Month: March 2018

The way to tempt joy into my  mind is to invite it first into my body.   My mind is drawn to peace once it is realized in my body.   The longing of my body draws my mind into the empty space that exists at the margins of my senses.   Joy is there, in the space between, in the emptiness.

My longing for the touch of the warm tea cup at my lips tempts me into that space that exists between my lips and the surface of the cup.    My whole body cascades into that space, pulling my mind into a well of peace and joy.

I am tempted to enter the formless space between the warm tea cup that I press against my lips.    My body and my mind open to receive and enter into the emptiness that is hidden by the touched surface of the cup.     I yield to  the temptation of that emptiness and find myself in shared space with the cup.   There is joy and peace for my body and mind.

My whole body / mind is tempted into surrender to the emptiness of the touch of the warm tea cup.   Surrender is joy-filled acceptance.    It is acceptance without emotion, it is the simple joy of touch.     There is no anticipation , no aversion.    The simple longing for emptiness draws me against the rim of my tea cup.

There is only peace and joy of touching the empty space, the true object of my longing.    Once again I have been tempted and succumbed.

It helps me to see all reality as a net.    My consciousness is a node on that net.    As a node, it is unique and also part of the whole.    It is a manifestation of the whole and an entry into the whole.    All nodes are where convergent causality meets, and all nodes are connected to one another.   The net is the reality of inter-existence.

The world is populated with manifestations of this convergent causality.    The reality I know is based on my ability to relate to those convergences.   All my senses and imagination connect me, and I can become aware.

I am aware to the degree that I can maintain a relationship with the net.  Because any one aspect of the net is part of the whole, I can be aware of the whole if I have insight into any singular part.   Insight comes by going beyond the simple sensory encounter with the net.

Having insight is in the realm of the sensory being known.    It allows me to become connected to what appears, in a sensory way, to be emptiness.    Insight allows me to experience the net as it is, not as it appears.

True reality is in the sphere of the net being known.    All else is an illusion or simply sensory.  The net is the unseen reality beyond sense and imagination.

I’ve only had a couple of foxes meet with me in the woods.    I really don’t know how many have seen me, but I am aware of only three times that we were aware of one another’s presence.

Once I was climbing slowly down a barren hillside along a denuded pipeline route, into a small ravine at the bottom of two tall hills.     I looked up from my feet and at the rising slope before me.    Half-way to the crest, there was a red fox, looking back over her shoulder, watching me.    She had paused part way up the hill.    Our eyes met for a brief moment, staring at one another for seconds that opened into boundless time.

For me it was a pin-hole, instant vision into a world I have never forgotten.  I can still sense her redness, her cautious curiosity.   She paused, then in tense haste, she vanished.    For an instant we had been in one common mind as we both lingered and  wondered who this was who had seen us so exposed.

I was riding down the paved road leaving my cabin in Wisconsin.    There was movement in the trees along the road on my right.    Suddenly there she was, running through the trees thirty feet away.     She was almost  a blur, but clearly a red fox.    There was no pause this time, no curious stares.    Only running feet, a bushy tail and red haste.

There were young foxes, I was told, in a den up a wooded hillside not far from my home.  I looked up the hill anxiously, hopefully and I saw movement around where there was disturbed soil.    I am not sure what I saw, but I know I had been in the presence of young foxes.

Perhaps they were too young to be aware or wary of me.    Maybe they simply became invisible once they sensed danger.   But for me they made this a special spot and a unique moment.     It was another fox-time to savor and remember.

I have struggled with the feeling of indebtedness that I have to the Franciscans with whom I spent twelve years of my life.   They are a community of men who educated me, shaped me and prepared me for a life in their community.   Then I dis-robed, I left.

I was discussing this with a friend recently, and he insightfully said that the Franciscans had given me as  gift.   I think that is true.     I have had an effect on my world in ways I never could have had if I had continued, as Neruda said, with cassock and biretta.

While I can take some satisfaction in the traces I have left on the world in the past half century, it is the training and education of the Franciscans that shaped much of that work.    My roots, to this day, show their monastic origins.

Every morning I dedicate myself to be a ‘guardian of nature,’ a role I typified during the years I spent in governmental policy dealing with the environment.    I routinely describe myself as a ‘gardener,’ an identify I began to take on as a novice with the Franciscans.    I was always the one who created and tended the flower gardens, wherever I went.

I see myself as a ‘healer of misery,’ an attitude that was cultivated by my years as a Franciscan.    For me, that often meant releasing people from the legalistic burdens imposed by the Catholic Church, a role that eventually nudged me into leaving the official role of a priest.

