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.

Mother's Light

As we explore deeper awareness to our feelings, thoughts, emotions and actions, we can determine whether they’re joining or separating.  Do they lead us deeper in love to our felt sense of interconnection, or away from love with felt sense of separation and restlessness.  Linguistic structure generally favor’s ego’s desire for us to separate.  Certainly, there is a language of the soul that facilitates a joining response.  Semantically, we can play it through poetry, prose and musical lyric.  Syntactically, we can attempt to pull the rug from the separated response by tense and emphasis.  Rather than exploring the separating question of “Who am I?”, how about digging into “Who is ‘I’?”  Or how about moving from, “Who are you?” to “Who is you?”  Can you feel the difference? One has me drifting on the surface of life, tossed around in anxiety by people and events.  The other carries me to a more solid, connecting place.

My mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer November, 1979.  After a month of struggling with her body deterioration I filled with selfish anger at the prospect of not having the physical presence of a mother through my life journey.  I had attached to all the wonderful support a mother gives her son, and no doubt, my challenge to achieve had been most fed by her.  I’ll always remember her syntactic/semantic play in a question that’s changed my life and fed my spiritual exploration.  She said, “Randy, WHAT are YOU holding on to?”  It struck as lightening as I came to peace with her transformation from form to formless.  Here was a fifty-four year old farm wife/teacher/funeral singer, steeped in conservative Norwegian Lutheran belief, providing Buddha’s deepest Noble Truths in a phrase that pulled the rug from me.

The YOU was no longer attached to all I identified with.  The question was bigger than any question previously asked of me.  The YOU wasn’t what I had achieved; it wasn’t what I had accumulated; it wasn’t what I identified with.  The WHAT was empty and full.  There was a deep relief in feeling we could never be separated.  It was like she asked me to find my original face, before she had been born.  Can you imagine that?  My mother was asking me who I was before she bore me…as she was peacefully transforming from her body to the unknown.

I’ve since come to learn that our physical dying is often a lengthy process.  While she still had a month to go before her last breath, there was a bluish/yellow/green halo that I perceived around her as she spoke that day.  Many have called these experiences moments of enlightening.  Tomorrow we celebrate the Buddha’s enlightenment and a few days later we celebrate the light baby Jesus brought to us.  These are all joining experiences, enlightening moments of joining, smashing ego’s temptation to separate us from our linguistically based thoughts.  While the ‘big belonging’ unified experience is usually dissipated from language, for me a deeper study of language and how we use it semantically and syntactically can do a lot for facilitating the unified experience.

Who "is" YOU?

Cross...illumination burst where ice meets water in transformation.

This photo was taken December 5, 2009.  Ice forms to about one hundred feet from shore.  The sun reflects on the water and when the light hits a different form (ice) the light expands.  Notice the cross.  Light expands as essence crosses change of form, water to ice.  Just as wave form continually changes, crashing on the shore to realize it’s always been water, it seems it’s during our moments of transformation, changing from one form to another, that light expands, transcending our previous notions of ‘knowing’.  Poof!! No birth…no death.

There’s joy in pleasing oneself, but it’s fleeting.  There’s longer lasting joy in pleasing another.  Yet, both eventually leave a vacuum created by desire and consequent suffering.  As youth, we fantasize the day we’ll have the resources of adults so we can have the material freedom we were ‘deprived’ of.  For me, it was unlimited chocolate candy bars.  I’ll never forget the day of awareness, recognizing that time had come and gone without my recognition of it.  I’ve since had days where I’ve eaten harmful quantities of candy, only to feel guilty and sick at the conclusion.  When it comes to giving to others, it feels better.  The joy is longer lasting, and yet, I’ve not arrived to that place of unconditional giving, that place where I’m immune to being kicked in the teeth after giving.  I know the key is to trust the heart’s intention with the courage and strength to not take another’s response personally.

Yet, there is a better way, a way to maintain joy in a constantly changing universe, even in the midst of suffering.

