Life in Totality

I was pondering the preciousness of the moment as it was, the simple abundant moment of now. There is nothing I can do to change the past. The future cannot be held. All I have is this one moment. To meet it fully alive and aware. Looking up, there she was. The grace of the moon mid afternoon beautifully haunting against the blue sky. The illumination of dark sharing the illumination of day. With a smile and chuckle, what better image of meeting life in its totality, this moment, now.

A Smile Alive

Have you ever felt your face smile?

I fed the birds and came inside hoping the promised light snow would come and coat the drought hardened earth that had known only the shroud of blowing dust. I don't remember walking to the window, but there I was. I saw the birds hopping and fluttering around the feeder. And suddenly I felt my face smile. I could feel every muscle move, the eyes change and the body melt. Visceral and sensual as if another had touched my body, I felt the smile. No explanation needed. And the snow began to fall.

Goggle'd Mind

The morning meditation burst into laughter. I realized my mind had gone Google on me and was returning 10,000+ thoughts and memories in 3.7 seconds. In my laughter I heard a sound. With a smile I shut the mind's browser down and listened to the birds.

Invitation

The curtains closed to separate the outside cold from the warmth inside. Yet the prism cloaked behind the curtains gifts a gentle reminder. To know every moment is an invitation to be open and see.

Exquisite Heartbreak

If I could but possibly grasp the enormity, vastness and fullness of IS I think surely my heart would burst. Oh sweet mercy may I crumple to the ground like children spinning and dancing then falling to the ground laughing. 

May I live to know the exquisite heartbreak of joy imploded.

Making an Entrance

With every doorway I pass through and every thought I enter the sacred. With every breath the newborn cry of life emerging anew. Simple, simple touches. As Rumi said, "Don't go back to sleep."

The Real "TO DO"

"You don't go to a restaurant to read the menu"*
As one who has never smelled a fragrance in the almost 60 years I have walked this earth, food has never been enticing. I go to restaurants to enjoy the communion with friends, to laugh with the waitresses and other patrons. It is the presence and awareness of sweet moments shared. And then to remember the wisdom as I set out into the day. To see the ice dancing on the car, and put away the to do list, to pause and savor the moment's dance. This moment IS the path.

*Gil Fronsdal "Issue at Hand"

The Eyes Have It

A function of the camera's eye. How long the eye is allowed to remain open. How much light is allowed in. How close or distant one chooses to see. This is not where I began my view of autumn's full moon. The second picture is what caught my eye. But when I drew the camera's eye back this is what I saw. It is the same moon. Perhaps a whispered reminder of light and the choices I and eyes have.

Beyond the Skin

*"What color is an apple?" The teacher asked. The young students all replied red, green, or yellow. One young boy was adamant they were white despite the teacher's correction which was growing stronger and stronger. "But when you cut it open, the apple is white."

A is for apple. Apples are red. A concept, a way of learning and seeing the world inherited by all from the beginning. Such a thin skin or veneer has defined the greater essence of white. Oh sweet Life, may I cut all I see open and see beyond, to see within the greater whole.

*Story told by Joseph Goldstein, "Insight Meditation" © Sounds True

Opening Celebration

We know those days, our special days. Days we celebrate our birth and other events. Days that shine the light on us. To open my eyes this morning and try to comprehend, that the Divine, the Source of all created this day for me and me for this day. The earth and my body Divine design. My breath the Divine breathed into me and breathes. All is well. All IS celebration. To awaken and sing joy, joy, joy to the world!

Mattered and Remembered

I ponder the lives of Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Mother Theresa, Ghandi, St. Francis of Assisi, and others. It was “easy” for them. After all, they were Buddha, Jesus, Allah, ……. Me, I’m just me and the frailties of me are ever so obvious. I can strive but I am not them. And then I ponder the immersion, attention, effort and abandonment we throw ourselves into creating the perfect wedding day, job interview, first date, taking the first child to college, a work presentation, even knitting or tending a garden. We completely surrender ourselves to those moments. We absorb each breath and moment. We lose ourselves and yet each moment is knitted into the fabric of our mind, body, and spirit. Should my attentiveness, love, joy, hope and open heart be any different for this day? Should I be any less alive? 

Maybe, I wonder, that is what Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, and all the others were trying to say. You can do it. You have done it. The only difference between those days and moments, is your intent and desire to make them matter and remembered. May this day be so mattered and remembered. 

Can Do

I can enumerate the aches, pains, burdens and to do's. I can wax poetic upon the should've, could've, wish'd and maybe's. I can cover my eyes to shade the sun. Even close the blinds and turn on the AC to submit the warmth. I could... But the only reality, the only, the only thing that will enact change is the creativity of saying 'yes' to this moment right now. La Chaim! Amen, so be it. En Garde! And so it IS.

Changing the Directions

A windy walk by the lake just as the sun peeked above the mountains.  As I walked I could feel the movement of my body, like a ship in the sea, meeting and re-directing the wind. A leaf fell straight down from a tree but was redirected when it plopped against my cheek.  I confess it became a game.  Turning my head, lifting my arm and even walking sideways to feel the change created.  I am not sure "who" changed "whom" but both the wind and my body, my heart and little spirit changed.  To think every time I move....I change the universe. Wind that would have been going in one direction was now going in another.  Quantum physics (which my little brain cannot grasp) talks about the energy we project upon the earth and towards each other.   May the energy and direction I create be that of compassion, understanding, forgiveness, gratitude, humility and courage.

