Month: November 2016

Being an observer can mean a couple of things for me.    Some ways of being an observer I am trying to cultivate.   There are others I am trying to  distance myself from.

Eckhart Tolle made me aware of the value of becoming a “watcher.”   It was an important element and tool that I began to use to become more aware, more present.    I especially became a watcher of what was happening in me.    This included my sensations, my feelings, my thoughts.   Almost like stepping back and seeing me and parts of me in a mirror.   Strangely, by stepping back, being less caught up in my thoughts and feelings,  I actually became more aware of them.   In some ways I became more of a disengaged watcher.

This, of course, became an important element of my meditation practice.   Sometimes I am almost stepping outside myself and observing what I am doing or feeling or thinking.   The effect has been to intensify the feelings, the sensations, the experience of being present.

And there lies the paradox for me.    By being more of an observer, I can be more engaged in what I am observing.    This is true of my own body, everything  and everyone around me.   As a witness, I  become more connected to the observed.

I don’t often like to become a “passive” observer of someone else’s imagination.    Entertainment put on a screen is that for me.    There are times for that kind of engagement, connection with someone’s imagination.  There are times to be a spectator.    I like to keep that at a minimum.

Paradoxical as it is, I do like and take delight in being an observer of myself and those around me.   Then I am able, with abandon,  to fall head over heels into that reality.

Ripening, for me, is another name for getting older.   This is not the over-ripe mass of brown apple pulp.   Rather, it is the bright red crispness and luscious sweetness of ripened fruit at its peak.   I think of a piece of fruit as it was destined to become.   Full of flavor, tasty.  This is what it means to get older.

I have emerged from an illusion.   There was a time I celebrated the age of flowering.   It was a moment of fragrance, full of promise, fancy to behold.   I never knew I was only experiencing a forecast of the magnificence yet to come.

Now I know what it means to begin ripening, and I think for me the process has only begun.   The lovely petals of the flowers have long disappeared and the swelling fullness of my humanity is only now beginning to express itself.

My mind has moved to a new skill level, and the memory of what I imagined was my prime time has faded.   This is closer to what I was meant to be.   The toddler Barry was no more human than an acorn is an oak tree.   I was only a faint promise of what was yet to be.

I love the feeling of getting older, this time of ripening.  My heart swells with the fullness of newly aroused anticipation and the glow of ripening is beginning to emerge.   I am becoming a part of the universe in a way I never imagined was possible.  For me, it is a process that has only begun.  I know the best is yet to come, a period when I can more fully experience my oneness with my world.

I never knew there was this hidden path to joy and oneness.  Now I am determined there will be no dried and rotten husk.    I excitedly lean toward the day when it is time to eat and be eaten.

I am beginning to get a glimpse at what it means to develop a skillful mind.   This election cycle, for all its pain, has been a good teacher.  Developing a skillful mind, I think, is simply taking charge of my mind.   For me, it is taking charge of my thoughts.   Telling my mind what it is allowed to think.   My mind is no longer in charge, there has been a coup.

Meditation has been my chosen tool.    It has allowed me to take charge, to bring my mind under my control.    I am practicing being in charge, and my mind is getting the message, finally.   My mind is jealous of its power.   It tries constantly to regain its mystery of my thoughts, of my feelings, of my life.   It asserts itself out of habit, and I have to remind it there is someone else now in charge.   My practice gives me the skill I need.

I now see that my mind is something to be mastered, to serve me.   It is not to hold me in its service, as I think it has for years.   Using my mind the way I choose is truly a skill to be learned.   Perhaps it is much like learning to walk, something I mastered at an early age.    Then I gradually took charge of walking where I wanted   It is only then that I truly had the skill of walking.

I smile when I think of all the effort I have made to take charge of my feelings.   All the while I think my feelings were taking their lead from my thoughts.    Now I am working on taking charge of my thoughts, and I think my feelings faithfully follow.   I am taking charge of my mind.   My mind is becoming better skilled at following directions.   I am becoming more fully human, and that is who is meant to be in charge.

All the talk of building bridges has left me pretty much unmoved and uninterested.    Most bridges are built from both sides, and I am fatigued and realistic about what has actually been done in recent decades.    Both sides have to be ready to construct the bridge, and I have not been seeing many signs that that kind of readiness is present.

Until the bridge can be open to my companions, my family, my community, I’m not going to put my energy into the effort.   When members of all religions, all sexual preferences, all ethnic backgrounds are welcome at the other side of the bridge, then I say “Let’s get going.”

Until then, I am more interested in putting my efforts into the members of my community, my family, my companions.    These are members of my Beloved Community, and I welcome all who want to join it.    But we all have to be able to walk across the bridge.

Repeating an untruth can make it seem true to an unskilled mind.   It is becoming a common experience for me to recognize how much I can create my own reality.   It is a habit of mind, my thoughts are gate-keepers.   It is easy for me to absorb untruths, illusions when I entertain them uncritically.

Repeated untruths become familiar and so they become easier to absorb.   The gate-keeper lets down its guard and admits the familiar uncritically.  The dimensions of untruths take on all the appearance of reality.    A truly discerning mind sees all as uncertain, ambiguous, illusory.

For me this has been true in areas of religion where repeated illusions took on the credibility of being real.    It has happened in relationships where familiarity created an illusion or expectation that became my reality.   How often I have “seen” or “heard” what I expected or wanted to see and hear.   How often have I seen and heard the familiar uncritically, without being attentive and mindful.

