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.

Most of us spend much of our lives trying to fight inevitable change.  We’re also continually drawn into the illusion of our separateness, developing egos we think are somehow defined by our thoughts, actions and achievements, identities, relationships, etc.  Yet, when we look deeper, change is inevitable and we’re not our fixed notion of an ego.  Energy disperses by law. Everything affects everything, by law.  We’ll all shed our bodies as entropy plays itself upon us.  Certainly, we can work to slow entropy through awareness and body/mind practice that recognizes the fragility of our time within these physical bodies.  Yet, no matter how hard we try to stop entropy, the body deteriorates and we take our last breath.  Through the Law of Unity, it’s impossible to ‘stop‘ our connection with the Matrix, the Oneness of Life.  It’s quite paradoxical that we come to steward better lives when we face our inevitable body release.  When we face our death, now we come to true living.  Our courage to ‘face this moment’ comes from our felt awareness that ‘this is it’, this moment indivisible in our typical notions of time and space.

The thought of no longer being is quite terrifying.  Many religions have evolved with stories about what happens when we shed these bodies.  This gives relief to millions and for many, readies them to actually face their death in Divine Oneness.  My mother had many cognitive traditional religious beliefs based on a God ‘out there’.  They were eventually incorporated into her dying experience as she once again left conflict and duality for the experience of peace and Oneness.  Christ was her mode of appreciation and her connection with the Divine was the greatest gift a mother could give her child.  Her most profound question, just a few weeks before her last breath, was, “Randy, what are you holding on to?”  This was the most liberating question I’ve ever been asked.  At that moment I felt her Presence within me and through the Law of Unity, experienced the impossibility of her disappearing.  Her Life Force was transforming, her physical energy dissipating, yet I carried great peace in knowing she didn’t stop and she didn’t disconnect from the Source of Being.  She was transforming, moment to moment, much like the chrysalis changing to the butterfly.

On this Armistice Day it seems appropriate to question our fighting nature.  The originators of this day set it as a commitment to never again repeat the grave mistake of WWI.  It was set as a commitment to find alternatives to warfare.  The very date of 11/11, signed at 11pm, carries the message of our Oneness in honor to the Law of Unity.  When I fight you from  fear, anger, greed or ignorance, I fight myself and harm the Universe with my dualistic thought.  When I experience you as me I respect the fragility of our condition and minimize the harm I do.  As Jesus spoke in Luke 6, “Love you enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you”, our life journey is to feel others as us, to do to others as we would have them do to us, because we are each other, bound in relation through the Law of Unity.

The intention of Armistice Day was lost after we experienced WWII and when President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day.  We lost the very strength of those spiritual leaders who chose this day of Oneness, 11/11 at 11pm, allowing us to further entrench ourselves in the illusion of conflict.  This is not to take away from our remembrance of those lost in combat. Still, can we follow our intention to Oneness?  It’s to challenge ourselves to honestly ask if war has ever worked.  It’s to really do the work of responding in action to Christ’s mandate, a mandate from almost all great spiritual leaders.  Cultivate Oneness.  Seek to understand one another as mirrors of ourselves.  At all costs, respond in action from love, not greed, fear and ignorance.  How many innocent lives have been lost from poor intelligence?  How many lives have been saved from patience, generosity, and love? Former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, made an insightful documentary about this evolution called Fog of War. Too bad it’s not a mandate for viewing on each 11/11.  In these times of ever increasing respect for militarism, anger and fighting, I suspect the words of Jesus and Buddha may create some negative judgment.  Yet, for me, as we approach 1/11/11 and 11/11/11, my intentions will forever strengthen in Big Hope and awareness to the Law of Unity and the Law of Impermanence, as we more deeply respond in love to our rapidly changing universe.  Honor and mourn veterans and their sacrifice? Yes, for their sacrifice lives in all of us.  Yet, let’s not loose sight of our spiritual mandate to forever increase our awareness to Oneness.  Love one another as yourself, because you are in One, our completion Here and Now, the separation an illusion.

MIDVAS (from Charles Van Riper’s acronym for Motivation, Identification, Desensitization, Variability, Approximations, and Stability)

So how do I deepen my understanding of impermanence and unity?  What ‘practice’ strengthens my capacity to accept what is within ‘this moment’?  What practice deepens my awareness and consequent experience of Oneness?  How do my thoughts deepen or weaken my understanding and experience of change and interdependence?  STAY TUNED

Students have ears.

