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.

There are two very basic laws of the universe.  What we put attention to grows stronger and what we don’t will grow weaker. The first is call the Law of Attraction and the second is called the Law of Entropy, otherwise known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  It’s really quite simple.  If we put energy to something we slow its deterioration; if we don’t apply it the loss of energy is faster.  We can look at this from a personal, family, community, national, or global perspective.  We could say that putting energy to slowed entropy is good stewardship.  From an ecological global perspective, we become more aware of our carbon footprint, expending less energy through conservation.  At a personal level, we become more and more aware about what works in the stewardship of the health of our body/mind.  The focus of this article is to focus on our personal ‘practice’ in slowing entropy of body/mind.

It’s now accepted that regular exercise, a moderate and healthy diet, and the avoidance of toxic consumption lead to slowed entropy.  For sure, we’ll all one day say good bye to these bodies.  Also, there’s never a guarantee that if we exercise good body/mind stewardship we’ll live longer.  Yet, our quality of life seems dramatically richer when we ‘practice’ those disciplines that work for slowed entropy.  Our bodies clearly manifest a different outward look when we mindlessly consume food and drugs.  As we learn more and more about the destructive effects of toxic foods we become more aware of our need to ‘practice’ with resolve.  Mindful living slows entropy and aids in disciplining us to the ‘practice’ of that which works.

What works for one may not work for another.  Yet, it seems universal that stress speeds entropy and present-minded living slows it.  Living in the present, we meet the moment in peace.  Living in stress, there’s a tension gap between where we are and where we want to be.  This gap often robs us from our appointment with life, creating conflict and dissatisfaction.  Mindful living must not be confused with lack of ‘doing’.  Paradoxically, the more aware we are, the more we participate, the more we put our energy to living, the slower our entropy.  Some have called this the ‘use it or lose it’ principle.  When we neglect the exercise of the body it speeds deterioration.  When we neglect exercise of the mind through rigid belief systems, we speed deterioration of cognitive function.  Mindful living commands openness, willingness to adventure into the mystery, and resolve to maintain our practice to increased awareness.

This increased awareness raises our gratitude for the precious moment that will never be again.  The Law of Entropy states that everything is in process of change.  Nothing stays the same and nothing disappears.  This law is in tension with the Law of Interconnectedness.  Everything affects everything and our awareness to this feeds our ease with the Law of Entropy.  When we mindfully care for our body/mind, we care for all.  When we neglect and abuse our body/mind, we speed the entropy of all.  Simply put, our resolve to increased awareness ‘heals’ and our lack of awareness ‘wounds’.  Our resolve to practice stewardship to body, family, community, nation and planet leads to longer living.  Our practice of numbed or distracted living leads to earlier deterioration.

A simple practice is to return to our breath. 

Breathing in, say ‘yes’ to the opportunity to participate in this life.

Breathing out, say ‘thank you’ for this gift and for the resolve to practice increased awareness.

Yoga is a healing practice.  There’s recognition that the body loses energy over time, but there’s also recognition we can slow this entropy through our practice.  Increased awareness from yoga provides the ‘felt’ sense of our interconnectedness…our joined state of being.  Some have referred to this felt sense of connection as love or compassion.  It’s definitely healing.  In contrast, our sense of separateness speeds entropy and dis-ease.  Yoga, meditation and other practices leading to increased awareness and mindful living are not easy.  They demand tremendous resolve and discipline.  Yet, the sense of peace, harmony, gratitude, and ease of living continue to feed our ‘practice’.  Knowing our practice heals body/mind, family, community, nation and planet is strong vitamin to the depth and strength of our yoga practice.

The basic meaning behind ‘theology’ involves ‘going deeper’.  As such, curiosity may be one of the most divine attributes we could cultivate.  The strength of our religion may interestingly go to the core of our willingness to forever go deeper.  While our cognitive belief systems stop our spiritual depth with notions of right and wrong, our heart energy forever drills deeper into the felt experience of our interconnection.  The challenge is to find God within the heart of ‘all’.  In his book Honest to God, John Robinson writes:

A statement is ‘theological’ not because it relates to a particular Being called ‘God’, but because it asks ultimate questions about the meaning of existence: it asks what, at the level of theos, at the deepest mystery, is the reality and significance of our life.  p. 49

He goes on to point to the main question of ‘where’ is God.  A didactic approach, one based on subject/object, would place God ‘out there’ or ‘up there’.  Yet, the Christian theologian Paul Tillich speaks of God as the ‘ground of Being’, stating:

The centre of our whole being is involved in the centre of all being; and the centre of all being rests in the centre of our our being.