“When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end.  A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting.  But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water.  While living the life of a wave, it also lives the life of water.  It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water.  It would think, “Some day, I will have to die.  This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing.”  These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish.  We have to help it remove the notions of self, person, living being and life span if we want the wave to be free and happy.  A wave can be recognized by signs–high or low, beginning or ending, beautiful or ugly.  But in the world of water, there are no signs.  In the world of relative truth, the wave feels happy as she swells, and she feels sad when she falls.  She my think, “I am high,” or “I am low,” and develop a superiority or inferiority complex.  But when the wave touches her true nature—which is water—all her complexes will cease, and she will transcend birth and death.”

“We need the relative world of the wave, but we also need to touch the water, the ground of our being, to have real peace and joy.  We shouldn’t allow relative truth to imprison us and keep us from touching the absolute truth.  Looking deeply into relative truth, we penetrate the absolute.  Relative and absolute truths inter-embrace.”

The Heart of Buddha’s Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh

There’s lasting joy in deepening awareness to our non-separateness.  There’s no longer the illusion of trusting another since we are each other.  Expectation of others diminishes as we move to unconditional love, free from the binding of judgment.  For sure, I’m now in this body, as wave, dealing with the challenges of living and the suffering from desire and attachment.  Yet, my solidity and lasting joy comes from the ‘felt’ sense of always being water.  Isn’t it strange that our lasting joy in an ever changing, impermanent world, comes from touching the permanence of our interconnection?  Wave…just Be it.  Water…just Be it.  Change…just Be it.  Non-change…just Be aware of it. Joy…just Be it.

The real test of our ‘being’ can be a deeper looking at what we do and what we say.  Can we review our actions and words of the day and assess what was joining and what was separating?  Can we see where our level of ‘joining’ stopped?  Perhaps you felt very ‘joined’ with your church congregation during a Sunday service, but separated from those of a different religious belief system?  Perhaps you felt very ‘joined’ with members in your local community, but very separated from those in communities far away?  It seems as though we’re continually being worked to experience a larger sense of belonging as we face global climate issues, rapid economic change, global culture immigration and integration, and massive technological/communication advances.  We have a choice to move to ‘joining’ or ‘separating’, to accept others as ‘us’ in all of our apparent difference or to resist others as ‘us’, holding firm to our cultural belief systems and notions of ‘rightness’.

Ancient spiritual wisdom commands us to accept our enemy as ‘us’.  We’re told to move to the highest level of belonging, transcending our bias and judgment of others, embracing one another with a larger sense of joining.  The level of heart knowing lives here, in this more inclusive space that knows no boundaries.  This is very difficult work, particularly when we perceive threat and consequent feelings of fear.  Is the cancer cell in my body a ‘joined’ member of my community?  Is Osama bin Laden a ‘joined’ member of my community?  Do I carry a weapon to fight those who I perceive as threatening?  In essence, am I moving in love to a larger ‘joining’ or in fear to further separation?

I’m now almost sixty.

They say that’s when a life lived well brings one to elderhood.

Well, if anyone’s interested, here’s my ‘used to, but now’ reflection.

I used to think there were answers, now I find there’s just deeper questions

I used to think my job was to fix things, now I find it’s to be present and listen

I used to think I was right and my job was to change others to think like me

Now I find it’s better to meet in the field between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’

I used to hate being alone, now I find I’m never alone

I used to think I owned things, now I find I never did and never will

I used to think the good approval of friends and family made me better

Now I find it’s all up to me to make me (us) better

I used to hate it when I reached out to others and received no reply

Now I work to accept it

I used to be sloppy in my speech, now I learn it’s better to be quiet

I used to hold my speech in difficult situations, now I learn to listen deeply with my heart

To polish the meaning and purpose of what I say

I used to become angry with my enemies, now I learn they’re my gift for going deeper

I used to take things for granted, now I know nothing’s to be taken for granted

I used to think I was nobody, now I know I’m somebody

I used to think I was somebody, now I know I’m somebody else

I used to think God was ‘up there’, now I feel God everywhere

I used to think there was a goal, now I ‘feel’ there’s just the journey

I used to be filled with ambition, now I’m filled with duty to honor grace given

From where does my action or seeming inaction come from?  If I perceive threat from another desiring me to conform to their desire, what’s the shape of my resistance or allowance?  How can I cause the least harm to them as me or me as them?  In all instance, when my wisdom to act arises from the heart there’s a strong chance for positive result.  Contrarily, when I react from fear, or when my non-doing is fear based, the result is more likely to have an unpleasant result.

