Month: April 2017

As I look out my window, it seems to me that everything is on fire.   Everything, everything is alive with the energy of the Big Bang.   The energy locked up in my own little fingernail has all the power of tons and tons of TNT.   I am surrounded by and in relation to a myriad of dynamic shapes, each with its own expression of being alive.

Some of the fire of the Big Bang comes together in recognizable, organized forms such as rocks, trees, mountains and humans.   All of us, animate and not, are patterned expressions of energy locked up in an organized, functioning shape.   I have senses that can tell me some of the features of those shapes.

Some days it is clear to me that all these shapes embody a certain intelligence and awareness.   On those days, everything around me perceives my presence and I perceive theirs, each of us with our own intelligence.   Most days and above all else, I just sense the presence of energy that throbs with the rhythm unique to its own form.   Everything is on fire.

This is the joy of awareness.

It seems to me that the rising complexity of intelligence is not consistent with the principle of entropy.    As time goes on, my own intelligence seems to increase, in spite of physical decay.    Even the process of evolution seems to support greater complexity in the genetic inheritance passed on.   The physical constructs of living organisms seems more and more complex.

The organization of society and evolving cultures also seem to be evolving to a higher state rather than lower.   Human intelligence, at least, seems to be expressed in deeper and more complex ways.

This is an issue I need to explore.

It’s an expression that is under-used, mis-used and over-used.  My experience with those three words, “I love you,” is so varied.    These days, I am most focused on how uncertain those words are to use and how cautious I am in using them.   I know part of why they are scary is that they are so ambiguous , and can mean so many things.

They can also be very revealing.

In their deepest sense, they can mean that I have opened my heart and can see the beauty of someone.   They are an expression of non-conditioned love, acceptance of someone, recognition of them as a lovable human being.    I find it much easier to talk about how I love certain individuals, and it is pretty rare that I will speak those words to them, face to face   It is a powerful experience when I have been able to exchange the expression of mutual love.   I wish I would use those words more often, but I am aware of their power.

I am also bothered by the mis-use of the expression.    For me, this can also be cases when they are over-used.    “I love you” has become so romanticized that it can be like too much icing on the cake.   I hear it used in all forms of media as a gushy expression of an unthoughtful feeling.    Sometimes it can simply mean “I want to be sexual with you.”    I think the words can be nothing but an expression of runaway feelings.    I want them to be more.

There is the throwaway expression of “Love you” which can casually mean that someone likes being connected with me.    The same expression can be used, especially  in family situations, to say that someone wants to keep me under their influence, or that they want to extract love in return.  I feel uncomfortable whenever I hear it.

I am grateful that there are a number of people that I can identify as individuals I truly love.    I’m not so agile about telling them that.    I don’t use those three words very easily.    I sometimes prefer to say “I see you,” which is a subtle way of saying ” I stand before you with open eyes and an open heart and I recognize you in all your radiant beauty.”

I know it is a lot to ask of those three words, but for now I want them to carry that message.   Some day I may figure out how to use the other three words more freely.

 

I am growing weary of watching the futility of people making promises to one another and I know that those promises are no reliable prediction of the future.  In spite of all the trust and faith put in them, the promises are little more than a statement of someone’s good intentions.    I suppose we all feel better when we think we can predict a future where things turn out just the way we expect.   I’m working on what I think is a much better way for myself.

I have come to accept that there are no guarantees that carry into the future, least of all guarantees we make to one another.   I have noticed that assurance I have given or received, no matter how good the intentions were, end up being a weak prediction of the future.   These promises assumed that the future circumstances could be adequately predicted and presumed how we would act   For me, it has been an attempt to live in an imagined time that is yet to happen.   I don’t see much stability in any of that.

All I can say or hear from someone else is to describe what is going on right now, and that can be a little fuzzy.   I can reasonably say that this is the person I am now, and these are my intentions.   I don’t think any of us can predict how we will act tomorrow.

 

It has been pretty amazing that in my old age I have actually entered a new Age of Discovery.  I have finally figured out, absorbed the ancient wisdom that the more I grasp and try to control, the more I am deterred and suffer.   I knew this in a kind of theoretical way, but experience has planted it deeply in my gut.

I learned it as I slowly let go of something I really wanted, moments I had savored and wanted to continue.   I wanted the continuance even though the reality may have only existed in my imagination.  It was a simple but lengthy process of evolving, a process I trusted even though I had never experienced its outcome.

I was hardly aware of this evolutionary process as I sat and settled into a time of clearing my mind twice a day for months.    The moments of grasping for something I so badly wanted showed up less and less frequently.   My sticky connection to the memory gradually loosened, and now I am mostly free.

