Month: September 2026

I have begun to see everythig as alive. It has been gradual and didn’t happen all at once. The trees, animals, humans, rocks, planet, suns. All are becoming alive for me. Of course, they have always been alive. What is changing is that I am now awakening to the reality that presents itself and unfolds before me. I’m not even sure that my awareness is complete, but the change is happening.

Key to my view is the recognition of the active intelligence that is expressed in everything I can encounter. Everything is infused with an intelligence that both expresses how things present themselves and animates us all. Intelligence gives form and shape to everything. It creates everything forms its attributes and infuses dynamic energy in all things. In my view, this all-inclusive intelligence brings everything alive.

Just looking at the world from a materialistic perspective, we have come to the conclusion , based on observation, that all things are made up of atoms. The consensus is that these atoms are active, that their “parts” are in motion. Nothing simply sits still but it is, at least internally, very active. In this mostly materialistic way, everything is in motion. For me this is enough to conclude that it is alive. Everything is active, not passive.

The first atoms that came together to form molecules expressed this aliveness. They actively engaged with one another. Molecules act further to create complexity and the complexity engages in a way to create what, even in common speech, we call organisms. Along the way, from the beginning and through the growing complexity , every entity expresses itself with dynamic energy. For me, they are alive.

There is in everything this alive energy that I have come to see as the erotic energy of the universe. It drives and defines everything that exists. Significantly for me, it invites deep and engaged participation in this wild expression of eroticism. This is the engagement that the universe calls us all to enter into, to become part of. For me, it is all about being alive and sharing in common what it means to be alive.

It is this view that allows me to walk through my garden and feel in my whole body the aliveness all around me, above me, beneath me. All the world, the plants, the trees, the ground, the wood in my deck are alive and inviting. This awareness makes it explosively clear that everyone walking past is alive just like me, like my garden, like my universe.

Everything around me takes on a magnetic attractiveness once I recognize that it is alive. Everything and everyone becomes preciously alive and invites me to engage with it. Once I recognize that everything is alive, I want to embrace and guard it from harm. Being alive is not just a trait of the universe and its energy. It is a welcoming invitation to an alive union. We all share being alive.

There are no answers or clear guidance outside. It is all inside, within me. My most trustworthy understanding is inside me and arises from my own personal experience. All the rest is someone else’s way, someone else’s path. My path is inside the winding patterns of what I myself experiences. It is not within the patterns of others.

My life is shaped by my learning what I observe of the patterns within me. For me, it has been important not to be distracted or guided by fears and an imagined future. It has been most reliable to stay in touch with what I am experiencing right now, not what I might experience in the future. Even less reliable has it been to stay in touch with what others imagine or experience.

I rely on what I experience inside of me, not what others experiene inside them. My reactions, like my dreams, are messages of how I am to move through the world. The experiences and imaginatins of others form their own path. The paths of others may provide an environment for my own experiences, and I can learn from them. I observe the experiences of others, and then I notice how I react. I learn from the experience of others, I see more clearly toward where I may want to go or away from where I may want to steer. Theirs is not my path. My path is mine alone, but I can learn from what I see others do.

A great shortcoming of my life has been to live in the imagination of others expressed in dogma, in teachings of religion. Their path is not mine, but I can learn from their path. Even the teachings expressed in Buddhism are no more than the expression of what others have experienced. I pay attention to what resonates inside of me and I act accordingly. The formulas of religion expressed in practices are no more than examples of how others have found their way. I have to find the way that is forming inside of me. That is how I make choices specific to me. That is how I recommend guidance to others. Others have to find the path inside of them.

I can only say what works inside of me. That means first of all that I have to pay attention to what is inside of me. I must above all be aware how I am experiening the world around me. Perhaps that is why I approach the world around me with love. I fall in love so many times each day, and that is an invitation to the world to show its loving self to me. That is how I learn to experience the world, by loving all that I encounter. And that gives me the most reliable experience inside of me. When I am open to the outside in a loving way, my inside path is most reliably based on what is real, what most accurately present.