Are there any guarantees?  Absolutely not.  Yet, when we commit to the process of love and awakened ‘doing’ outside the realm of duality, we find that compassion and deeper listening are keys to diffusing potential threat.  This dedication to our interdependence upon one another sponsors our courage to show up, pay attention in awakened doing, responsibly do our best, and most importantly, to be easy on ourselves when things don’t turn out as we expected.

This is learning to live a life of love without grasping.  It’s knowing the elements support us…the ground, air, water, and fire.  It’s knowing there’s someone else inside of us that carries the wisdom of loving action, in harmony and rhythm to the flow of life.  The residence for this wisdom is in the heart, not the head or stomach.  Some have called this nonviolent mindfulness.  It’s a space of compassion,  where when I look in your eyes I experience me.  It’s a space of forgiveness, where I’m open to the completeness of the arising moment, no matter what comes up.  It’s a space of gratitude, where I’m forever aware that this form I carry is gift and all moments are surprise and gifts arising.

Trust no one, since it places expectation on another and leads to inevitable disappointment.  Love everyone.  Trust your heart’s knowing as you trust the universe.

Mountain...Just Be it. Snow...Just Be it. Rider...Just Be it.

Words can only point, abstractions we’ve arbitrarily agreed upon. They either facilitate or hinder our movement to the felt experience of our interconnection.  We often block our learning by insisting that meaning is in the word.  This is not the case, since we each bring our own unique experiences to language and we therefore conclude that meaning is in the person, not the word.  This is a foundational principle from the field of General Semantics.  Put another way, the map is not the territory.  This is emphasized in the Chinese story ‘Pointing at the Moon’.  A dedicated student asks a teacher to explain some difficult text.  The teacher claims he can’t read and the student questions the teacher’s credibility.  The teacher claims that the territory and words are unrelated, stating how the finger can be used to point out the moon, but you don’t need the finger to see the moon.  The teacher points out the absurdity in mistaking the words for the territory, in mistaking the finger for the moon.

The master athlete or musician can not find the words to accurately describe the felt unified experience when subject/object duality is transcended.  The linguistic barriers binding us to our sense of separateness have been released.  Our descriptions of ‘in the zone’, ‘flow’, ‘nirvana’, ‘bliss’, etc., can help us aim to this experience, yet that’s all they can do.  At some point the mind must surrender the abstractions of language, of time and space, and fully enter the present moment in the ‘feeling’ of the unified experience.  At this point it’s all Subject!  I am not my body, separate from other bodies.  I am not the wave rider, separate from the wave.  The felt experience of ‘being’ my body in other bodies, my body in the wave, my awareness in relation to everything, within ‘this precious moment’, is peace.  The felt experience of myself separate, bound in notions of language, time and space, is my restlessness.

I have not found lasting joy in attachments to notions of my separateness.  There’s a transitory pleasure that can come from comparing myself ‘better’ than another.  I have temporary moments of pleasure from ‘my’ achievements and accumulations, yet the Law of Impermanence eventually dissipates this joy and I once again face restlessness.  In the Subject relationship, I can’t ‘have’ anything since nothing can be owned, and I can’t ‘do’ anything without affecting everything.  The observation of energy dissipation (everything changes) and interdependence (everything is connected) leads to the core teaching of all spiritual traditions: Love one another as yourself because you are not separate from one another.  This teaching drives us to ‘not harm’ and hopefully to compassion, even for our perceived enemy.  When our actions move from the heart’s felt sense of connection (love), we steward the advance of life’s abundance.  When our actions move from the mind’s sense of fear and ignorance, we risk harm, claiming justification for collateral damage.  Just as breath practice is a conduit to move from the mind’s restlessness to the heart’s wisdom, so is the phrase ‘just be it’ a tool to move from our ‘doing’, ‘having’ duality to heart’s felt sense of presence and interconnection.