My daughter-in-law and I were having a conversation about education when her three year old son piped in, “Students have ears”.  I took this to mean that teachers must respect the minds of their students.  We were taken to a new place that more deeply examines the nature of the “teacher” and the nature of “student”.  It looks more into what moves us to learn.  There seems to be a recent backward trend to have the teacher impart knowledge upon the student.  The student then demonstrates comprehension and retention in some form of test and consequently receives the approval of the culture.  Yet, this seems more of an indoctrination than an awakening to deeper knowledge.

I heard my grandson say that he, too, has a mind.  A powerful teacher knows how to open the mind to new discovery.  The children come with open minds, curious to learn and dig deeper into the mystery.  A didactic approach that aims to ‘fill’ the student with knowledge (teacher as Subject, student as Object) eventually robs the student of enthusiasm.  The ‘dance’ of learning has been stifled through the illusion of a ‘right’ answer.  A true teacher is more of a ‘guide’, deeply listening to the student, identifying the obstacles the student has placed in front of discovery.  Attempting to present knowledge when the barriers to learning are strong would seem to be a wasted effort.

So how does the ‘guide’ hold the student’s interest, stimulating them to new discovery in creative response?  It would seem the first requirement is to get the student to ‘show up’.  This comes from our culture’s respect for the educational process and the evolution of our humanity through cultivation of the creative response.  Our civilization advances to the degree we desire to wake to our interconnection and the reality of imminent change.  When we realize we’re all connected, affecting our universe, we stimulate the desire to learn and ultimately contribute.  We more carefully examine how we nurture and how we harm.  Our motivation to ‘matter’ is awakened and it’s what drives us to dig deeper into our heart’s calling.  We ‘show up’.

The next step is to ‘pay attention’.  With technology’s multiple screen devices and an increasingly greedy political environment, the quality of education suffers tremendously.  Children without healthcare, without adequate diet, and those suffering from tremendous home emotional pressure are most challenged to pay attention.  Those students who’ve fallen asleep to technology’s distractive pull can barely give ten per cent attention to the teacher.  Countless books are now being released describing the dangers of the inattentive mind.  Our years of posterity, living in the economic bubble, have yielded a group of students put to sleep through TV, video games, social network distraction, cell phones and ever increasing ways to carry the mind below awareness of the ‘present moment’.  Simply put, a true teacher needs the student’s awareness.  An educational system that’s going to work well needs full attention.  Obviously, ever increasing class size greatly diminishes the capacity to hold a student’s full attention.

By definition, our ‘best’ is when we’ve ‘shown up in full attention’ to the present moment.  When we’re asleep, even partially, to the moment, we’re not at our best.  So how do we slow to open the hand of thought, to settle to the moment and awake fully to deepening our education?

The above question forces us to examine the intention of education.  Why are you a student, a teacher, and school institution?  What are we aiming for and what motivates us to participate?  As a culture, what is education about?  For some it’s about the utility of getting our youth prepared for a paycheck.  For others it’s about training our youth to think like we think.  For others it’s a competition with others, driven from pride to ‘be better than others’.  Yet, I maintain our work is to deepen our awareness to the ‘illusion of other’ as we become more and more aware of the ‘experience’ of interconnection through a cultivated educational experience that respects my grandchild’s remark that ‘student have ears (minds)’.  Our lifelong task is to stay from closing those ears, challenging the creative mind to open.

No doubt, we’re living in an increased polarized environment.  Our commercial media bombards us with ‘us vs. them’ message.  The very notion of advancing to handle ever increasing change is repeatedly beat down by those who proclaim an ability to ‘stop change’.  The very notion of creativity, collaboration and stewardship is beat down by those who beat the drum of ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’.  The stress from these repeating thoughts forever hinders our learning.  Obstacles to growth appear and we crash or crack.

Perhaps the most effective thing a guide can do is to begin a dedicated program to ‘waking up’.  Dedicate portions of the day to simply still the mind, letting go repeating thoughts, deepening awareness to ‘this moment’.  When the student really, really, really wants to ‘be here, now’, real learning happens.  When the guide has brought the student to ‘joy for the moment’, enthusiasm is the result.  It doesn’t come from the approval of others but from a deeper knowing that ‘the best’ has been touched.

If you’re a teacher, what makes a strong teacher?  How do you know you’ve done your best?  What motivates you to do what you do?  What do you think needs to happen to get the student to show up, pay attention, and to do their best?