The god whom he cannot flee is the Ground of his being.  And this being, his nature, soul, and body, is a work of infinite wisdom, awful and wonderful.  p. 53  from The Shaking of the Foundation

Forever drilling deeper, outside the walls of knowing, further into the abyss of the heart, we touch the Divine, as Tillich referenced, ‘the ground of our Being’, beyond notions of the subject/object divide, touching the mystery of subject as one.

I put together a few of my favorite holiday tunes, hopefully for your listening pleasure.  The backgrounds are from Abersol and Leonard.  The mix is quick, down and dirty. The tones are from the heart.

Sample

I’m looking for more quotes from you or writers who’ve inspired you in verbally trying to aim to a sense of ‘being’.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Dainin Katagiri Roshi describes it as follows in Returning to Silence When you want to express the total function of a thing, say a fish when it swims in the water, the function of the fish is exactly one with the function of the water.  That is why you cannot see exactly the total function of the fish becoming one with the water.  But real fish is no-discrimination-between-water-and-fish.  They are one, but they are not one because they are two, but they are not two.  They are really working together, so we can say, “Looks like a fish.”  “Looks like a fish” means it is not exactly a fish.  If this is true is it water?  No, it is not water, it’s a fish, but it’s not a fish.  It is just oneness.  This is called “looks like just going, looks like just coming.”   P. 35

From The Protean Body by Don Johnson

…I walked out onto a dock in the Gulf of Mexico.  I ceased to exist.  I experienced being a part of the sea breeze, the movement of the water and the fish, the light rays cast by the sun, the colors of the palms and tropical flowers.  I had no sense of past or future.  It was not a particularly blissful experience: it was terrifying.  It was the kind of ecstatic experience I’d invested a lot of energy in avoiding. I did not experience myself as the same as the water, the wind, and the light, but as participating with them in the same system of movement.  We were all dancing together.

In The Silent Pulse, George Leonard writes:

At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, made up of wave forms and resonances, which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything in the universe.  The act of getting in touch with this pulse can transform our personal experience and in some way alter the world around us.  P. 11

Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself.  This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of freedom sometimes hoped for in special relationships.  It is a sense of actual escape from limitations.  If you will consider what this “transportation” really entails, you will realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body, and a joining of yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it.  It becomes part of you, as you unite with it.  And both become whole, as neither is perceived as separate.  What really happens is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness, and lost your fear of union.  The love that instantly replaces it extends to what has freed you, and unites with it.  And while this lasts you are not uncertain of your Identity, and would not limit It.  You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely accepting it.  You have accepted this instead of the body, and have let yourself be one with something beyond it, simply by not letting your mind be limited by it.  Chapter 18, v. 11-12

If we want to know what God says in a tomato, we must look at a tomato, feel it, smell it, bite into it, have the juice and seeds squirt all over us when it pops.  We must savor it and learn this tomato poem ‘by heart’.

Life accepts you; life loves you as a separated part of itself; life wants to reunite you with itself, even when it seems to destroy you.

The Blues...Just Be It

The famous bluesman, Otis Spann, has referred to the blues as ‘a doctor’ that sometimes heals, sometimes
doesn’t, but it aims to help one move through the pain of life.

The blues and blues/jazz is a rich form of surrendered harmonic alignment that carries us through suffering to freedom.  Just Be It features harmonic alignment through the blues in a variety of musical configurations for all occasions.

Commentary on the Blues

Ride: This blues band performs every other month at Washington Square Bar and Grill in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.  The current band membership is starting its fifteenth year.  Ride is best known for creating a live party atmosphere with a compilation of blues and rock songs that facilitates moving energy and healing.
A typical set list is taken from the rich heritage of Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield and Freddie King through to the Grateful Dead, Bill Withers and Lou Reed. Ride pays tribute to the connecting experience these songs stimulate.

Band Members: Gerry Dahl, Bass and Vocals; Steve Husten, Drum Kit and Vocals; Mike Bruns, Guitar and Vocals; John Layton, Guitar; Randy Johnson, Vocals, Trumpet and Harmonica, and Jonathon Townsend, Drums and vocals

Sample audio songs:

http://www.archive.org/details/RideAtDecoys2007

Five Long Years video at Stasiu’s

Don’t Keep Me Wondering

Ride… Blues to rock your soul…

Check the calendar for performance schedule.

PeaceMeal: For a softer, background blues/jazz atmosphere, this group performed weekly at Washington Square Bar and Grill for three years. PeaceMeal has played background alignment music throughout the Twin Cities area.  Performing as trio or quartet, this band features Dan Parker on bass, Steve DeGenaro on guitar, and Randy Johnson on trumpet, harmonica and vocals.  Occasionally another horn or a keyboard player will sit in with the band. When it’s important to keep the volume down so you can have a peaceful meal and/or conversation, PeaceMeal perfectly augments your special occasion.