In each moment, you are changing the universe

Moving From

A "duh" moment of laughter. Waking up before dawn and my first thought "I need to go and meditate" As if the space and time between my bed, waking and altar were insignificant and not part of Now .

  My little altar, nature, sitting by a tree, walking, and the precious things I can see and read bring such joy, peace, laughter and love. I would find myself going "to" them. To experience and BE and know myself as the altar, nature, the sitting, the walking, the words of Love, Hope, Life allows me to move FROM and Into Life not "to". I am the center and entrance to the labyrinth of Life and Love all of these are the gentle curves and turns giving pause to reflect, give thanks, and expand like ripples outward, growing, understanding, developing, unfolding and embracing all others. BEing Now I move From I am and ripple and turn moving "to."

Backspaced

With a word or silence, a glance or turning away I give either Love or judgment, which is to say acceptance or rejection. Perhaps that is why busyness is a priority, and To Do lists the drivers, no time to notice the choice made.  Even technology can intensify the absence of the voice, the texture, the breath of the other, the time to write a complete word and sentence that lets you linger with the thought of the other, or it diminishes the physical other by putting them on pause to respond.  Technology gives a voice to my scriches but I know not where they go.  On both the macro and human level,  we've created ways to distance ourselves. Yet more and more books, programs, and get-a-ways are likewise created and purchased in answer to the longing “what is the meaning” or finding happiness or how to shut down and sleep.

There was a thread when I began but I've learned the art of backspacing. 

Perception.....Not

A year ago my wallet was stolen. For two months the world demanded I prove who I was. The remembrance still creates bone shiver. I knew who I was. I simply could not provide what the world needed to validate their perception.  I am aware of my wallet now. 

Sweet Hands of Life...to have the same Knowing and awareness of who I AM regardless of what the world sees, demands or expects. I am not a perception.

Whispered calligraphy

Life's water colors across the canvased sky, embracing and cloaking the stoic mountain top.  My eyes thought they saw the illuminated sun dog where the peak should be.  Even now I look, and am not sure it was there.  And then I gaze upon the calligraphy left upon my heart from the sight. A love note that whispers, trust what you see.

The Constant Darkened Light

I sat in my little chair looking to the sky, hoping to see the meteors. The neighborhood was totally quiet while all others were sleeping. It was, after all, just after 2 a.m. I stared and stared and not a one.  Soon my eyes wandered and I noticed an almost perfect circle of stars around the moon. A mandala of black drawing your eyes to the center where the luminous glow beckoned you to enter.  Lingering in the mandala, contentment made a gentle bookmark. The true beauty and wonder is not in the fleeting moment of meteors passing by, but in the faithful constancy of the moon and stars, always present, always there, no matter if you bother to look or seek, their light always waits to bathe you in soft.

After an hour or so I packed up my little chair, coffee time was calling.  Pausing I lifted my hand to block the brightness of the street light.  For one who cannot see to drive in the dark, street lights are surely a gift.  The blocking of my hand made the night sky even darker, and there, ever so quickly, a meteor danced across the sky.  My heart gently created a bookmark - sometimes you need the dark to see the light.

"Inside every human chest is a  hand, but it has nothing to write with [until] Love moves further in...."  ~ Rumi

Thorns and souls

Quietly I ponder the difference between the thorns of a rose bush and those of a cactus. You know how quickly the delicate petals of a rose fall to the ground.  Once opened so quickly they drop.  The thorns of a rose bush point downward, as if to point to their gentle loss and beauty so brief.  The cactus with its long defiant thorns point upwards. The cactus thorns point upward defying anyone or anything to touch either the gentle bloom or their petals which hold the precious water.  Rose bushes require tending and depend upon the rains of life to sustain them, and they grow into full bushes.  The cactus has learned to survive in drought, heat and hardened waterless earth, so often in a solitary stance.

Perhaps the rose offers such a lasting sweet fragrance, wide long arms, and downward pointing thorns, to remind us how precious and sweet, yet brief, life can be.  That we must tend, water and prune, yet, even with the tending, the delicate petals will fall.  Acceptance. The cactus in drought, with its oasis of water filled green petals and upward pointing thorns, remind us to look upward and mindful of where we walk but fearing not the heated hardened earth and drought nor the quite solitude of presence, life is green and even dryness yields a flower. Faithfulness.

To walk mindfully knowing both the brevity and steadfastness of Life. To walk mindfully seeing both the upward thorns of the cactus and the fallen petals of the rose.  To look upward towards the sun of Life that sometimes feels as if it is baking and drying up our souls, and yet we see the blooms and our thirst is quenched.  And, with a giggle and smile, should we lose our walk lose its mindfulness, Life sends a sharp poke through our "soles" to bring us back to attention.  

Reality TV

Time is relative. It is a function and reflection of the priorities we have given to our heart.


It is the ultimate candid camera that never shuts off, Reality TV showing the world who we are.


How we use our time - or not - speaks louder than words, is the way we touch the world and others. Each tick a bread crumb saying this is the path I have chosen, this is the path to my heart.