“Zazen, which is letting go and opening the hand of thought, is the only true teacher.  This is an important point.  I have never said to my disciples that I am a true teacher.  From the beginning I have said that the zazen each of us practices is the only true teacher…… I’ve never said that I am a true teacher or that I am always right.  Whether you think I am a true teacher or not is only your opinion.  A true teacher is just not that sort of thing.  Please do not forget that the zazen of opening the hand of thought is what constitutes our true teacher and is most worthy of respect.”

from Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama

Many have said we really don’t authentically face our living until we’ve faced our death.  When my full heart ‘feels’ infinity, the time and space that’s outside of time and space, I touch the ‘whole heart’.  Zen masters and those pioneers in transformative psychology and interfaith spiritual studies have struck upon this.  When we can let go the grasp of desire for things as they were or as we would have them, simply (and most challenging) touching the felt response of ‘this arising moment’, we’ve altered the universe.

I recently turned sixty years old.  I spent three days returning to each new breath in wonder to the grace given for still ‘being here’.  There have been many moments where grace was given and I was spared severe damage to this body.  And here I am, typing these words, a new breath, a new acorn hitting the deck, a new batch of leaves blown from the trees, the dissipating hum of a plane flying away, the sound and feel of autumn, knowing that this moment will never return.

I attempt to ‘be’ here.  Yet, as my mind touches a new thought, a word, an experience I attempt to label, somehow I travel away from awareness to ‘this’ moment.  So ‘who’ is this ‘I’?  Is it the awareness of this body creating this word string from a thought in my mind?  Why not just rest in the silence of the heart, the ‘felt’ connection of all with all?  Why not just celebrate in nonverbal heart opening rather than cerebrate from the intellect?  It seems to work so much better as my one year old grandchildren demonstrate.  The whole heart doesn’t know thought, words or intellect.  It resides in the realm of the interconnected Being, beyond any notions of separateness.

With today’s bombardment of technological distractions it’s no wonder fewer moments are felt in wholehearted doing (Being).  We so suffer from the restless mind, being dragged here and there with our notions of busy-ness.  We’re so unaware of the harm caused from our actions as we’re continued in our delusions of separateness.  Yet, I have what Katagiri Roshi calls Big Hope.  Others may call it Big Faith in knowing one day we’ll all wake to awareness of our Divine Oneness.  The new math in The Great Healing (return to wholeness) will challenge that 1 + 1=1, just as 1/1=1 and 1 x 1=1.  When in the practice of the whole heart, the notion of being alone is absurd.  The notion of harming another is absurd.  The whole heart knows it’s only hurting itself and dedicates life to the curious mind, forever open to the next surprise in loving wonder for the gift to ‘be’.

A few years back I couldn’t help look at a clock without seeing 11:11 or 1:11.  As search engines evolved I was able to find others with this dominant repeating experience.  The general thrust is that duality is illusion, all is One.  Today major movies try to touch this notion of a Network, Matrix, God, Source, etc.  Yet, we’re still carried with the illusions of small belonging, fighting expensive endless wars, engaging in win/loose politics, sports, religion, commerce, etc.  While this is difficult to approach with words, most people have a felt sense of our interdependence.  Yet, our greed, fear and ignorance have us persisting the dualistic approach to the moment, the subject vs. object.  The Great Healing receives strong energy in 2011.  While ‘time is Being’, our felt sense of One will advance significantly on 1/11/11 at 1:11 and 11:11, both am and pm, and on 11/11/11 at 1:11 and 11:11, both am and pm.  The sad illusion that we’re separate will lose tremendous energy as light spreads to our felt sense of One.  While all I know is now, in ‘this moment’ I feel this advance of peace, outside of time and space.  I know thousands of other spirits have this same feeling and there’s tremendous joy in moving from material greed and fear to the realm of love, listening, curiosity, joy, gratitude, and the magnanimous.

Breathing in, I know I am not my body.  Breathing out, I know I’m not ‘not my body’.

Breathing in, I know I’m not right.  Breathing out, I know I’m not ‘not right’.

To really appreciate full, it helps to be empty.

To really appreciate life, it helps to face and know death.

When the mind leaves the posture, obstacles appear.

When the mind leaves the tone, obstacles appear.

When the mind leaves ‘this moment’, obstacles appear.

When the mind leaves ‘this breath’, obstacles appear.

When the mind leaves awareness, obstacles appear.

Conformity is overrated.

Precision is underrated.

Conformity is a dangerous condition where depth sacrifices to approval.

Multitasking is divided attention and counter to wholehearted being.

We’ve been trained from fear to meet survival needs, often at the expense of harm to others.  Whether in family, school, work, religion, community, state, nation, etc., the notion of ‘win’ is illusion, ultimately costing us real peace.

