object tool that makes this so difficult.  Yet, when I empty the thoughts, the words, the naming of feelings, emotions and perceptions, there’s a deeper remembering.  It says you are supported.  It says you’ve always been supported and you always will be supported, no matter what.  It’s that felt sense that gives one the courage to let go, even in the midst of apparent crisis, knowing we’re never alone, never separate.  Paul Tillich writes, “Love is stronger than death.”  I think this is what he means.  Love, the everlasting feeling of embrace and support, will always win over the ego’s pull to separate.  Mother Theresa said we lose our peace when we forget we belong to each other.

I know we live in very uncertain times.  Some respond from greed, fear and ignorance to our interdependence.  They do what they can to scare us and would control us by pushing for laws that fight tooth and nail against nurturing our interdependence to one another and nature.  Their thoughts, emotions and actions fail to nourish compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude, the key drivers to touching the ultimate.  I don’t know where I came from, I try to deepen my awareness to this next arising moment, and I sure don’t know where I’m going when this body wears out.  Yet, I do know I’ll find peace in reflecting on those moments where I did not cause harm.  I know I’ll find joy in reflecting on those moments where I expressed kindness and gratitude for the opportunity to participate in this life.  I know I’ll feel happy for those moments I held my silence in honor to the awe and mystery of the Divine.

This celebration day I hope you’ll find a way to make space to cultivate the gift in the given.  It’s been said our real present is deepening our awareness to the present (moment).  I’m learning to live with less expectation.  My notion of hope has changed dramatically.  I used to attach to my sense of being ‘somebody’, thinking I was responsible for fixing things.  I’m deepening my awareness that nothing is ever fully resolved.  Everything is continually changing, moment to moment.  This is this, that is that, and then, the next breath.  The peace that comes from that is found in a bigger hope.  Holding this hope deep in the heart is finding the courage to let this body go when it wears out in preparation for the next womb.  For me, it’s knowing God intimately.  As we travel the latter years in these bodies, may we forever meet our newfound ‘differences’ with confidence and surprise.  This seems to be the essence of graceful aging.

For sure, we don’t want to leave these bodies.  Yet we will.  Part of our journey is to cultivate our intimacy with the Divine so we may have a courageous letting go into the next womb, fully embracing the uncertainty of what’s to come.  Real peace comes from a deep sense of knowing the Ultimate, knowing we’ve always been connected and supported, knowing we can never be separated, and our work is to wake up to this truth we’ve fallen asleep to.  Whether it’s called waking to Love, God, Ultimate, Divine, or Oneness, it’s the source of our compassion, forgiveness and gratitude.  May we all cultivate this stability in the face of unstable circumstance.  May we all grow our compassion and support for one another.  May we never take for granted the gift of these body/mind’s and the opportunity we’ve had to participate.  May we forever grow our appreciation for the gifts of ‘this womb’ found within this arising moment, breath by breath.  No birth, no death…just a new womb.

I’m quite frightened by leaders who ‘think’ they’re right, losing their curiosity to the mystery of damage from the ‘clever’ mind.  I’d much prefer leaders with strong spiritual foundation, who ‘feel’ what’s right, who then act upon it.  They rise above their ego’s desire for more power and wealth, aiming to act with what’s ‘best for all with harm to none’.  These are leaders who’ve done well at cultivating Big Hope, inspiring us all, as human beings, to be and do better.  These are leaders who carry humble confidence in following heart’s draw to make spiritually sound decisions in line with the tenants of our great spiritual traditions, some of which are listed below.

1. Aim to act without harming other living beings or the planet.
2. Aim to use speech that does not cause harm.
3. Aim to long term, mindful sexual relationships that cause no harm.
4. Aim to consume moderately and mindfully.
5. Aim to steer from body/mind consumption that intoxicates and numbs us to harmful thoughts, emotions and consequent actions.
6. Love one another as oneself, continually aware of the poisons of greed, fear and ignorance to our interdependence.
7. Cultivate awareness to the impermanent nature of all things, cultivating gratitude and stewardship for those who follow us, honoring the wisdom from those who’ve proceeded us.

As I try to understand our national incapacity to hold a conversation, it seems we’re locked in dogmatic notions, refusing to listen to one another.  Some stress more local and/or state government.  Others stress the needs for federal government.  I suspect we all hope to offer ‘opportunity’ for all, to weed out those areas where opportunity is robbed, and ultimately, to leave our bodies knowing we at least haven’t made things worse through our presence, thoughts, and actions.  Democrats have been accused of welfare handouts and entitlement programs that enable continued lack of opportunity and participation.  Republicans have been accused of protecting the benefactors of greedy hoarding.  Both have caused great damage to the American Dream, land of opportunity and participation.