So when I reliy on the guidance that is within me, it is founded on my intent to see things and people just as they are. That may be how I learn to live in the world just as it is. It is not a learning based on the spoken or written teachings of others. It is based on what I experience inside of me when I am open to the world. I follow my own path. I follow what is most clear inside of me.

It is an on-going challenge for me to avoid being distracted. I practice walking in my garden, aware of my plants and where I am in relation to them. But I become easily distracted by what needs to be done. I constantly pay attention to what has yet to happen and am easily distracted from what is happening right now. I get distracted by my own thoughts and the thoughts of others. I get distracted by what I would like to do and by what I want to avoid.

For me, walking the middle path is largely about not becoming distracted. Rather than being aware of who I am and where I am, I get distracted by what I would like to have happen or by what I don’t want to happen. If I focus on what is happening right now, I have less inclination to wander off the middle path. I get less hooked by craving or avoidance if I am not distracted, if I am paying attention to where I am and who I am.

I notice that when I walk from the bus to the light rail and from the light rail to my classroom, my mind wanders from one thing to another. I could be attentive to the sidewalk, the people moving around me, the feel of the air. But I get distracted by my plans or my problems. I would prefer to pay more attention to what I see and what I feel. I would like to be paying more attention to how I am reacting, what my body is experiencing, what it is like to be me in this moment.

My iPhone and my computer are great distractions. They take me away from the moment and direct me to other places, to the past, to the future. These tools encourage me to live in the imaginations of other people, in what they are thinking, in what they want of me. I can be so easily distracted by what others are saying or what they have said. I can easily be distracted by the words and thoughts of teachers. I get distracted from my own thoughts and feelings by getting too immersed in what teachers, even teachers like Thay, have said. I want to know more about what I think, even if my own thoughts are stimulated by what others have said.

Even while driving, I want to be more aware of who I am and what I am doing, not what someone is saying on the radio or podcast. It is a hard balance to maintain. Walking the middle path is for me a challenge to avoid distraction. I choose to be aware of me and where I am. I want to take full possession of my life, and not be distracted by what is beyond me . I want to be focused on who I am and where I am.

I have always bent toward being a teacher. Perhaps sometimes too much, I have always wanted to teach others. Not all that teaching has been welcome, and I have gradually learned when not to teach. Now that I am in my elder years, I am much more casual and subtle in my teaching. More than anything, I have learned that I can be an inviter and less of a shower. I invite people into an experience, and they can do their own teaching to themselves.

I don’t tell others as much I once did. I more often show them. One way I do this is my my casual openness. I invite others to experience openness by my relaxed, focused openness to them. It can be as simple as nodding or speaking to someone I am passing in a passage way. I can be the way I talk to the checkout person at the store. I invite others into a bubble of openness, and they can experience what it feels like. If they want to.

This is a key part of my falling in love multiple times a day. My falling in love is simply my being open to another person or thing. For me it is a loving invitation for them to reciprocate, to fall in love as well. It can be quite vulnerable, it can be awkward, it can be off-putting. It can also be an experience of what vulnerability and openness feels like.

That is a risk I am more and more willing to take. It is what it means for me to be a teacher. Others are invited to experience what I experience. Being an elder is my last chance to be a master of loving, a master teacher. I want to make the most of my being a teacher.

Being neuro divergent hasn’t alaways been that comfortable. Now, so much has changed. I didn’t realize that my brain worked a little differently from many others. I did know that I was different, that I didn’t fit in. In time I realized that my brain did function a little differently from others.

Then I was officially identified as being on the autism spectrum. The medical team confirmed that they considered me divergent.

I was somewhere on one of the tail ends of the bell shaped cure that said I was different from most. I was not considered average. It was then that I really began to like being different. It had been a long, drawn out process.

I finally accepted that not only was I different but that difference was a unique attribute. I developed a confidence and comfort in following my divergent way. Over time, I learned to understand what I felt and trust what I felt. I think I alaways had a sense of wanting to do things my way. But now I know and feel that this is my own personal path, and I like it.

For a few years now, I have seen that being divergent has been my own special gift. I have embraced being divergent.