A strong desire to be ‘better’ may be the comparative that prevents you from full whole hearted attention, from ‘being’ your best.

In the end, all we really want (and need) is one another’s awareness.  So let’s ‘wake up’ to one another.

Rockets of desire seldom launch when there’s a sense of yearning (restlessness).  We must first carry our gratitude and depth of awareness for ‘what is’.  This opens the space for the new to come in.

Opening in joy to receive what ‘is’ slows greed’s venom, opening space for lasting joy.  We can live in love/generosity or fear; live in greed or gratitude/generosity; ignoring or awakened awareness and sharing.

I can move beyond the feeling of ‘overwhelm’ by deepening to that place beyond notions of birth and death.  This deepens our capacity to face restlessness and the suffering mind/body.

Not this moment?  Yes…this moment.  The journey from establishing ‘object permanence’ at two (training our mind for a different moment) is to once again move back to ‘this moment’, deepening our awareness to impermanence and interdependence.  Breath in ‘yes’.  Breath out ‘thank you’.

When ‘best’ is defined by 100% attention we see it’s transitory, momentary nature.  This takes a lot of pressure away.  Too often we’re damaged by the spirit of competition, the extreme grasping at the expense of another’s loss.  Winning yields a temporary pleasure, but it’s not sustaining.

Sustaining joy comes from not taking things for granted.  Moving from awareness to gratitude, we eventually arrive in joy.

Sustaining joy comes from felt sense of ‘fullness’, never from felt sense of ‘lackness’.

There is no audience, just our fear of judgement.  Be played to your fullest.

Judgment is an obstacle to love.  The brain can’t create and criticize at the same time.

Sept. 26, from 7:30-9 am, I’ll be leading a group in beginning zazen practices at the Woodbury Bikram Yoga studio (755 Bielenberg Dr.).

I was first trained in this form of meditation by Katagiri Roshi in 1972 and have been obedient to this form since with a daily meditation schedule.  It comes from the Soto Zen tradition and was first presented by it’s founder, Dogen, as follows:

For sanzen, a quiet room is suitable. Eat and drink moderately. Discard all involvements and take respite from concerns. Do not think good or bad. Do not adjudicate right and wrong. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a Buddha. How could it be limited to sitting or lying down?

At the site of your regular sitting, spread out a thick mat and place a cushion above it. Sit either in the full-lotus or half- lotus position. In the full-lotus position, first place your right foot on your left thigh, then your left foot on your right thigh. In the half-lotus, simply place your left foot against your right thigh. Wear your clothes and belt loose and arranged neatly. Then place your right hand on you left leg and your left palm (facing upward) on your right palm, thump-tips touching. Thus sit upright with posture straight, neither inclining to left or to the right, neither leaning forward or backward. Align your ears with your shoulders and your nose with your navel. Place your tongue against the front roof of your mouth,with teeth and lips both shut. Always keep your eyes gently open and breathe softly though your nose.

Once you have adjusted your posture, take a breath and exhale fully, rock your body right and left, and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think of what does not think. How do you think of what does not think? Nonthinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen. The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. It is simply the Dharma gate of peace and bliss, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the manifestation of ultimate reality. Traps and snares can never reach it. Once its heart is grasped, you are like a dragon gaining the water, like a tiger settling into the mountains. For you must know that just there (in zazen) the true Dharma is manifesting itself and that from the first dullness and distraction are struck aside.

When you arise from sitting, move slowly and quietly, calmly and deliberately. Do not rise suddenly or abruptly. In surveying the past, we find that transcendence of both mundane and sacred, and dying while either sitting or standing, have all depended entirely on the power of zazen.

From Approach to Zen, Uchiyama Roshi further describes our posture:

The zafu (cushion) should be in back of the place where your legs cross and your knees should be firmly down on the zaniku (floor mat).  The weight of the upper part of the body should be distributed on three points–your knees on the floor and your buttocks on the cushion.

Sit up and straighten your back as if you were pushing your buttocks firmly in the zafu.  Keep your neck straight and pull in your chin.  Without leaving an air-pocket inside, close your mouth and put your tongue firmly against the upper pallet.  Project your head as if it were going to pierce the ceiling.  Relax your shoulders.  Put your right hand on top of your left hand in the palm of the right.  Your thumbs should meet above your hands.

Your ears should be in line with your shoulders and your nose in line with your navel.  Keep your eyes open as usual, look at the wall, and drop your line of vision slightly.