It would seem time to truly come to the table with deeper respect for the collateral damages caused from our ‘thinking’ mind.  Our heart mind knows that promotion of mindless consumption is bankrupting us.  Yet, we continue to push an economy that simply can’t live on others’ money.  Our war efforts have not made us safer.  Our profit centered health care will break us.  The uneven distribution of wealth has made us a two class society incapable of offering the education needed for growth and opportunity.  Our selfish, self interest lobbies have made the political system inoperable.  The top 20% hold 85% of the nation’s wealth.  The top 1% hold 40% of the nation’s wealth.  Yet, we’re spiritually mandated to live in moderation.  Media owned and operated by those holding this wealth brilliantly shape our consciousness to accept this unbridled greed as investors become more cunning at playing our financial institutions, rapidly growing their portfolios with little benefit to the greater society.

Media puts more attention to a political candidate’s capacity to raise capital than to their moral foundation.  Conflict debates are promoted and televised when we really need to see the skill of a candidate’s capacity to act with moral integrity in a crisis situation.  Our spiritual institutions need a voice in speaking to the foundations for a candidates thoughts, emotions and actions.  Those candidates carry the humble confidence of a Gandhi, Mandella, King, etc. will stand out.  Those candidates who are living the spiritual code to do what’s best for all with harm to none will stand out.  Those candidates who inspire us to Big Hope in times of trouble, as did FDR, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, will stand out.  Those candidates who can effectively negotiate and compromise thought without compromising spiritual integrity will stand out.  It’s time to rise above the football rah rah mentality that politics has embraced.  Our survival as a nation and planet depends upon it.

Moment of Silence

Almost one week ago a human being with a very closed mind, tortured in feelings of isolation from a closed mind, caused tremendous harm to so many.  His actions stole the lives of so many and forever changed the lives of us all.  And here we are, still yelling at each other, ‘thinking’ our way of seeing the world is the correct way.  Well, maybe that’s just the way we’re built, forever struggling with the poisons of greed, fear and our ignorance to our interdependence upon one another.  Yet, for me there’s Big Hope that we can touch a higher ground.  Shortly after 9/11, an eleven year old boy suffering from a fatal disease, captured that higher ground.  Mattie Stepanek wrote the following poem on that day:

For Our World

We need to stop.
Just stop.
Stop for a moment.
Before anybody
Says or does anything
That may hurt anyone else.
We need to be silent.
Just silent.
Silent for a moment.
Before we forever lose
The blessing of songs
That grow in our hearts.
We need to notice.
Just notice.
Notice for a moment.
Before the future slips away
Into ashes and dust of humility.
Stop, be silent, and notice.
In so many ways, we are the same.
Our differences are unique treasures.
We have, we are, a mosaic of gifts
To nurture, to offer, to accept.
We need to be.
Just be.
Be for a moment.
Kind and gentle, innocent and trusting,
Like children and lambs,
Never judging or vengeful
Like the judging and vengeful.
And now, let us pray,
Differently, yet together,
Before there is no earth, no life,
No chance for peace.

September 11, 2001

This is a request for you to consider a pause from your busy mind to touch that higher ground, that ground that stands above greed, fear and our ignorance to one another as brother and sister.  For a moment let us, stop yelling, fighting, and hurting one another.  For a moment, let us open our hearts and minds to one another in the very gift of this next breath.  For a moment, let us meet the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Norway, the land of peace and harmony.  For a moment, let us just listen deeply to one another.

Stillness

“Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is.  Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for.  We do not know.  Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away.

Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thought of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone.  Now do you know him not.  But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him.  Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.” Course of Miracles,  Chapter 31:1, verses 12-13, p. 648

This is real courage.  This is commitment to Truth, to an open mind, to birthing action from hope and faith, knowing we are forever supported.  It’s knowing that feelings of aloneness and separation have been born from thought, thoughts that can be released.  As we release these thoughts into the eternity of ‘this moment’ we find relief from restlessness, touching the stillness.  We find “a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope and sparkles with a gentle friendliness.  Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you.” CoM, p. 641.  The cultivation of this stillness is what provides the courage to face impermanence and the sensitivity to touch “the universal Will” that all living things remove obstacles to awareness of Being whole.  In stillness, there is non-duality.  In stillness,  we experience that nothing remains unchanged but the Truth of our One-ness, and our fear to face it.

Amazing Grace…Still Here

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 it 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.

Ride at Worthington Unvarnished Music Festival Rough Live Recording

The paddle, the board, water and air, body, mind...all as one.

