Month: January 2019

It is a pretense for me to say what I will do. A conversation with a close friend last evening reminded me that it would be untrue for me to say what future role I might play or take in someone else’s life.

It would be equally untrue and a mistake for me to rely on what pretense they might make of promising what they will do in the future. I want it to be enough for me and others to be totally present, anchored, immersed in the here and now. I do not want to live in a pretense of what the future might be.

This is not easy. It is often reassuring to tell someone that I will be always at their side. They might tell me the same. However, I think that reassurance is false and a big pretend. Better that I put my energy and attention into what is happening right now. That interaction is at least close to being real.

Dealing with the fundamental ambiguity and uncertainty of life is a constant challenge. I don’t want to rely on a pretend future. I want to rely on what I think is happening right now. I want to be able to spend time with someone, slowly unfolding and opening our hearts to one another. I want to pay attention to what is immediately in front of me and not be staring beyond the headlights, trying to see what cannot be seen. It should be enough that we put our focus and attention on the convergence, the relationship that is now.

I am aware that the words I use affect the way I think. Someone wants to set up a meeting in March. It would be a pretense to predict the future, so I do not say “I will be there.” Instead I say “I intend to be at the meeting.” I hear myself correctly say what is happening right now, not pretending to predict what I will do in a couple of months. There is no future that I can correctly or reliably disclose.

I hear people making marriage or relationship promises to one another and I cringe. They must be pretending, otherwise they would acknowledge that their good intentions have an uncertain likelihood of being fruitful. Better to say what they are experiencing and deeply feeling at the moment rather than making pretend predictions of an unpredictable future. Many of us have built our lives around such shaky promises and pretenses, then been deeply disappointed and wounded when things don’t go as promised.

For me, this issue of not living in the pretense of a future is unresolved, but I am working on it. While I try to plan wisely for the future, I also try not to live there. I try not to allow my feelings to be guided by frequent thoughts of what will happen days and months from now. I try not to put too much energy into paying attention to a pretend future.

In practice, that means paying attention to today as much as I can and not paying too much attention to next week. I want to be very focused on what is going on right now, and I seem to be slowly escaping the pretense of being in the future. I am slowly improving my ability to pay attention to what is happening now without keeping an eye on the uncertain future. After all, any awareness of my future is nothing but a pretense.

As a human, I have this awesome ability to reciprocate awareness. I suspect that other creatures have a similar ability, but mostly among their own kind. I best reciprocate awareness with my own kind as well.

I can open my heart to rocks and plants, and for a moment even share mutual awareness. This awareness, however, is remarkably different from the shared awareness I have had with other persons. It is a recognition and acknowledgement of each other. It is a gift we give to one another, and nothing we can take back. It endures, whether I choose to experience it or not.

When I relax and open my heart to someone, it is an invitation for them to do the same. It is an invitation to reciprocate, to be aware, to be present with me at whatever level we might be capable. We signal that connection in myriad ways, but the open heart is always involved. Even if the heart is open but a small crack, that instance of shared awareness never passes, it is never lost.

I allow myself to feel connected to all those with whom I have had those moments of shared awareness. Those were the moments when we conspired to look or listen and we entered into the same moment of time, we entered the same sphere of space. I think that those are moments of timelessness, a time of stepping out of the normal reckoning of the passage of time. They endure, they never go away.

I continue to experience those moments of reciprocal awareness, not as a grasping for some lost treasure but as an enduring expression of mutual awareness and joy. I don’t know if there was a beginning, but I am sure that there has been no end.

There have been many ways that other persons and I have opened our hearts to one another, but it seems all of them have endured. They are not experienced as memories, but as enduring instances of love.

Maybe that is what love does and why so many people resist entering that realm of awareness. I now know that those loving moments of love endure, especially those marked by reciprocity. Once I have opened my heart, that moment never goes away, even if I resist continuing to experience it.

That moment exists outside normal time. I may later resist that same form of openness. We may no longer reciprocate that instance of strong openness. But that open time of awareness and joy is still present. I have a choice whether to experience that reciprocated awareness.

So I routinely choose to continue to experience that awareness. I allow my heart to experience those reciprocated moments at least once a day. I knowingly invite all those I have loved to be present with me. I might as well do that because they are part of me, and they are waiting there to share in my awareness and joy.

I choose not to resist entering into that timeless embrace. It is not just a memory. It is allowing myself to feel an experience of reciprocated awareness that took me out of time. I meet that experience again and again, whenever I choose to allow it.

I want to experience what it means to be happy. That should be no problem because the ability to be happy comes naturally with being human. As a child, I experienced happiness just by being myself. Happiness is just part of my human mechanism, and not much of that has really changed since I was a child.

