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.

Facing uncertainty when you “think“ you’re alone feeds our fear and greed. When we can surrender the illusion of being alone, of not being supported, not being loved… we can open and allow grace. I have found it helpful to review all those times in my life when this body should’ve been ended had it not been for grace given. With awareness to the power and gift of grace I’m fortified to meet the moment with a whole heart, with diminished fear and a sense of satisfaction that feeds joy. With awareness to the direct experience of grace and the opportunity to participate in this precious birth, the quality of life improves and our natural tendency to complain and fuel dissatisfaction dissipates.

Given this precious birth, it’s our responsibility to show up, pay attention and take on the difficult task of being our best. We can get lost in our desire “to have“, we can fail to meet the situation at our best when we lack awareness to the harm we may cause. This is why it’s so important to balance “have“, “do“ and “be“. With awareness practice we can find our grounding and carry an upright posture, knowing we’re giving our whole attention to the moment as we stretch further and further into our best. We can be distracted by those who would put us to sleep to the core of our being. There are those who would justify inflicting violence on others so that they could achieve more wealth and power. It’s only when we recognize the truth that we are each other, that our work is that of stewardship and compassion, that we can touch that space of showing up with full attention, being our best. Finally, it’s important to hold self compassion as we often miss the mark. We have to rest our foolish pride, knowing we don’t control the results.

Cooked Enough 

I like to think of life as a cooking process. We’re all being baked, moving through experiences of suffering and healing. We experience pain and do the work of alleviating it. Some of us come out of the oven too soon, thinking we have all the answers. We attach to belief systems and actually do great harm by trying to force those belief systems on others. Wisdom would have us stay in the oven so that the experiences would give us insights infused deep in the heart and bones. When we are fully cooked we come out with deeper convictions to not cause harm, greater appreciation for the gift of our precious birth and a recognition that each moment is gift, Grace given. With this, being fully cooked, we walk more carefully, with deeper appreciation for the wake of our actions, thought and speech. We first look at the potential for collateral damage from how we behave and what we say. We listen more and speak less. We move with a sense of direction and stability rather than reactive anger and negative emotion.

Some people step out of the oven way too soon. They haven’t had the experiences, the nurturing, the education or the training to move into life with deep wisdom. They step out of the oven thinking they know, that their map is “the” map. They may still be trapped in their grasping or their fear . So much of our leadership today comes from lack of experience, lack of wisdom and the fallacy of happiness from excessive wealth or power. 

And then there are those who can’t step out of the oven. They are trapped in their situation, consumed by fear and complaint. With deep awareness practice we can witness how we are being run through the mill, how we can deepen our wisdom and move into elder stage  wisdom/compassion. 

There’s something about being open with awareness to when it’s time to step out of the oven. We have been cooked fully recognizing that suffering never stops. Van Morrison captures this when he sings his latest song, “I haven’t lost my sense of wonder. Even though things don’t seem to be working out. I haven’t lost my sense of wonder, even when in a world of doubt. I’ve been through the mill, I’ve had my fill.  Now peace be still.“

“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which you were born. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives”. Albert Einstein

I recently made a Facebook post showing my golden retriever toning in harmony to my trumpet. There were a couple comments about possible pain this may cause to him. One response drew the conclusion that it was causing pain. In truth, this is a deep ritual practice that emanates from the heart. It’s a call to wake up to the illusion of being separate, to the poisons of fear and greed, and our need for healing rather than continued fighting.

Mojo and I have done this every day for more than four years, sometimes twice a day. Toning for healing has been a spiritual practice for me since 2003. There are times during trouble and deep wounding when it’s too early to introduce words. This became all the more clear to me when toning the horn at Virginia Tech after the mass shooting in 2007. Mojo was a gift of grace to me at the beginning of the pandemic. The grief in October 2020 was tremendous and Mojo spontaneously joined in the healing tone when only 10 months old. We both meet this ritual with tremendous vital energy each and every day. My experience and research shows no evidence that this is a painful experience for him. I’m sure there are those whose experience and research could draw another conclusion. This seems to be the problem we have today. There’s a lack of awareness to the field of epistemology, how we know what we “think“ we know. We debate, argue, fight under the illusion that somehow “we know and others don’t“. I can’t conclude that Mojo‘s howling is not painful at some point. I can only take my experience and research. Others have their experience and their research and they can only come to a temporary conclusion. In effect, this is the essence of wisdom from R D. Laing. He claims that I have my experience and you have your experience. I have my experience of your experience. You have your experience of my experience. And on and on this can go. We will never have each other‘s experience so all we can do is deeply listen to one another for better understanding. Can you imagine the world today as John Lennon did when writing the song “Imagine“? Can you imagine putting even a small percentage of our military budget toward the very sophisticated skills needed in listening to each other for understanding rather than dominance and ideology?