Once you’ve taken the zazen position, open your mouth and exhale deeply.  By doing this, you change your whole mood.  In order to work out the stiffness in the joints and muscles, slowly swing two or three times to the left and right.  Now you take the immovable posture.  Once you’ve taken the immovable posture, breathe quietly through the nose.  The important thing is to let the long breaths be long and the short breaths be short.  Your should breathe as naturally as possible from the tanden (about an inch below the navel).  If you are maintaining the correct zazen posture, the center of gravity of your body and mind will naturally fall here. Don’t make noise by breathing heavily.

In our zazen, the most important thing is to sit in the correct posture.  Next, it is important to regulate the breath and calm the mind.

It’s easy to tell someone to aim at the correct posture with his flesh and bones and leave everything up to this, but it’s actually not so simple to do.  If, even while you are in zazen position, you continue your thoughts, you are thinking and no longer doing zazen.  Or, if you fall asleep while in the zazen position, you’re simply sleeping and no longer doing zazen.  Zazen is not thinking, nor is it sleeping; rather, it must aim at holding a living and vital zazen posture.  If you become sleepy while doing zazen, your energy becomes limp.  If you pursue your thoughts, your posture will become stiff.  Zazen is neither being limp and lifeless nor is it being stiff; rather, it ought to be full of life and energy.

In his revolutionary book published in 1957, Alan Watts describes zazen very similar to Uchiyama and adds the following:

The breathing is regulated so as to be slow without strain, with the stress upon the out-breath, and its impulse from the belly rather than the chest.  This has the effect of shifting the body’s center of gravity to the abdomen so that the whole posture has a sense of firmness, of being part of the ground upon which one is sitting.  The slow, easy breathing from the belly works upon the consciousness like bellows, and gives it a still, bright clarity.  The beginner is advised to accustom himself to the stillness by doing nothing more than counting his breaths from one to ten, over and over again, until the sensation of sitting without comment becomes effortless and natural.

Clouds in the Water Zen Center in St. Paul suggests the following:

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.

1. 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 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.

When the mind leaves the tone, obstacles appear.

When I was twenty-nine my mother was in her last days with her body.  She would let it go within weeks from asking me, “Randy, just ‘what’ are you holding on to?”  I had expressed my anger and frustration for letting her body go so soon.  Her question came from a higher place as I witnessed a yellow/blue aura surrounding her fading body.  It ripped the grasping mind from beneath me as we touched a moment that changed me forever.  Outside of time/space notions, we had gone from the small hope of wanting things different to the Big Hope that all is one in ‘this’ arising moment.  The obstacle of judging ‘this’ moment good or bad had been removed.  In the fullness of our emptiness, we faced the life/death moment as miraculous ‘change’.

When people ask me about ‘what’ we wake to, it’s simply to ‘this moment’.  It’s the grand affirmation to what ‘is’, no longer chasing thoughts about what was or what we wish to come.  It’s coming home to feeling ‘this’ breath, touching awareness to ‘this’ feeling, in full arrival to heaven, here and now.  It’s the courage to live in the realm of ‘no complaint, no complaint’.  It’s the strength to face each moment new, no matter what.  It’s the discipline to make space for finding the gift in what’s given, no matter what.

Can I wake up to the felt awareness that everything is connected?  Am I cultivating the deeper feeling that everything affects everything, everything being joined?  Am I strengthening my ‘Yes’ to this living moment or feeding my ‘No’?  Am I waking to new found mystery and curiosity or stuck in my beliefs and notions of ‘rightness’?  Simply put, am I waking to peace or separation?

In our polarizing times this is very difficult work.  May my mother’s words soften your day in appreciation to ‘this’ moment?  May you find the extraordinary in the ordinary?  In honor to my father’s gentle mind, may you live a life without complaint?  In peace and full blessing, we share this precious moment.  Yes!  Thank you.

We come into this form of body and experience our world.  We receive sensations, interpret them into perceptions, create thoughts that lead to emotions, and build a ‘map’ to what we imagine is ‘the territory’.  Our spiritual masters and great scientists claim the territory is all connected.  Yet, our thinking mind continually pushes us to a sense of being separated.  We dedicate so much of our living to separateness and defending ‘our map’.  Perhaps our greatest obstacle to love, peace and joy is the judgment that our map is the ‘right’ one.  Yet, when we embrace the Divine, the Law of Unity, God, the Territory, we clearly see we only carry a map.  The curious mind wants to touch the territory.  The alive, vital person wants to ‘touch the Territory’.  This takes a different kind of belief.  It’s the belief that comes from the felt experience of touching the Territory, in full knowledge that separation is an illusion.  It’s not belief in another’s map.  It’s not an emotional attachment to a thought.  It’s a surrendered moment of peace that allows us to harmonize with all that is.  It’s real intercourse of lasting joy.  It’s the ‘great fullness’ that comes from emptying our map to ‘feel’ the territory.  It’s movement from the intellect to the belly or heart brain.  It’s willingness to silence thought’s incessant noise.

