Month: July 2018

Europeans brought alcohol to the Indians.   They also brought the other mind-bending elixir of religion.    Both bent the minds of people who already were able to see how things are connected.   Both alcohol and religion supported actions that caused the indigenous people to lose lands and perspective.

The loss of this inherited vision is still a struggle, a lost heritage, a distraction from what was an ancient understanding of reality.   Both alcohol and religion have been poisons that destroyed the fabric of a world that had nurtured the spirit off millions of people.   The Europeans brought gifts that took away a life of insight and connection.

Those Europeans stayed and stayed, and they still keep on giving.

I continue to gather insight in what it means to fully love someone and expect to live separate lives.   It seems to happen to me rather frequently with so many different levels of connectivity, and I can see that it is simply the way things are.

It is a lesson that I was initially taught many years ago, and my understanding of it has only recently gotten more clear.   My life is populated by people whom I love, people with whom I have an open-heart relationship.   I am clear that I will not have a “living close” relationship with any of them.    We are actually close, but also separate.

What a transformation it is to be fond of someone.    Fondness is what I have for my companions.   One might call it love, but “love” is such a loaded and misleading word, almost like “God”.   Fondness is more like the “love”  in “loving kindness.”  So you can call it love, but I prefer to think it of being fond.

Fondness may open doors in my heart I hardly knew were there.   Fondness is unplanned and almost unintentional, except it helps if I have a random openness to become fond of people I meet.

Each realization of fondness is unique.   Each fondness I experience expands my own awareness, and with it my heart.    The impact is lasting, permanent, unless I deliberately close my heart.

My life is not focused on a singular companion, but I open my heart to many fond companions.   For me fondness is not an expression of empathy, of my feeling what they feel.    It is rather a connection of compassion, of loving kindness.   I am open to an awareness that allows me to see with their eyes, to walk with their loving steps.

Sometimes it seems that I am almost moving inside their skin, aware as they are aware.  I may have my own identity, but it is no longer singular and totally separate.    I recognize the connection that is already there naturally.   My recognition and experience of the natural connectivity  with fondness allows it to endure.

With fondness, there is a joy in the companionship we share, but it is much more.    It is an expression of an enduring connection, an extension of the moments when we experience the sharing of time and space.   But only if I choose to allow the experience to occur.

Fondness is not a taking, not a possessing.   It is an allowing in.   It is an awareness that is shared and is always a part of me.

It is an evolving experience, and each day is a little different.    This morning I was especially aware of how I am beginning to think with my whole body.    For me, it is easiest when I am sitting on my cushion.     But it is what I experience as my fingers touch the keyboard and when the blueberries burst between my teeth.

My sense of presence, my consciousness, my awareness is no longer such a cerebral event.    It extends through my arms, torso and legs.    My body has never felt so alive with awareness.    Each tiny maple tree that I pull from my diminutive lawn has a feeling that sends a wave of awareness through my whole person.   The collection of roots in my hand is a tangled image that I see with more than my glancing eyes.

The more my body becomes involved in awareness, the less I am attentive to the passage of time.

This morning I was conscious of my diminishing grasp of time.   My connection with time is becoming less clear, less distinct.    I sometimes wonder if I am becoming cognitively impaired.   Is this a sign of creeping dementia.    I may be losing my grip on reality and slipping into a realm of lessened cognitive order.    I take some solace in my ability to be aware of this experience and reflect on it, but still I’m not sure.

I would like it if all this means that I am beginning to get a better awareness of what it means to be immersed in the un-anchored now.    It is inviting to be so totally absorbed in what is happening that my growing sense of awareness is all embracing and my connection with time is fading.

I am thinking these days about a relationship I had with someone in my younger days, and how I was so inept at entering into the present moment.    I could hardly see what was before my eyes, and could scarcely absorb the moment.    And that moment passed with minimal engagement by me.

This memory reminds me that there is no more important moment than now.   My desire is to embrace that moment without hesitation, without holding back, with complete vulnerability and transparency.    I see that I have begun to do that more and more.    I am beginning to understand what it feels like, and a little about how to do it.    I also think it must look a little crazy.

I am deliberately stepping out of a reality most humans around me have created and in which they live.    I am in a way becoming disengaged from what others consider the real world.    I am aware this must look a little crazy, disconnected, out of touch.   I sometimes wonder about it myself.

The more I become able to be immersed in the now, the more I feel I am stepping out of the common reality.   I am convinced that things are not what they seem.   More importantly, I have begun to experience a different kind of world.    It is an alternate reality.

I only hope I’m not actually going crazy.  The looking glass is a two-way mirror, and I am stepping beyond the typical reflections into something different.   I’m not about to step back.

There is a very human part of me that struggles with being alone.   It has been a lifetime of learning as I have tried to find how to be alone and yet be absorbed by my world.    There is no more obvious example of this than how I have reacted with my fellow humans.   I look back, and I realize how I have often reached across the divide and gathered companions while at the same time I was holding onto something that kept me separate.

It happens even now.  It may only be a passing glance, or a long and intimate conversation.    The connection may only be subtle, but we touch one another’s aloneness and we are connected.

There are times that the presence of another seems such a familiar place.    Someone is so similar that I am almost seeing a reflection of myself and whom I have become.   Other times the difference is strange and foreign yet inviting.   For the moment we are companions and we dance away a time of passing opportunity.   Polarities sometimes attract and sometimes push away.

All my life, my experience of aloneness has been a mystery I have cautiously explored.   I have never really understood or absorbed what it means to be alone and at the same time stand side by side with my companions.     I only know that I am less cautious and restrained than I was half a century ago.