Category: Uncategorized

I wonder why more of us aren’t running down the street in terror over what is happening.   There are enough terrifying things going on that it is amazing that more of us have not gone berserk.

I look out my window and up at the sky.   All seems calm and peaceful, but I know that there are climate changes in motion that will dramatically change the face of the earth and our established way of life.    Not since agriculture became essential to our species has there been much of a change in the climate we have learned to rely on.     Things have been very stable, with a few cold blips along the way.    As disruptive as those cold blips were, they were small compared for what will soon be upon us.

We have become so numerous and so well-fed because we have been able to produce an abundance of food.    There are still problems of distribution, but the food is there and available.   With the change in climate, this reliable system is about to change.   Without food, it will be difficult for the immense population of humans to survive.

Social disruption will come with climate change.    To make things more complicated, we are already in the midst of social turmoil.    The leadership of past great civilizations and the decisions they made brought about the ruin and dissolution of those huge communities.    Rome, the Maya, the Aztec all experienced dissolution of their societies.   It was a ruin caused by their own unchanging insistence on a way of life no longer sustainable.

In the US, we are experiencing a stubborn reliance on points of view that are out of sync with reality.   Over consumption is perhaps the greatest threat, accompanied by the resistance against learning from past mistakes of our species.

I am uncertain just when it will arrive, but I expect we will experience chaos and collapse in my lifetime.   However, you probably won’t see me running down the street in terror.

I have come to see sexuality as a way we naturally relate to one another and create community.   It need not be a narrow and exclusive way of relating to one another, and I also think individuals can reasonably choose to isolate themselves in an exclusive sexual relationship.    For most people, in fact, deciding on an exclusive sexual relationship with one individual is an integral part of their decision to couple, most often to raise children.

I use to think that sexuality was one way of waking up, becoming more aware of another individual.   The thrill of sharing pleasures is, I believe, a small taste of the thrill of meditation and the deep awareness that comes with total surrender to “what is”.

I still think this is true, but the waking up factor is only one side of the coin.   Sexual awareness is something that very naturally comes along with an open awareness of someone, even ourselves.   It is part of seeing someone as they really are.   To be aware of someone as a sexual individual is to see them as they actually are.  A decision whether to relate to them in a sexual way begins with and depends on this awareness.

The degree of my growing awareness depends on my ability to be aware.

Desire arises in many ways and many forms.   I get to decide how to make good use of the energy of desire.    It is my choice whether to be controlled by desire or allow it to carry me into a deeper awareness.

Unfortunately, I think humans have trivialized and abused their sexuality.  Some humans seem to expect nothing at all of sexuality except perhaps a fleeting stimulant  Or they expect so much out of their sexuality that they dole it out in stingy amounts.  So much of my culture is infected by one or both of these notions.

Rather than create a path of awareness, sexuality has often been a tool of dominance and power.   Rape is an instance of extreme dominance and power.    Marriage has in most traditions become  a structure of ownership, one person over the other.    Most  forms of marriage put the male as the owner, the female as the one possessed.    It is a social contract based on ownership, rights, privileges, guarantees, etc.

For me, touch is an important way of relating to people I get to know.   If I don’t feel I am being intrusive, I even touch strangers.   It is natural for me, it is a way of becoming more aware, it is a way of relating, it is a way of affirming one anothers presence.   I think that sexuality can be described the same way.

My problem is that I don’t think many other humans think the same way. So far, I think I am a community of one.

 

 

I have been having such a good time exploring how to step out of time.   The more I explore, the more it becomes a real part of me.

This morning I spent ten glorious minutes in a world with no time.   Everything was happening right now, and I was part of it.    I had this deep feeling of what it is to be in the middle of the Big Bang as it happened all around me.   The years of earth development telescoped into an instant.   Everything came together in a breath.

The future did not have a time assigned to it any more than the past.   I got to sit in the middle of an expanded sense that everything is happening right now.

I love stepping out of time and being attentive to everything that is happening right now.   Its is a wide and deep horizon and it is a thrill to be there.

A couple days ago I got to put my fingers against a pillar of natural stone sitting in front of a friends home.   All time was erased and I was there, touching a stone-without-time.   It was all there, the fire, the molten rock, the heat, the cold surface of the stone that always is.    The heaving, the flowing, the sitting still, the constant movement  ……. it was all there, captured in a simple touch.

Everything is in constant change.   While time is the measure I use to keep track of change, the increments are something people have invented.   There is no way to freeze the moment, and “now” is all there is.

All things are in motion, the mountain, the wood of my house, the growing plants.   The land on which I stand is moving.   My bed, out of which I rose  this morning, is in a different place from where it was yesterday morning.    Everything that exists is real because it is in relationship with something else, and that relationship constantly changes.

Nothing is static.   There is no permanence.

So much of my days are devoted to being connected.    It is a joy to be connected to my plants, to my body, to people I see.    This has been such a deep desire in me that it has gotten out of balance from time to time.    Now I know better how to be connected, deeply aware of things just as they are, not as I want or imagine them to be.