Our judicial and political system reward those most effective at selling ‘their’ map.  Various religions sell ‘their’ map.  Parents steal the creative minds of their children by instilling ‘their’ map.  Spirits are stolen by authoritarians forcing ‘their’ map and we endure monologues from egocentrics pushing ‘their’ map.  We endure wars, sports events, advertisements, and mindless consumption caught in our thought (map).

So where do we find peace?  How do we ‘touch the territory’, beyond notions of like and dislike?  How do we enter the realm of ‘flow’ in full arrival to our Being?  It requires suspension of ‘our’ map.  This is something foreign to politicians, attorneys, most pastors, and most in authority.  Perhaps someday we can raise the courage to deeply listen to one another from a ‘suspended map’, touching the territory of Oneness in gratitude for the opportunity to participate.

The calendar says this is the last day of July, 2010. The journey deepens for us all, and this will be my only July entry. Each day I’m amazed at how Source presents events to humor us, enliven us, and challenge us to grow into deeper territory. This summer has been particularly pleasant for me as I’ve been honored to witness the ‘freshness’ of my one and three year old grandchildren in our house. They live in joy, unencumbered by the weight of the intellect. They receive each moment new, in wonder to what’s coming. They’re in constant movement, stretching their bodies and movements to new levels each day. You can smell their curiosity. And when they hug, they really hug. If we were to wear smile meters, my grand daughter would be off the charts.

I’m not sure where I was before I was some body (manifested in this body). I’m certainly not sure where I’ll be when I’m no body (not manifested in this body). Yet, the longer I live, the deeper I practice living, the more I experience, the deeper I ‘feel’ that nothing ends. My observation and experiential ‘feel’ is that we change, and then discover we’re somebody else. The more I silence my thought, moving from head to belly or heart, the more I experience this moment to arising moment. There it is…poof…and now the next moment…poof…and on it goes. This happens in everything I see. We come into form from formlessness and then surrender form to a new arising, moving from light to heavy to light, from a felt sense of being joined, to ego’s draw to a sense of separate identity, back again to felt sense of being joined. There are a lot of markers along the way. Perhaps the most evident are found in our degrees of greed, fear and ignoring versus our degrees of compassion, gratitude and forgiveness.

If we truly come to experience our connection with all things, we more easily see the folly in trying to accumulate more than we need at the expense of another, of trying to achieve against comparison to another’s loss, of fearing from others that what we have will be taken, or of numbing ourselves to the territory for fear of facing it. Once we know we’re all connected, why would we harm another, harming ourselves. Why would we steal from another, knowing we’re stealing from ourselves? Why would we greedily try to hold our ‘stuff’ at the expense of stewardship to the welfare of those who follow us? Cultivating our felt sense of ‘oneness’ and our courage to face impermanence, we live more meaningfully and prepare to die without regret. While this is a common thread among great spiritual leaders, it’s now carried forward with validity from some of our greatest scientific minds. Albert Einstein, in 1950, wrote the following:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe. A part limited in time and space, he experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion from his consciousness. Striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion; not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the one obtainable measure to achieve peace of mind.

It seems we all say we want peace of mind, yet all our attempts at control work against peace. My grandchildren meet the moment, here and now. They find joy, heaven in this arising moment. I may try to change things to the way I think they ‘should’ be. The more I push the further I seem to travel from peace. The deeper I listen, the longer I hold silence, and the stronger I love (developing felt sense of oneness), the less I seem to harm. I can lock into my notions of ‘rightness’ or be in joy. I can embrace my restless mind, experience how things change, pause, and then take action that minimizes harm. The pause is big. This is where I can touch Big Hope, where I can ‘feel’ my Being that lives beyond the limits of this body, and where I can raise my vibration (energy) to once again experience the impossibility of separation. This is where I can once again touch what Carlos  Castanada has called ‘the active side of infinity’.

The weight of our cultural mind, the never ending monologue in my mind, and the challenge of relationships forever works me back to the bifurcated experience. Basically, I’m once again caught in the delusion that I’m here and you’re there. I’m once again tempted to convince you that ‘I know that’. I may fight to convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong. Yet, my Divine Self is forever evolving, humored at my missteps. Louis Hay has said:

The Universe waits in smiling repose for you to get your thinking right so it can pour its abundance down upon you. And it waits…and waits…and waits. It may not be this lifetime or the next, but someday.