I recently gave a lesson to a friend who is living in the midst of tremendous change and uncertainty.  This seems to be increasingly common as we face what seems to be accelerating change.  Perhaps it’s our finance, job, health, a weather event or some political agenda that impacts us.  In any case, we feel a sense of ‘un-grounding’.  This loss of stability can grow as we feed thoughts of ‘not enough’ and a sense of disconnection.  The gift in losing a sense of material security is a growing hunger to cultivate spiritual security.  In the throws of life’s pain, can I hold a sense of ‘big hope’?  Can I stand beyond the notion that I’m only my body and the thoughts my mind secretes?  Can I wake to a deeper feeling, one that finds peace though magnanimous interconnectedness?  Katagiri Roshi speaks to this wholehearted living, writing the following:

“We can see the functioning of the whole universe in all of our activities—walking, standing, sitting, and sleeping—not just in zazen.  When you act wholeheartedly, your activity becomes very clear, calm, flexible, and magnanimous.  It is boundless, and simultaneously it is you.  So studying the boundlessness of activity is studying the self.  This is called intimacy.

How can you know the meaning of intimacy?  You cannot see it objectively because intimacy is not the result of activity; intimacy blooms right in the midst of activity itself.  If you try to understand intimacy intellectually, as a concept, you never know real intimacy.  Delusion and enlightenment are also concepts, but the perfect, supreme state of enlightenment is completely beyond concepts.  You are already enlightened, but you can never conceptually know what enlightenment is because when you think of it you create a gap between yourself and enlightenment.

For example, when you swim (SUP), if your consciousness picks up one perception of water and a separate perception of swimmer (paddler), this is not real intimacy.  To experience intimacy with the ocean, you have to jump into the ocean and just swim in the whole universe with no thought of subject and object.  Without plunging into the ocean, you can’t swim.  So open your heart and be intimate with the water.  Completely depend on the help of nature.  Then the water takes care of you.  Your body is supported, your body is swimming, and you survive.  You and the ocean are one, and you swim right in the middle of the functioning of the universe.  That is great enlightenment.

Plunging into the ocean is your effort.  The usual idea of effort implies the egoistic aspect of life.  But you should understand swimming (SUP) from two aspects: something created by your effort and something created by nature’s effort.  When you make your effort and jump in, you can see the other aspect because something appears that is beyond your effort.  The universe is helping you; nature is taking care of your human life.  Then swimming (SUP) is called vivid activity.  This swimming is called play– playing with the water, with all sentient beings in the water, and with the five skandhas of your body and mind, before your conscious of them.  Your consciousness cannot pin down what intimacy is because consciousness is very picky, always picking out one thing and looking at it separately.  So consciousness never knows the true sense of action.  But we can know in other ways.  You can intuitively know something simultaneously with action.  That is our practice.”

Each Moment is the Universe, pp.143-144.

Lately, I’ve been teaching with a colder water temperature.  I’ve not been using wetsuits, providing greater motivation for students to ‘stay with the action’.  I assure them that when their body and mind are absorbed in the activity, they will stay on the board.  As soon as they chase after a thought or feeling of fear, they will greatly increase their chance of falling in.  Loss of attention and focus allows the subject vs. object separation to grow.  It takes strong devotion (almost vow) to totally be absorbed in the activity, growing the unity of your body, your mind and the object.  This is real security, where confidence blooms in the face of uncertainty.  Real confidence comes from penetrating ‘this’ very moment.  Again, Katagiri Roshi writes about this:

“This practice is for everyone.  Any area of the human world—art, music, sports, or whatever you do–requires this life.  But the question is: What degree of confidence do you have?  When you have a very strong, stable confidence every day, it is called spiritual life.  If you don’t, it is called art, music, or sports.  In the practice of art, oneness appears, but outside of art it doesn’t work, so you are confused.  While playing sports you can understand oneness, but outside of sports you cannot see it because you don’t have confidence.  When you don’t have confidence, the oneness you experience is relative truth.  When confidence is always with you, oneness becomes absolute truth.  To have strong, stable confidence every day, you must concentrate yourself on making the effort to constantly approach and penetrate this very moment.” p. 146

In stillness, the light shines through. The feeling of support grows.

wMay 22 Cultivating Stillness Workshop

“Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away.
Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thought of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.” Course of Miracles, Chapter 31:1, verses 12-13, p. 648

This is real courage. This is commitment to Truth, to an open mind, to birthing action from hope and faith, knowing we are forever supported. It’s knowing that feelings of aloneness and separation have been born from thought, thoughts that can be released. As we release these thoughts into the eternity of ‘this moment’ we find relief from restlessness, touching the stillness. We find “a world in which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope and sparkles with a gentle friendliness. Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your friend, and let it join with you.” CoM, p. 641. The cultivation of this stillness is what provides the courage to face impermanence and the sensitivity to touch “the universal Will” that all living things remove obstacles to awareness of Being whole. In stillness, there is non-duality. In stillness, we experience that nothing remains unchanged but the Truth of our One-ness, and our fear to face it.