I daily pledge myself to be a ‘messenger of wonder,’ a role that continues to unfold with each exciting new day.   It was as a Franciscan that I learned to look beyond the ordinary and the expected and focus on dreams and untested realities.    It is a habit that I  took into the work place and into the St. Stephens community.    In a simple manner, I helped others to reach out beyond the obvious and trust their own sense of wonder.    My experience in the world of wonder allowed me to tell others that it is rewarding to trust their own heart.   I learned this from the Trubadour Vagabond known as Francis.

As much as I daily aspire to be an ‘architect of peace,’ I am not aware that I have yet learned that skill.    People tell me of my calming presence, but I am not sure.     I have begun to experience an inner peace, but it has been many years developing.    There are still many sharp and rough edges.    The Franciscans may have nudged me to become an Instrument of Peace, but it is an instrument still being fashioned.

I am grateful to the Franciscans who have given me as a gift to my community.    My community is unaware for the most part, but there are some who can recognize the Franciscans for what they have given.    I wish the Franciscans could be as aware themselves of what a gift they have given.

I sense that most of them look inside and see what they have lost by my leaving their community.      When I have reached out, they have not been able to respond.    They have not yet raised their eyes to see what a gift they have given.    That would be very hard.

 

 

Wanting things to be different causes me the most turmoil.    I just chased two rabbits out of my yard because I don’t want them to be there.     I’m not sure if I caused them as much turmoil as I felt.    I hope I did.     I hope they will want to be some place else  and the turmoil will cause them to move out of my yard.

The things I want are exemplary of the many feelings of dis-satisfaction I experience.     I want things to be different than they are, I am dis-satisfied with what is.     I want the snow to melt and plants to start coming out of the ground.   I want my injured leg to be stronger.

I think I notice more how the dis-satisfaction creeps into my life.   I am more aware of the powerful influence it has on my contentment.   As much as I want the rabbits to be gone from my garden, I am not as disturbed by their presence as I once might have been.    I am simply and reflectively looking at my options and deciding what to do.   I may want the rabbits to be gone, and I also plan that they no longer will  hang out in my yard.

Mindfulness has become more of a solitary experience for me.    When I sit down on my cushion, I am very aware that I am very alone.   It is a place that I can only go by myself, in spite of all my desire to have companions.    It is nothing anyone can experience with me.

Ever since I began to experience the joyful energy, the deep relaxation, the pool of contentment, the clarity of thought that comes with mindfulness I have wanted to share that discovery.   I have wanted to bring all my friends along.   I have wanted them to experience what I had discovered simply because it was so wonderful. I wanted this  not so that I would have company but simply because I wanted them to sample and experience this wonder.

I am gradually accepting that the passage into mindfulness is a narrow and secret passage.    It accommodates only one person at a time, and the passage has contours that fit that person alone.   I cannot bring anyone along with me.    It is a solitary passing, and no one can walk beside me.

I can help my friends to find their own way, but they will have to fashion it for themselves.    There are many common aspects and similar approaches.    But the passage is a personal one and I think no one can be completely taught the way.

I have already learned from a variety of teachers, but I have basically had to rely on what I have taught myself.   I have learned what I have chosen to experience.    I continue to discover what works for me.    It is a solitary passage meant only for me.

The paradox for me is that when I sit alone on my cushion, or walk alone across the parking lot, I do not feel alone and disconnected.    My experience is of a vast emptiness with no shape.   In the same instant, I experience a connection without bounds or shape.    I have the feeling of falling into a vast void and plunging into the midst of everything.

It is such a solitary moment that I am not even sure I am there.   It is the closest I feel to a no-self.    Little by little, there is no other, there is no me.    Sometimes, I feel like I am lying on the dock at my cabin and staring into the night sky above me.    The vastness is so magnetic that I feel like I am falling into it and becoming part of it.    There are no stars, only deep darkness.

I am in love with my companions.    I love the time I spend with them and take deep delight in being present with them.    I often want to drag them into what I know is possible, but I know I cannot.    It is a solitary place that I must go alone.   There in is no room for anyone. There is only room for no-one.   Even I have to surrender my-self to go there.

 

It seems that I have spent much of my teen and adult life considering what is natural for me, and all other humans.  It might seem like a relatively simple issue, but I have noticed that what is identified as natural by my culture is highly influenced by religion and other social forces.    It has not been guided by observation.    I’ve not been immune to this influence and I have struggled against it. .

Today I have the expanding benefit of many human minds who have examined this issue, both from a philosophical and from a biological perspective.    I am trying to rely mostly on the simple observation of how I operate and how that has been influenced by the selective pressures of evolution.     I am part of a species that has not only survived but has been able to prosper to such an extent that it has overrun the planet.

All this success has been part of natural selection.   Nature has set this course.   Generations of humans like me have been highly successful in surviving long enough to pass genes into a new generation.    Our intelligence also has allowed us to figure out how to do this without the restrictions of natural controls, such as disease.