This is what meaningful living is all about. Waking up to our Bigger Self, cultivating our sense of Oneness, practicing compassion, gratitude and forgiveness, and courageously catching up with our bigger Self, our Divine nature. As we empty we meet a new fullness, an openness that awakens dormant forces not previously accessible. As we experience ‘great fullness’ in this arising moment, we present an ‘allowing’ for new to arrive. We catch up with our Divine when we fully arrive to the ‘feeling’ of the future breathed into the present. There’s no yearning for things different, no restlessness for anything other than deeper love for all, gratitude, and letting go the weight of past events. This is true relativity, when we jump outside of time and space to the paradoxical. In loving feelings of ‘alone’ we feel ‘all one’. Outside of space in ‘nowhere’ we feel ‘now here’. Outside of the fear of ‘beware’ we cultivate ‘be aware’. We can surrender the ‘in form (ation) age’ to the ‘in spirit age’. Surrendering our temptations to ‘have’ and to ‘do’ we drill deeper into our ‘be’ nature. The dis-ease from thinking we’re separate from God (Source, Universe) heals as we nurture the gift of the Divine within and without, beyond notions of in and out.

Your Somebody is your body, given to your stewardship. Please never criticize it. Catch up to your greater Self and honor your body for doing everything it can to catch up to the beauty of response for the gift of your materialization. If you have any sense of lack-ness, stop it. Move from this ‘dis on grace’ to cultivation of gratitude for the grace bestowed upon us to manifest. Move forever from complaint to no complaint. Work forever to be in the sustainable felt experience of ‘joy’ rather than forever seeking the fleeting pleasure of ‘enjoyment’. Surrender attachment to second and third hand information and cultivate first hand experiential knowing from the Laws of the Universe, forever reducing the number of felt moments of separation.

In the process of catching up to our greater Self, we leave the ‘ant in a sugar bowel’ consumptive mentality. We enter the realm of or best creative expression, knowing the results of our actions remain as we return to ‘no form’. Our practice at ‘pause’, deeper in silence, reverently offers our vibration to the song of the Universe as we arrive. The arrival is beautiful, outside of the intellect’s desire to separate. The beauty changes us and deepens our living as we touch the soil that Source served to seed our Divine nature. Life is celebration, not cerebration. Life is feeling, not thought. The real question is whether or not we’re strong enough to surrender our love of thought for our love of the Divine.

So what instrument(s) do you use to deepen your expression? We give birth to the Divine with our creative artist of life. As we remove our thought obstacles, let go our critical mind, we drill deeper. Our emptiness paves the way to our receiving and our fullness. In breath, we’re inspired from silence and emptiness. Breathing out we participate. In affirmation to this very gift, we’re filled with ‘Yes’. In sustaining joy, we scream ‘Thank you’. This is wild work that doesn’t know the peanut gallery. It doesn’t feel the need for approval from others. It just dances in the realm of the creative, touching that experience of joined response in the Divine song of life. This work is grounded from a deeper sense of Being-ness and it knows the gravity of conformity.

So if life is a song, and if it’s all vibration, can’t we assume that all we need to do is open to the harmony and rhythm that’s found throughout all things? And if it’s song, again, what is your instrument? Can you step aside from your mind and ‘feel’ the depth of song spring forth from you belly? Wayne Dyer has famously said, “Don’t die with your music still in you?” I don’t like the word ‘die’ because it implies an ending, a sort of separation. How about, “When you surrender your material form, will you have regrets for holding un-played music?”

Finally, if you’ve traveled with me through these words to this point, please know I’m deeply humbled by this work. It’s a never ending challenge. People may wonder what’s the point? Why cultivate a deeper sense of Just Be It? I don’t have the three minute elevator speech, but in the words of famous bluesman, Otis Spann, “I gotta a feelin’ everything gonna be alright. I gotta a wonderful feelin’ my baby (Divine) coming home tonight.” Sung from the belly, Otis had the present moment feeling of the future in the present. It’s a wonderful feeling. Just let go the things that grow your restlessness (greed, fear, ignoring) and be aware of those things that make your life more meaningful (love, gratitude, and forgiveness). There’s an army of cooperative vibration just waiting to hop your train of creation as we participate in this joyous song. It’s here, now.

Final quote of the day from Reb Anderson on the Second Precept:

In uprightness you see that everything is you. If there is one thing about yourself that is obscure to you or feels separate from you, then you will feel some dent in your wholeness. That one small dent will force you to inevitably try to fill it.