Sample songs:

I Shall Be Released

Check the calendar for performance schedule.

There’s general acknowledgement of a ‘shift’ in the way we process our involvement in the universe.  This change had been forecast thousands of years ago and now we can literally sense a quickening or acceleration of this new way of experiencing things.  This change dramatically affects our relationships not only to one another, but to all elements of nature.  We find ourselves relating in a very different way to plants, animals and the various gifts that contribute to our very breathing.  There’s an experience of connectedness and with this experience comes a dramatic change in the way we process our moment-to-moment living.

We stand outside the old paradigm need to control.  There’s a trust or accepting in the unfolding of events and we come to see the damage caused from our previous attempts to fix things we thought were wrong.  We come to a deep appreciation for each moment, for the very gift of breath, and discover consequent joy and happiness in breaking the chains of comparison, judgment and criticism.  In the new paradigm we take responsibility for our thoughts, speech and actions, in full recognition to our creation of reality.

So how does this relate to ‘riding’?  Isn’t all of our life action about movement within the moment?  Whether riding a great wave or driving our car or engaging another in dialogue, there’s an element of courage involved in our surrender to receive what’s presented, what’s present in our awareness.   So when approaching an ocean wave, the old paradigm has one divided from it, somehow in a competition or war that’s aimed to conquest.  The riding style of the old paradigm is more aggressive, driven by ego’s desire to conquer, compete and somehow receive validation through another’s approval or praise.  It’s more taken with notions of one’s doing-ness and achievement.  New paradigm riding involves a much deeper listening to the unfolding events.  The water and wave are approached through a notion of love and surrender.  All boundaries of separation are broken as the rider literally experiences his/her ‘wave-ness’ within the core of the heart.  The rider does not separate from other brothers and sisters engaging the wave, and he/she intuitively moves to stay out of another’s way as the process unfolds.  All notions of ownership, blame, inferiority and superiority vanish as the rider meets the moment in full wonder and gratitude for the opportunity to participate.  We’ve shifted our paradigm from ‘just doing it’ to ‘just being it’.  At this moment of stepping from our separation we move just past the edge of our ability in creative response.

From Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

The Way abides in nonaction
Yet nothing is left undone.

From The Heart of Being by John Daido Loori:

What is the right view and the wisdom that allows the barrier to be broken down?  It always comes back to Be the barrier.  That is the right view. Be the barrier. That is the right wisdom.  This is because, from the very beginning, the barrier is nothing but yourself.  There is no barrier.  When you realize there is no barrier, the barrier becomes a dharma gate.  If the barrier is Mu, be Mu.  If the barrier is the koan, be the koan.  Anxiety?  Be the anxiety.  Fear?  Be the fear.  When you are the barrier, it fills the universe.  There is no longer a reference system.  There is no separation—no self and other, no self and barrier, no self and Mu, no self and the koan, no self and the breath.

From The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo:

When we withdraw our gaze from its egoistic preoccupation with limited and fleeting interests and look upon the world with dispassionate and curious eyes that search only for the Truth, our first result is the perception of a boundless energy of infinite existence, infinite movement, infinite activity pouring itself out in limitless Space, in eternal Time, an existence that surpasses infinitely our ego or any ego or any collectivity of egos, in whose balance the grandiose produces of aeons are but the dust of a moment and in whose incalculable sum numberless myriads count only as a petty swarm.

From Returning to Silence by Dainin Katagiri Roshi:

Each movement was beautiful and completely independent, but simultaneously each movement was connected.  There was no gap between her and the ballet.  Within the limitations of her life fading away, she took care of each form with wholeheartedness.
There is no gap between her and the dance.  They are just one.

Wholehearted Living by Somebody Else:

When doing life wholeheartedly we touch being.   Meeting eternity within each moment, we experience impermanence and our interconnectedness.  Within this experience, we are the full expression of our action, outside any mental formations of separateness.  Wholehearted living comes from the spirit of what’s best for all, with harm to none.  There’s a deep sense of stewardship, of engaged action dedicated to ‘taking care’.

Wholehearted living doesn’t just happen.  The deeper we touch our actions through disciplined practice and resolve, the closer we come to surrendered performance that touches the fabric of all.  The past no longer spits out our capacity to touch the present.  When doing is wholehearted there’s great ease of performance leading to what some have called style.  Outside of cognitive noise, the mind/body meet the moment fresh to it’s unfolding…each ‘doing’ new.

