Author: barryschade@gmail.com

Is the story of a lost paradise a memory of what I knew and experienced as a baby?   That was a time when there seemed to be no separation between me and the world.    It was a simple time when I first learned to live in my senses, my awareness was only on the sensory level.

Then my rationality began to develop, and I gradually learned to step back from my senses and know that I existed, a separate, human boy.   The sense of deep intimacy with my world faded. My attention shifted more inward and I began to flex and train my mind to step back from my senses.   I knew that I existed.   The higher power that comes with rationality gradually grew.  I began to wield the mental strength that is my inheritance.

In the process, I lost that intimate connection with the world, simple as it was.   Rationality has a price.   I am grateful now to be using that same rationality to experience and “see” the world in a more exciting way.   I am learning to connect with the world in a real way that still relies on my senses.    Now, however, it is as an observer, a watcher of what my senses tell me.

I still rely on my senses to tell me about the world, but I have a heart that is telling me how to interpret those sense messages in a new way.   I think I see the gates to paradise in the distance.

When I was a baby, I’m sure I saw the world differently.   I think I simply saw it as it was, not much different from the open eyes of a new puppy.   I don’t think I saw it as something different or distinct from me.   Everything was connected, and we were all part of the same.

Gradually, my eyes turned around and I developed a view of myself.   “I” came more into focus, and I developed a sense that I was different and distinct from the world.    Sometimes the world served me, sometimes it became a scary place.   Sometimes I asserted my growing vision of self, even with tyranny on occasion.   I learned to use my turned-in eyes.

In time, I even learned how to see the world not as itself, but how it measured up to my internal images.    I set expectations for those I loved, even tried to shape them,  based on how I had come to see myself.

Now I’m gradually turning that vision back around, learning again what I naturally did as a baby.   Seeing the world as it is, not as I have come to imagine it is or should be.   Seeing others on their terms, not mine.   I am regaining some sense of the web that joins me with everything.

It’s an exciting time.   It is a time to turn my world around, open my eyes to see and discover what I use to think was separate and  ‘out there’.

When did we decide to become lovers?  When did that moment pass when we opened our hearts and we decided to let one another in? For most of my friends it is too late to decide because that decision has already been made.   Maybe it is hard to determine just when that moment passed because the process was so gradual.   But I know and can feel that we have decided.

Some days, I think I must make this decision to open my heart a dozen or more times.   Mostly the other person is totally unaware it has happened.   But I am.   They are caught, unaware, in the web that binds us and there is no struggle.   Sometimes they are momentarily aware and open their heart ever so slightly.   Then we go our way.

Then there are my deep friends who have truly joined hearts with me, knowingly, willingly, sometimes tentatively.     For us our glittering, abundant humanity  has become a shared treasure.

Do we touch?   Of course, because that is part of being human, part of sharing pleasure.   For some it is a casual gesture, a familiar hand on a shoulder.   For others it is a hug that quickly passes but assures us we are connected.   For others it is a warm embrace that for a moment brings us together as only touch can.    We are all meant to be lovers, but we get to decide when.

I spent so much of my young life schooled in words from the distant past. I learned to live my life in the maze of ancient texts,  and loved the mysterious  comfort that came from worn tomes.   These were the writings crafted by scores of people who attempted to capture their  world of the divine in metaphors drawn from their own experience.   It was their time, their now.  Their  words

Now it is my time to craft words and break out of the crusty library of the past.   I am aware of the Humming with senses not shaped by the old  words.  It is a world shaped by my own knowing.   This is my time, my now.    It is my turn, and I intend not to waste it with old words.

I certainly never saw this coming.   I find myself making decisions that draw me more and more into the life of a contemplative.   The focus on my inner life is taking on more and more importance, more and more of my time.

I am aware of this deepening that is taking place.   Sometimes it is like walking thru a dark, moon-lit forest at night.   The shadows around me are both real and just out of sight.   I am mostly aware of what is happening in me.    That seems more real than the shadows.

I am sorting out what it means to relate to that world around me, particularly the people.   I still value and want companions.   But I do not want the immersion of coupling.  I have come to value my friends more and more.   I savor the moments we spend together.

Being a contemplative is simply part of my nature, but only part.   While I may be choosing the world of a contemplative, I am still very connected to the world around me.   In fact, I find the time I spend with friends is more engaging than ever.   I can be present to them, with them in intimate ways I never could before.

I am so much more aware of them and feel so much more able to share the intimacy of who we are.   It gives me joy.  If becoming more of a contemplative means being less connected to my friends, or to my world, I want nothing of it.