Evolving is not an abrupt or obvious process for me.    I scarcely knew its beginning and doubt it will have an end.   However, I have stepped into the process with both feet, and am very unlikely to back out.   I have discovered dry land and the only direction I see is forward.  It is a process I have some skills to manage.

Each moment is beginning to be something brand new and I welcome them.   Each moment flows over me with a constant feeling of fresh newness.    The past quickly fades away, except for lingering signposts of moments that have been.   I will never recover them.   Neither can I basket the passing, joyful moments.   I know that grasping them will only cause me frustration and suffering.

This is an journey of evolution only I can take, even though there are companions that can join me for a time.   I am so grateful for my companions and welcome their walking with me.   I know this is can be confusing for them at times because none of us know where this is going. I trust the process.

I know that I am committed to evolving and savoring each new moment, then letting it go.   There is no assurance that the path will be anything but lonely and dangerous.    But I think it will turn out all right.

I am grateful that there have been so many people who have been witness to my life.   I am especially grateful for those who have simply been a clear witness to who I was, and less grateful for those who told me who I should be.   A witness does not judge.  A witness simply observes.

I can only hope that I have been as forceful a witness in the lives of those who have acknowledged me and in many ways validated whom I had become.

I want witnesses in my life, but it has been difficult for me to come to grips with the fundamental reality that I am alone.    My companions can do nothing for me, I must act on my own.   What they do for me and what I ask them to do for me diminishes my life, my presence.   What they do is theirs and not mine.   I am the sole actor in my life.    The idea of coupling can be a serious distraction from the healthy independent life I must live.

Even while I choose to act along, I do not intend that to mean that I want to be alone.   I feel a deep connection with the companions who surround me with their witnessing eyes.   I have chosen to open myself and to invite my companions with an intimacy that allows them to be witnesses.   I attempt to be transparent so that they can see me as I truly am.   I offer the same in return.  We have woven a lasting web of intimate witness.

For me, these have all been invitations to acts of love.   When my companions and I open to see one another as we truly are, this is what love is about.    Being witness to the beauty of one another as we actually are is loving one another.   While I still can get distracted by an image of what I imagine, think someone could be, I am finding it much easier to pay attention to who they actually are, right now.

I’m choosing to be an aware witness of my companions.    I also want it to become more of a habit.

 

 

From time to time, I get drawn into the thoughts of physicists who argue against free will.    Great thinkers, like Brian Greene, seem to be saying that our choices don’t have an effect because all activity in the universe is simply following a predetermined law.    And that includes us.

Not wanting to contradict the likes of Brian Greene, I am ready to concede that he and his associates may be correct.    I do have my own corollary to their argument.   I think that I do have a choice on whether I yield to what is, what is going on.   I have a choice whether I align with, decide to be part of the rhythm of the universe.

Every day, maybe every moment, I seem to have a chance to choose whether to be part of what is happening.   I think I have the option to stay within the confines of my mind’s imagined world.    I would rather be where the real action is.

I remember what it was like to go rafting with my family down the wild Rio Pacuare, a class 4 rapids in Costa Rica.   At every turn of the river, I had a new opportunity to let go, allow the river to carry me out of control, up and down, over the rocks.   In that adventure, resistance was futile.   The guide pretended to have some semblance of control.   It was wild, out of control.    I had to choose whether to cling onto fear or let go to the joy of flowing with the river.

My days are like the Pacuare River.  There is very little to hang on to, even if I want.   I often reach into the future and solve problems that have yet to come up.    I watch out for dangers.   I “solve” so many problems, fashion so many narratives that never actually occur.  This usually serves me well and gives me a template for choosing how to deal with the present when it finally arrives.   Mostly it means that I spend a lot of energy that far exceeds any problem or situation that eventually occurs.

My real choice actually occurs in the moment, and is essentially about how to yield to the flow.  Even if the outcome should be pre-determined, as the physicists seem to say, it is my choice whether to yield.   That is for me to determine.   Will I align myself or not.

The mother of a close friend has died.    It is a happening totally outside of my control and experience, nothing I can effect.   It might not even have a direct effect on me.    However, I can choose to be part of that happening, I can choose to open myself to my friend’s grieving.   I can choose to yield and align myself to her sorrow.   I can absorb, even without talking with her, some of what she is grieving by yielding to the oneness that binds us.

This is for me the choice I constantly make when I decide to align myself with the rhythms of the universe, and not resist.   It is reaching for the joy of harmony.   It is a choice I get to make, moment after moment.