Does it make sense to continually yell at one another, trying to persuade another that we’re right and they’re wrong? Wouldn’t ‘common sense’ direct us to start with what we have in common rather than focus on our differences? Drilling for what’s ‘common’ with those who have many differences with us seems to be the essence of any spiritual practice. We’ve been instructed to experience others as ourselves, to ‘feel’ our interconnection and interdependence upon one another by all our great spiritual masters. We now have science substantiating the very notions that everything changes and everything affects everything. Nature functions from balance, harmony and rhythm, yet we continue to contribute to the noise created from our focus upon difference over what’s common.

Common sense is curios and helps us develop the capacity to converse, to listen deeply without aggressive desires to change another. Common sense directs us to not harm, given our knowledge that we’re all connected, and thus, hurting ourselves when we harm another. It directs us to treat one another with reverence. It acknowledges that we’ve all been manifested in these bodies to participate in the joy of life, fully appreciative to the fact that our actions had nothing to do with making our body/mind. It recognizes the repeated failure of our attempts to ‘fix’ someone or something when it’s driven from our greed, fear, or ignoring of truth. Common sense asks us to explore the ground work that always works, the guts of faith, love and hope. Recognizing these seeds to gratitude, common sense would direct us to extend our moments of joy rather than feeding our restlessness and sense of lack.

An application of common sense presents an authentic motivation to explore what we ‘really, really, really, really want’ from a perspective on non harm and contribution. It asks in honor to one another how we can share our divine talents to the fullest of our potential. It steers clear from ‘right’ vs. ‘wrong’ and conversational stoppers like ‘I know that’. There’s shared recognition that we’re on a journey to delve deeper into the mystery of our life opportunity to participate. It recognizes that no one escapes the pains of life. It asks us to base our inquiry on direct knowing rather than second and third hand information that’s not substantiated. Rather than blocking debate with fixed belief systems, pushing an agenda of ‘knowing’, common sense carries the power of joyful expectation for deeper meaning through the virtue of curiosity, love and the discipline to not cause harm.

Some day I’d like to see common sense driving our politics, business, churches and education. I’d like to see law schools teaching deep listening skills rather than focusing upon the violence that comes from persuasion and ‘notions of rightness’, of winning and losing. I think we all have a desire to minimize our mistakes. Fortunately, mistakes can be corrected through the deeper awareness that comes from sincere inquiry into what we have in common.

I’ve often been presented with belief systems that are based on second hand information. I have no problem allowing another to hold these belief systems. For example, many religions have beliefs about what happens when we shed our bodies. Wars have been fought and millions of people have been killed defending or pushing these beliefs. Can you imagine the results if we had the courage to explore these beliefs without the blocked learning that comes from thinking we’re right? Personally, I have a deep, felt sense of Jesus, of my ancestors, of those spirits whose actions live forever through the power of their contributions. I know much analogy and metaphor has been written about our future and what happens when we shed these bodies. And I also can’t forget Brother David Steindl Rast’s directive about thought and speech:

Go deep into clearly exploring what you mean before you speak.
If you don’t know it from direct experience, probably best to be quiet.
If you are clear about what you mean, and you know it from direct experience, “So what?”

When it comes to events after life in these bodies, until someone comes back and substantiates it, I will not speak about it, speculate about it, or try to push any beliefs on another. My personal experience has best served me and those around me when I joyously treat each present moment as heaven. When I can let go ‘ordinary’ to ‘surprise’, experiencing the ‘gift of the given’, cultivating joy for the opportunity to participate, this is truth of direct substantiated experience.

I find greater vitality to life when encountering those of difference as long as we can commit to open, active listening. It makes common sense to first explore what we have in common, cultivating our joy in the shared life experience. It gives us opportunity to steward the purpose for our unique being. As we become conscious to the fleeting moments of life, to our relationship to the present moment, we more deeply touch the sacred ground above the battle field.

While we now see the tremendous harm done from the mental thought of ‘drill baby, drill’ pertaining to off shore oil, perhaps this could be a great directive to use with one another before we resort back to our unproductive addictions to fight. If I can only discipline myself to forever drill deeper in exploring our common ground, perhaps we can better steward our contribution to ourselves, family, community, nation and planet.

Exploring common ground is harmonic. It helps join in rhythm and balance for better community. For me, common sense is all about exploring our ‘joined’ response in this miracle of life. Fighting, aggression, debate, persuasion, and other forms of pushing have generally produced harm, noise, distortion and movement away from the music of this precious moment.