I’m learning.  It seems that the more skilled I become in being “present”, I am better able to be “present” with other people.   As I go deeper into my meditation experience and related practices, I am able to be more intimate in other settings, and still keep my balance.

This is not easy.   Staying balanced, staying centered in the midst of intimacy is a challenge for me.   It is a work in progress to be sure.

I am grateful that I have a group of friends, men and women that I am comfortable being intimate with.   With them, I can both be very present and be part of their presence.   These friends I truly treasure, and look forward to the times that we can talk and be together.   With then I have an intimacy that grows with my personal practice and my own ability to be with them in an intimate way.   I am happy to be friends with them.

There have been times when I got messed up with intimacy.   I think I grew up in an atmosphere of deprived intimacy, and somehow came to crave it.   I don’t think I have known how to manage the desire because as I became able to enter into someone else’s presence, I lost touch with my own.   I slipped off center, I lost my balance.   Their agenda became my focus.

It has been good that I have lived alone for about 2 years.   I have been able to live without the distraction of interaction for much of that time.   I am so grateful that during this time I have been able to become more contemplative, more meditative, more mindful, more present.   I have a new sense of balance.    I am so much more able to share intimacy with my friends.   I am a better friend.

I don’t think I have ever felt more alive than I do now.  There have been passing moments, even extended times, when I felt this awake.   But it was nothing like this wide-eyed awareness that seems to be expanding day by day.

My experience of the world seems so much more real.   That is so apparent in my being with friends or people I randomly meet.   I seem better able to see them as actually “being there”, perhaps in part because I am more “really there.”

I do see a difference when I sense that someone else is really there and is attentive to my presence.   This is what I experienced in a joyful way recently and it nearly swept me away.

That is my challenge, to stay focused on what is real.   To stay awake to the present moment and not be seduced by my imagination of what might happen, either pleasant or not present.

I may be starting to be awake, but I know I will be in training for a long time.   Being awake to the present is thrilling, but it is not always easy for me to stay there.  I have an active, planning mind.

Every day I wake to new surprises resulting from meditation and mindfulness.   My world is evolving from black and white to rich, vibrant color.   And it isn’t over yet.

I wonder why it took me seven decades to find this out, to find out that the world is so rich, deep and wonderful.   I spent more than a decade as a contemplative monk, and I remember hearing nothing about this enlivening way to experience the world.    There was, of course, the occasional reference to mystics.    But they were weird, odd, maybe out of touch.

I think I may be getting a little weird, a little out of touch with the world I have been accustomed to.   I am experiencing a different world that has been there all the time, and I hardly knew it.   I don’t remember anyone telling me about it, except perhaps in some indirect, obscure  way.

Now I want to spread the word, but that may not be easy.   Encountering mindfulness is a little like an altered state.   For me, it has been like waking up and discovering that I’ve been dreaming.  It is a little like the first europeans who saw Yellow Stone.   They had a hard time convincing people that wondrous place really existed.    I know it only because I have been there.

I experienced an understanding this morning that was reinforced by Rilke when I picked him up to read his words for today.

There was a shadow over me that I recognized yesterday morning    I now realize how much energy and reality I was giving to imagined future developments in my life, one pleasant and one unpleasant.   That was drawing me out of the present into my imagination.   I lost something of my connection with what was actually going on around me.   It felt strange, but I didn’t know why at the time.

I believe I am developing a sense of what it is like to be present.   It is exciting, it is energizing, it is filled with awareness.    It is almost like an altered state.    I get a taste of it when I spend time practicing in meditation.   I can bring it up when I am moving through my day.

My grasping for a future that was both pleasant and unpleasant took me away from the present.   Desire can come in many forms.

There once was a time that I imagined myself as some kind of reincarnation of Francis of Assisi.    It was an image that was encouraged by my living in a monastic setting and wearing the robes of a franciscan friar.

I remember thinking that this was a bit pretentious.  It all seemed incompatible with humility.    At the time, I probably would have described my bold fantasy as a form of imitation of Francis, not in all things but certainly in his connection to Nature.   I think I also envied and perhaps wanted his deep connection with Clare.

I now see this connection with Francis as much more than simple imitation.   Regardless whether there is true reincarnation, I think I experience something of Francis living in me.   It is a little like knowing, recognizing his presence.   The centuries melt away, and I feel a real connection with his spirit.  In some ways, he is alive in me.

We do share the same essential spark, we are joined in the Humming.   But it is his involvement with the natural world that I identify with and can most recognize.    I am beginning to think that his mysticism is equally attractive to me, but that realization is still unfolding.

There is no statue of Francis in my garden, but I think he lives there when I walk thru it.   He is not a model, not a patron, not a protector.   He is here.