Over the years of doing this Mojo and I have come to listen to each other in deeper ways. His tone is entraining more and more to the tone of the trumpet just as I’m entraining to his howling tone. These tones go deep into my ancestry and the ancestry he has with the wolves. Our experience has shown a tremendous healing impact with these calls back to wholeness, healing and unity consciousness. It’s our simple way for making a wake up call to the gift of grace and the opportunity to move through another day with deepening resolve to not cause harm.

After more than 50 years of a daily zazen meditation practice it seems it can be summarized with one word: attention. With full wholehearted attention to the moment, the mind can settle down from its busyness. Awareness to the body and present moment surroundings is what gets attention. Yet, it’s only natural to be distracted, to lose attention, to drift and daydream, and even fall asleep sometimes. This is why my teachers in the early 70s used at kaisuka slapstick. When they saw that we were drifting and drowsy, they would use this instrument to bring us back to full awareness. 

The other day, while meditating outside, a beaver‘s tail had the same effect on me. The loud slapping of his tail brought me to full attention. It’s so difficult today when culture has become very sophisticated in drawing our attention away from the moment. We seem to have little awareness to the present moment as we live on a constant diet of dissatisfaction, complaint, and mindless consumption. There have been a number of events where culture has been slapped into attention. These were moments where we have humbled ourselves with a deep sense of compassion and stewardship for each other and the planet. However, we seem to keep coming under the cultural influence of small tribal thinking in times where we need magnanimous thinking. We are times where we need more healing and less hurting.

Can you face the moment in the affirmative? Can you greet this rising moment with a resounding “yes“? Can you say yes to deeper understanding? Can you allow the unfolding moment with a sense of love and wholeness? Can you allow and greet healing with the affirmative? A helpful meditation for this is “Breath in Yes, Breath out Thank you”.

Or do you meet the moment with complaint? Is your day filled with resistance and the negative? Are you continuously carried away by those things you fear or by your craving for what you want things to be? Can you allow your curiosity to feed deeper understanding? Can you stretch into greater and greater Being? When your thoughts are surrendered, you can more deeply touch the experience of love, wholeness and a deeper healing that knows you are supported, you’ve always been supported, and you always will be supported. This is the true experience of Grace, of God, living in and of all things and the awareness to that inner light that is in all living things. It’s not limited to membership or certain requirements. When we awaken to presence, to love, we see how no one can “not belong”. We see how everyone has been loved, is loved and will always be loved. This is the experience of breaking the illusion of Separateness.

Mojo is a golden retriever who tries to uphold the Golden Rule. He is now five years old and started howling with my horn toning when only ten months old. Since then we have a daily routine of harmonizing together with the intention to “More healing, Less hurting”. It’s a call to start the day with deeping intention to nonviolence, not fighting and meeting each moment fresh in gratitude for the opportunity to “just be”. It helps navigate through the gravity of the day so we don’t end up like the fishing boat in the background.

The ritual starts with “Ready” on mid-G, “Set” on F# and “Go” on F. We then go down the chromatic scale to low C and follow with mid C down to mid-G where we sing the opening melody of “Imagine” before ending on a flury that juices our mojo for the day.

Once you break through the illusion of being separate, once you experience “unity consciousness“, this understanding of “no me, just we“ layers open the paradox to how we must care for each other since we are each other, knowing that no one cares for us since there is no “me“. This is the essence of Toltec wisdom, “Don’t take things personally” since there is no me.

The more we can say, “I’m here. I just want to be here, now fully embracing this moment” the less we suffer. The practice is to breathe in “yes“ to what is before us in this moment, and breathe out “thank you“ for the gift of this moment, recognizing that we may not see that gift for some time as we are caught in our suffering and attachments.

Breathing in, say “yes” to just being. Breathing out, say “thank you” for the gift of being. With this practice our doing lines up and we wake up from the illusion of our separateness, from the fear and greed that would lead us to cause harm to others.

We can learn to move with the sense of the sacred, with the reverence for the gift of this moment. The Bible asks us to be still and experience God. The Buddha recognizes the suffering that comes from our attachments, and the relief that comes when we let them go. When we let go of the thoughts of the mind and fully enter the body we alleviate the stress that is the cause of so much disease. Brother David Steindl-Rast eloquently speaks about the benefits of gratitude. He says that we feed our gratitude with the recognition for the gift of opportunity to participate. We can always find something to be grateful for, even if it comes down to participating in the gift of the next precious breath. When we pull the mind back, allow thoughts and beliefs to dissipate, we experience joy in the experience of the divine here and now, the experience of heaven, here and now. The suffering that comes from grasping or pushing away can be alleviated by fully entering the experience of the body and touching the sacred in all.