However, society has conspired to encourage me to want to be something else. As I learned to interpret the world around me, layers upon layers of cognitive patterns have been developed that interfere with my being deeply happy.

I was promised happiness in many ways and that enticement continues. Most of those promises were simply encouragement to conform to what others want of me. To be a conforming and welcome member of society, I had to learn to think in a certain way. It wasn’t long before I learned to be woven into an elaborate social fabric, part of which taught me to be a faithful consumer.

I am trying to reboot my mind and get back to that original state. My method is actually rather simple. I am working to develop a relaxed, attentive and bright mind, something I think I once had. I have to let go of so many patterns of thinking, but I am slowly discovering that a relaxed mind is happy and a source of happiness. A relaxed mind also allows me to be aware of everything in a new and deep manner. When my mind is relaxed, I actually experience moments of deep awareness.

This kind of happiness is not just for myself. It is the kind of happiness that we all can share with one another as we help one another to be happy. I am willing to share my happiness. It doesn’t actually require much effort because it simply means that I be openly happy.

I like to affirm the wonder I see in others, a wonder that I am beginning to see with more clarity. I want to share the pleasure that comes from the felt experience of being who we are. Just by doing what I do best, embracing the happiness of being who I am, I encourage others to do the same.

I regret all the times in my past when I was part of a toxic reciprocity in which we wanted one another to be something other than what we were. I would rather that those had been times that I chose to be around someone who helped me be in love with myself, and I had done the same.

It is a joy for me to be aware of who / what I am and share that realization and happiness with others, especially those who can reciprocate. It is the joy of an affectionate and loving bow with a close friend. Being aware of the world, including people, around me is part of my own self awareness. It works well when that awareness is reciprocated.

I am only beginning to discover this kind of happiness. I am beginning to allow it to sink in. I am beginning to allow the recognition of others to sink into my relaxed, at-ease heart. Reciprocity takes time. So does my learning the happiness of a relaxed, attentive and bright mind.

Entering the realm of focused concentration has been such a subjective experience for me. The approach changes from time to time for me, the outcome is highly unplanned, and I am often uncertain where I will go.

There are constant subtle shifts in how I am enveloped in concentration. My heart / mind keeps finding new ways of passing into that arena of deep awareness. Even while I often seem to be moving along a familiar route, no two incursions are exactly the same.

It probably should be no surprise to me that I am hearing different explanations on how to find my way into deep concentration. There have been many schools of thought around how to be mindful, and I think it is because the experience is unique for each individual.

People who have entered deep concentration draw maps for us to explain how to get there and what the experience is like. While there are common patterns, there are many subtle differences. While one teacher may urge joyful movement into these deep realms, others give warnings against the methods they have suggested.

I have pleasantly been a current student of jhanas, the realm of deep concentration. I am noticing that my teachers and commentators have different views and different ways of explaining what jhanas are about. There are common patterns of explaining what the experience of jhanas is like, but the outlines of the pathway and the experience differs from person to person. Each draws a slightly different map of where they have been, where students might go, and what contours shape the jhanas realm.

It is something like asking someone to draw a map of my garden and explain what it is like to walk along the brick paths. Everyone has their own unique version of a walk through my garden. They explain it in different ways, even while it seems to be the same garden.

The realm of concentration seems no different. I am struck how the maps are, after all, an abstraction. The map is not the way. The way is changing, unknown and unpredictable. I may sometimes take refuge and put my trust in someone’s map, but I can only know the way if I walk forward. I walk one foot before the other on ground that is both familiar, and unfamiliar.

I am aware that every meditation sitting has the feeling of a new beginning. The experience is fresh, uncertain, unpromising. Yet I feel like I have somewhat been here before. Trying to repeat a past experience, however, only leads to grasping, and that is neither effective or successful.

There is a basic map that I follow. I clearly outline my intention, I open my senses to my surroundings, I invite my body to be fully present in movement, I notice my place in the midst of my room and in the midst of people who have entered my heart, I surrender myself into a realm of deep feeling, I focus on my breathing.

I always yield to the uncertain flow and undulation of the landscape I occupy. Some experiences are familiar, but they seem to emerge on their own accord. They are invited but not compelled or pushed. There always is a point at which I put the map and familiar practice away, and I trust in a new way to go.

The new convergence of concentration may be subtly new and different, but it is almost always bright, relaxed and full of energy. Typically, a flow of pleasure and joy emerges, often with surprise and without notice.

I have received maps and they are useful and beneficial. However, they are not enough. They are not adequate to take me deeply into the realm of concentration. I think there is another guide.