A study of the wave has often been used to distinguish our notions of separateness from a bigger sense of belonging.  Consider the small wave never knowing from where it came, suffering in relation to the much larger waves in its midst.  He considers himself so inferior to the other waves until another wave points out that he hasn’t seen his ‘original face’.  Asking who he is, the compassionate wave explains how the wave is just a temporary form, that all waves are just water.  Upon realizing that his fundamental essence was water, the small wave came to peace and he no longer suffered.  Many waves suffer all the way to crashing upon some distant shore, only to realize they’ve always been water and always will be water.  While great suffering comes from the subject vs. object relationship, our joy, peace and courage move from our ‘felt’ sense of interconnection and continuation.

The felt sense of ‘just be it’ is always there, available to us even in this moment.  Try it.  Breathing in, surrendering my notions of separateness, I affirm meeting this moment fully with the felt experience of gratitude for the opportunity to participate, “Yes”.  Breathing out I’m filled with joy in my expression of gratitude, “Thank you”.  We can cultivate our practice in deepening awareness (interconnection and impermanence) and gratitude in the “Yes” response or we can remain in our restlessness with “No” and failure to recognize the gift in the given experience or opportunity.  Put simply, can we meet ‘this moment’ in awareness to ‘the gift given’ in awareness to our ‘not separate’ experience, forever changing, arising moment to arising moment?  Easy words to say, but extremely difficult to apply with a disciplined practice.

So the direction is to diminish our subject vs. object orientation and consequent feelings of separation and restlessness and to enhance our all Subject orientation.  The linguistic based thoughts arising from ‘just do’ and ‘just have’ seem to foster the separated experience.  ‘Just be’ seems better suited to move us from the thought to the feeling for more considerate living in stewardship to the health of all as one.  Put another way, aware doing from the heart is great being.  Unaware doing from felt orientations of separation has great potential for harm (notions of fixing).  From this perspective, aware non-doing has great potential for moving us to considerate action with intention to harm none.  Just as the wave came to felt sense of connection as water, our actions change as we experience all things as us, interconnected, forever in change, yet never to disappear.  In peace and joy, this precious moment, please consider adding ‘just be it’ to your arsenal of tools that aim to break the subject vs. object barrier.

The real test of our ‘being’ can be a deeper looking at what we do and what we say. Can we review our actions and words of the day and assess what was joining and what was separating? Can we see where our level of ‘joining’ stopped? Perhaps you felt very ‘joined’ with your church congregation during a Sunday service, but separated from those of a different religious belief system? Perhaps you felt very ‘joined’ with members in your local community, but very separated from those in communities far away? It seems as though we’re continually being worked to experience a larger sense of belonging as we face global climate issues, rapid economic change, global culture immigration and integration, and massive technological/communication advances. We have a choice to move to ‘joining’ or ‘separating’, to accept others as ‘us’ in all of our apparent difference or to resist others as ‘us’, holding firm to our cultural belief systems and notions of ‘rightness’.

Ancient spiritual wisdom commands us to accept our enemy as ‘us’. We’re told to move to the highest level of belonging, transcending our bias and judgment of others, embracing one another with a larger sense of joining. The level of heart knowing lives here, in this more inclusive space that knows no boundaries. This is very difficult work, particularly when we perceive threat and consequent feelings of fear. Is the cancer cell in my body a ‘joined’ member of my community? Is Osama bin Laden a ‘joined’ member of my community? Do I carry a weapon to fight those who I perceive as threatening? In essence, am I moving in love to a larger ‘joining’ or in fear to further separation?

Breathing into this moment because there is no cure to uncertainty.