I have been tested during this election time.    The media has reported so many untruths in uncritical fashion.   There have been times that I began to accept untruths as reality.    This has been so much of the story of this election, and the reason I stopped paying attention to the news.   My ability to critically filter what I heard and read became over-taxed.    I became weary and weakened in my ability and desire to repel the attacks of so many illusions.   So I put down the paper and turned off the radio.

I think that the needy are a gift.   They are desperate, and so they do not keep silent.   They speak, even shout their pain and anguish.   Their voices become an open invitation for compassion.    They challenge me to open my heart, to really see them, to not turn away.

Their need is so obvious I have to strain if I want to avoid it.    I pass it on my short four-block walk between bus and light rail.   I sit next to it on the bus.    I am aware of their need as I drive through their neighborhood, hear their stories on the radio, read the reports on their plight.  I seem to be surrounded by opportunities for compassion, and I have to choose what to do.

I admit that I am confused by the shouts of hate, anger and prejudice.    These are people who have a deep fear, and are ready to blame others for the causes of their fear.    They often blame people who have more need than them.   How do I get past the hate and anger.    How do I see them as fearful and in pain.    How do I not turn away.

I don’t think I can get past the anger and hate.    I would rather not see them.  They do not stir my compassion.

My ability to experience you has increased dramatically.

In the past year, all my senses have hightened their awareness.  The fragrance of my world has become more intense.    The color and dimensions of my world have become more engaging.   I am more attentive to sound.    Most significant, I am much more aware of the dimensions of my body.  My skin tingles in anticipation of whatever comes near.   Wind has become more present, space is inviting.

I am also more aware of the dimensions of pain and tragedy.   It can be overwhelming at times.   This week I have experienced a couple days of profound sadness because I saw the power of fear, hate and anger.   And I also have thought of all the pain I expect people to experience because of the election.   But I can be aware of it in a way that does not bring me suffering.   I am sad, but it is unlike the welcome experience of my senses which bring me expanding joy and delight.   I am sad but content.

If this is the path of mindfulness, I embrace it with gratitude.

I woke this morning to the news of the further unraveling of the social fabric we have haphazardly woven into our world.   I am sad that the USA has chosen a fabric of rough and uniform texture rather than a delicate and diverse one.   I expect that this will be a harsh and painful time

I also am aware of the unstable climate we have created in our world-wide atmosphere.  I watch as the whole world rushes forward toward an environmental upheaval never before experienced by our species.  There is great human pain in our future, brought about by our effect on our environment.

Even as I expect to share in the approaching pain, I intend not to be swayed or swept away by it or its anticipation.   The social condition in the USA has been making a dramatic shift as so many people yield to their fear and the pain of loss.   Claw and fang are having their day;  tenderness is taking a holiday for many.   I watch, and I wonder if this will plunge us into a time of panicked savagery or awakened consciousness.

My world has passed a significant pivotal point, both social and environmental.  I think we have the capacity t0 work our way through, but I am uncertain that we will.   What will we choose to do?

I am watching, and I will touch what I can.    I will change what I can, but I will not be changed by what I cannot.    I think I will be mostly watching and resolving not to be swept away by fear and panic.

 

I have to admit, even though I love the bright colorful world around me during the daylight, there is something about darkness that attracts me.   I have come to think of the distinction between light and dark as having meaning only because I have eyes that have evolved to be able to detect a very narrow band of wavelengths.  All the rest of the world is cloaked in darkness, even during the daylight provided by the sun.

In some ways, darkness is the default, the normal state.   A world illumined by the light I can see is the exception.    This is a lesson of the night sky.    All is dark except for the flickering points of light provided by the stars.    Our daytime sky would be black too but for the scattered rays coming from our own star.

I depend on light in critical ways, whether it is light from the sun or light created by human invention.    I am able to function, explore and enjoy my world because of illumination.    But there is a world that exists beyond the small circle of light that a candle provides.   I want to be more aware of that unseen world, both the tangible and intangible.

I already have the comfort provided by the velvet black of a night sky, and I enjoy the enveloping darkness of a room without lights.    I love the space I create when I draw the hood of my cape over my head and face.   I think these are but threshold experiences of darkness.   Darkness creates a sense of presence that is less obvious in the light.

I would be very sad not to have the use of my eyes.   I would also like to be better able to develop a better sense for darkness.

When I think about the first tiny creatures and early animals like Trilobites, it is tempting to think of them as loving a long, long time ago.   I think it is rather conventional for my mind to yield to the outrageous divisions of time and put some kind of linear order in it all.   Past, present, future.    All are assigned their correct places.

I prefer to see these ancient new beginnings as happening right now with me in their midst.   Today is the day when those small interpreneurs grasped life and became part of the universal living web.   Not an isolated island but part of an event that never really had a beginning and will never end.   It will always be.

My mind doesn’t always like this kind of thinking, or rather no-thinking.  I still like to push aside the illusion of time and sit in the midst of these timeless events.   I am part of the same web as those early “first” creatures.   I was and will always be with them.    We are all first-borns.

I know that I have learned to live in a world that is conveniently framed by time.  It seems to make more sense to see events emerging in orderly fashion, one after the other, each given its place in our measures of time.

But I like better to see us all as walking forward not in single-file but all abreast.   I resist time imposing its order on me.  Time, for me, is a constraint which I learned to use as a way to put order into my world.   Instead, I am now opting for a world in which Trilobites can swim thru my every day.