It’s really quite simple.     I have senses, such as eyes, touch, hearing, etc.    These allow me to be in touch, in contact with the world around me.    These contact experiences allow me to learn what is favorable and what is unfavorable to my survival.     My humanness attaches feelings to these experience so that I feel attracted toward some things and repulsed by others.    It is that feeling that propels me to act one way or another.

This is where mindfulness enters in.     If I am not mindful of those feelings and their power, I simply act as they guide me.    Nature steers me toward what is favorable to my survival and away from what is perceived as unfavorable.   Nature is very demanding about this and causes me to be very dissatisfied if I don’t follow this reflex response.

Natural selection has in many ways put me into a bondage.    It has compelled me to live in an illusion that my feelings are in control.   I have lived most of my life unaware how much I am compelled by what I feel.

However, if I am mindful of those feelings and their demands, I can intervene and naturally govern that reflexive momentum of nature.    The insight I have about what I am feeling provides me with more information.   I have more insight.    And this is also a human response according to nature.

Most of my life, I have relied on the mechanism given me by natural selection.    I have followed my feelings, sometimes even tried to get in touch with my feelings so that I can follow them.    I have relied on a natural reflexive response.   I now realize how much control I have given to those feelings.   I am learning that I have another natural ability to know what I am feeling, that I can escape the reflexive control my feelings have over me.

Mindfulness is what has put me in the driver seat.    I am no longer a passive passenger following the natural process of clinging to the actions and outcomes identified by my feelings of attraction or aversion.

For me, the process of mindfulness is a valuable asset.   I have no idea why we humans evolved to have this ability.    But I am aware that mindfulness is an ability that has somehow emerged from the process of natural selection.     It is natural.   As an ardent biologist, I assume it has something to do with natural selection.

I am relying on the natural ability of mindfulness to get us through the mess we humans have created as a result of our unbridled reliance on what we feel.     I have hope that natural selection will allow some mindful humans to survive.

I admit that I like to know how things are going to turn out.    I will often read the last pages of a novel before I settle in and enjoy the embrace of the story.    I like to sit on the side of my bed and review in my mind how a day will likely progress and only then do I plunge into the experience.

I actually don’t get excited about the notion of uncertainty, even though I am slowly allowing ambiguity to creep into my life.    I sometimes think that I am most comfortable when I focus at the extreme far edge of where my headlights can reach.

I know there are no guarantees and that life is essentially ambiguous.    In order to embrace that notion, I feel that I have to unlearn a lifetime of practice.    I am so accustomed to knowing, or at least wanting to know how things will turn out.

Every day I creep a little more into a world where there are no guarantees.    I am convinced that things are intrinsically unpredictable.    If there is something like the essence of reality,  I think it is essentially ambiguous.   Most of what I once thought was clear and predictable I am recognizing as an illusion.    The reality behind the illusion is hard to grasp, but it is where I know I come truly alive.

So each morning, I sit on the edge of my bed, take a deep breath, and then plunge in.     No guarantees today.

It is a harsh realization that there is no satisfaction to be found  in normal human experience.   “I can’t get no satisfaction” is not only a musical relic from my past but is a profound commentary on how things are.    Any satisfaction is at best temporary, and that is probably what motivates most of us to keep trying.   It never ends.

What a different experience it is to simply accept and embrace experience as it is.    The joys and pains alike are better left alone, not pursued or avoided.     I’m more at peace when I don’t resist whatever it is that presents itself.   I’m at my best when I don’t try to change things very much.

I’m not being passive or giving in.    I simply don’t think it is a helpful practice to “let go.”    I’m rather annoyed by that 12 Step notion of “let go and let God.”    That may be a useful temporary bridge to get beyond some personal turmoil.    It is not good advice on how to live.

There certainly is no satisfaction to be found in letting go.  Letting go is much too passive for me and I would much rather embrace the joy and pain.    Allowing things to be as they are is a deep reliance on my having all I need.    I take great comfort in relying on everything in me to carry me through.     I am much better off when I don’t reach outside myself for solace or satisfaction.

I really don’t want satisfaction from fixing myself, or fixing anyone around me.    Change is OK, but it is something that naturally flows from interest and insight.    I’m not very motivated to change anything, but I rather just allow it to take a natural progression.   I especially don’t expect satisfaction from making changes.  I’ve noticed that pushing changes rarely bring satisfaction.

I don’t want to resist life, but I do want to allow it to happen.    I don’t at all intend to stand back and watch things occur.    I prefer to jump in and embrace what is happening, both the joys and the pains.   I don’t expect to get much satisfaction, but I do think I will have  more pleasant walks in my garden.