It is important for me not to make my experience different from what happens.   I want to accept what is, not resist it, welcome it, be attentive to what is being felt.   I want neither to be controlled nor attempt to control whatever I experience.

Reality is in being connected.   Relationship is reality.

 

I have such an established pattern of rushing to the next moment.   I am looking ahead, where I am going, what I am going to do next, what I intend to get from the other side of the room.   I learned a long time ago that when I am using my bandsaw to cut wood, it is always better if I focus about a quarter of an inch ahead of where the blade is cutting.   It is much easier to cut on the line if I am looking a little bit ahead.

My life is not like that.   I find I am better if I pay attention to what I am doing right now, and only think about the future as needed.   This is where I live.   I miss something if I rush into the next moment or linger in some memory of the past.  My mind loves to plan and to remember.   The rest of me seems to thrive best when I am paying attention to the moment.

For me that doesn’t mean paying attention to something happening outside of me.   My greatest delight is when I am absorbed in watching myself pay attention.   If the bell is ringing, I hear it.    But I am absorbed in the act of hearing, not so much in the ringing bell.   For me it is almost a paradox that when I am attentive to the act of hearing, I become most intense in my awareness of the bell.

It becomes a ringing bell in a most intimate way.  I don’t particularly feel alert or attentive.   I am quite relaxed, and I enjoy the bell as it rings.   It takes on a reality and my curiosity rises.

Some day I hope to understand this.

I continue to be mystified by my senses, how they can both distract from awareness and heighten awareness.    The taste of a luscious peach can draw me into intense awareness.   The anticipated taste of any food can pull me into compulsive sensory behavior.

In some ways, I’m not surprised that humans have been suspicious of the senses and have become wary of sensual pleasure of any kind.   This caution is a waste and missed opportunity .

When I choose, my senses can be a welcoming gateway into awareness and delight.   I am getting better in how I choose that path.

I once heard someone say that she doesn’t really write songs.   She simply pulls them out of the air.   When she is ready and receptive, they come to her.

That seemed strange to me at the  time, but I am more aware now that creativity can’t be forced.   It simply happens when I am ready and receptive.  I have to be relaxed and open to catch a passing image that I apply to my garden or an idea that I put into writing.

I am really not actively working to be creative.    These are not images and ideas that I have actively put together.    They are nothing I could honestly say that I created.   They simply show up out of the clarity of my mind, and I catch them to make them mine.

I don’t know where they come from.   I think that my memory has a role to play because it is such a storehouse of raw material.   My imagination also has a role because it can conjure a field, a place, a white board where something can come into virtual existence.  My discerning mind is also active when it is engaged as an editor.

The creative process for me is not a pursuit, but more like a relaxing and an allowing of the creativity to happen.  It is the letting go that brings awareness or mindfulness.   Before I can be creative, the memory, mind and imagination have to quiet down somewhat.   They have to sit on their hands for a moment, stop waving them in the air.

That is when the space is opened for new images and ideas to appear out of thin air it seems.   I sometimes think that the images and ideas are “out there”, some place beyond my senses.   When I invite them, they show up, but only if there is room for them to slide into my consciousness.

One of the reasons I think that they have a “place out there” is that I can recognize them when I see them or hear them come from someone else.   They appear in things that people make or in things they say.   When someone is being creative, I seem to recognize that the creativity is happening.    I can see it in other people or in the work they produce.   It is like being able to see the beauty in a natural scene if I relax and just allow the beauty penetrate my awareness.

I think that I, like all humans, have a built-in ability to recognize art because I have the ability to become aware of a pattern.   It is a pattern that I have come to recognize as beauty.   It is a natural, built-in response that is at the core of my being an intelligent being.

The outcome of creativity can be felt, observed and captured only by me when I have relaxed my forms of awareness, my categories, my active imagination.   Art and beauty come to me in their fulness when I have entered the shapeless depth of relaxed awareness and mindfulness.   That is where I engage in my own creative process or recognize the creativity of others.

My empty mind is a caldron of creativity and recognition.   It is where, if I want, I can capture the pattern of beautiful images or ideas.

Happiness, to be experienced, must be sought, pursued and embraced.   To  be happy, I must want to be happy and take the risk of opening myself to joy.   Happiness is not a companion of fear.

So it is similar for suffering.   I must have my eyes open, then I can recognize suffering.   To accept suffering is to embrace it, envelope it, absorb it in the depths of my senses.

There is no sting.   The result is a quiet peace not unlike my experience of happiness.

I wonder what it would be like to be a plant, like a daisy.   What would it be like to experience the world, all reality, as a daisy experiences it?   My roots would be penetrating into the ground, searching for water and so many other things in the soil.    I would experience the sun warming and energizing my leaves.    Wind would blow me from all directions, mostly giving me the breath of carbon dioxide.

What would it be to simply be alive, with no sense of time, only the moment that is now.  I would have no memory of what I did yesterday or any imagination of what tomorrow might unfold.   I would only feel the exhilaration of being alive, all systems engaged.