Wholehearted living always aims deeper.

Workshops on peak performance in sport and music will be scheduled periodically.

Check the calendar for dates.

Brothers...Just Be It

Today’s relational focus seems to violate the notion that ‘we are each other’, a notion that’s been repeatedly expressed through ancient spiritual wisdom and now in science.  We can ‘feel’ this need to surrender to understanding.  Just Be It provides several opportunities to study and train in the dialog process.

Listening Skills Training: Participants will study the art of nonjudgmental listening and apply this skill in role play and real situations relevant to their need.  Whether in family or business relationships, skilled active listening technique is a science that demands repeated training for effectiveness in collaborative efforts and conflict resolution.  Given that violence begins where listening stops, effective listening training may be the most potent path to harmony and peace.  Nonjudgmental listening from the heart is the center in moving from monologue to dialogue. (more…)

The tone...just be it

Our deepest felt sense of inter-connection transcends the limits of language.  This is particularly evident when a separating wound is deep.  When it’s too soon for words, but time to break silence in the healing process, the healing sound of the horn can assist in bringing us back to harmony and inter-Being.

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent  mind.  This mind is the matrix of all matter.
Max Planck, Noble Prize Physicist

Horns for Healing: Horns for Healing sounded at Virginia Tech one week after a horrific shooting incident, sounded the horn at Minnesota Remembers, a memorial shortly after 9/11, sounded the horn at a ceremony after the I35W bridge collapsed, and has participated in a number of individual memorial services.

The Story

On September 21, 2003, in the early evening of a Palm Springs desert, I located the back of a parking lot where I thought I would be free from disturbing anyone.  After playing my trumpet for about twenty minutes I was visited by a few doves with an amazing presence.  It was if they could see though me, touching the core of my soul.  Within minutes more doves arrived, at least one hundred.  I could hear them speaking to me. Tears came to my eyes and I could sense their pleas, the cries of desperation.  I kept playing, but didn’t really put together the message they were sending. I knew something very profound had happened to me and was too afraid to mention it to my family.  We retired and shortly after 3am it was like being hit over the head with a sledgehammer by those doves.  I woke fully engaged in a state of awareness that was riveting and proceeded to receive one of the most direct communications of my life. The instruction was clear and concise. It was a most profound challenge to sound the horn.

The doves have been our greatest inspiration to a loving existence.  Their message was vivid…the violence is increasing as we fail to listen to them.  Their plea was for help.  They despaired that the bells were no longer being heard.  They cried from being filled to overflowing with grief at our increasing appetite for violence in the movies and TV we watch, the violence in the computer games our children play, the violence in the toxic substances we ingest, and the harm we cause one another, within the family, community, nation and world.  Their tears came through God, the Force, Source, Unified Field, or whatever name you apply to point to this creative source of life.  They despaired at our numbness to practice the teachings of our ancient spiritual teachers, our failure to take pause in gratitude for this very gift of life.  In the clearest of divine communications, they said, “It is time for the horns.  You people need to be shaken from ‘busy-ness’ and fear to take pause in the name of peace and harmony for all creatures, human and animal, for all plants, for all minerals.  The sounds of these horns will inspire a movement for others to signal their desire for healing and a sense of stewardship for future generatons.”

Conch Shells for Kids: Ancient wisdom has shown the value to increasing our ‘circle of belonging’.  In an age where notions of separation, nationalism and ‘small belonging’ threaten global healing it becomes increasingly important for our youth to expand notions of ‘belonging’ to the global community.  Before our violence upon one another there existed the one Golden rule to live by.  Pila has referenced this as Aloha mai ke Akua ipo: “to love yourself as you love God”.  Within the full understanding of this Golden Rule we come to “experience” the reality of damage done to others is truly done to ourselves.

Within our acknowledgement that healing comes from “intention”, Horns for Healing will donate a conch shell to those school classrooms willing to make a sacred contract to sound the conch shell for healing at the beginning of the school day.  Teachers would direct all students to send their thoughts and heart energy to a world without violence.

Oliver Wendell Holmes describes nature’s horn, the conch, in  “The Chambered Nautilus”:

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous toil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old
No more.

While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:–
Build
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

Sounding the horn for harmonic alignment…return to wholeness:

conch-1

conch-2

conch-3

• Memorial services.
•    Invocation to healing ceremony
•    Celebratory events such as weddings, anniversary, legacy parties
•    Any special occasion where the healing vibration of horn sounding facilitates alignment to our inter-Being.

Check the calendar for conch shell training and performance schedule dates.