Category: Uncategorized

I am only beginning to know what it feels like to let go, and I am grateful that the experience is creeping invitedly into the hours of my life.   I know what it feels like because I am slowly becoming accustomed to meditating, even for brief periods of time.    As my mind becomes emptied, my whole body becomes charged with a sensory awareness independent of a specific stimulus.    It is the feeling of floating in salt water.   I can feel my muscles relax, one by one, as I let go of my body.

I feel a vibrant energy, a life force throughout, an all embracing warmth, a glow.   I feel un-attached.   I am all-accepting.  I have let go.

This is the feeling I want to have when facing death. This is the letting go I want to bring to encounters that threaten me with inner turmoil.   This is what I experience as awareness.   This is the openness and total acceptance that is my chosen path to loving someone.  I am beginning to think it is part of all of these, and I have much to learn about each.

It is the deep feeling of letting go that I hope allows me to open my heart to the young man with drooping pants shuffling past me down Hennepin Avenue.   It is the same letting go I want to give to my Son when he sets out on a path that only he can choose.   It is the letting go I want to bring with me when I walk with a special person in my garden.

I never want to be so old that I no longer continue to unfold.    I am in wonder at all the new possibilities that continue to present themselves.   Unforeseen and unpredicted.   There are even new physical improvements that I never dreamed possible.

Mostly I am awed by the possibilities of my inner space.   As I discover new insights and mental skills, I can only wonder at what might lie ahead.   I am discovering that I have many more human skills within me that I never knew about before.   I am slowly learning to use my mind in new ways and manage myself in a strange new way.

I am concluding that humans have great adaptability built into their genetic code, but we only make use of a small part.   There is so much there, but we limit ourselves by so many pre-conceived notions about what the world is about.  We constantly miss the opportunity of discovery.

For so long I have tried to uncover the meaning and identify the pattern of things, and what I missed is the fundamental randomness and ambiguity of everything.    There is no certain pattern and reality exists only in my encounter.   There is no static world, all is evolving.   Equally important, my awareness is evolving too.

Even this life-form we call human has constantly changed for 3.5 billion years, becoming something “not quite the same” with each passing moment.   I am the result of a roll of the genetic dice.   I am a little different in my make-up, my inner pattern from my ancestors who lived a hundred years ago.  Even my consciousness is evolved.   I can unfold possibilities not available to them.

The randomness of this continuous change is exciting.    The stream of existence is constantly not the same and is unpredictable.    I am sad that religion has misled me into thinking that I would find certainty if only I believed.  I grasped for certainty when I needed to let go of certainty.  All the while, I needed to embrace the uncertainty, randomness and ambiguity of all things.

So this new day presents itself to me.   It is another opportunity to delve deeper, to unfold another layer, to discover another possibility.

In the unfolding of this new day,

In the waking eyes of morning.

I commit that I will not dishonor my heart with hatred.

I humbly offer myself as a Guardian of Nature,

A Healer of Misery,

A Messenger of Wonder,

An Architect of Peace, and

A Fountain of Loving Kindness.

All summer long, I stood under the ancient Maple in my yard and looked up into the branches.   I loved being under all the leaves waving above me and hanging down from the drooping branches.   An umbrella of dark green was all I saw and I felt so embraced by the canopy above me.   It was a cool and comforting place.   I was enveloped by the protective dome.

Now the leaves are gone, and when I stand under the branches, I see the world beyond.   There are bright silver stars at night and I see the deep blue of the day sky.   My tree is still there, but now I know that there is more to see while standing under it.

For nearly all my life, I have enjoyed the comfort and thrill of the illusioned world around me.    My eyes never saw beyond the color and shape, my touch never penetrated beyond the hard and warm surfaces.  I never knew that beyond the curtain of appearances was a whole additional reality.   My senses were caught up in an illusion and only gave me a vague impression of what is really there.

The wonderful world of unseen dimensions, hidden activity, and invisible realities is beginning to be revealed.    Some of the reveal is taught by those who explain the unfolding realities of modern physics.   Some is realized by my shedding the dominating thoughts of my mind.   Some comes from opening my senses in a new way to the deeper world around me.

I have loved my summer tree.   And now I know there is more.

I have been trying to sort out just what I intend my relationships to be like.   It is a question that applies to my dearest, most intimate companions and to casual acquaintances.   I suppose, in a strange way, it also applies to those whose behavior I despise.

This issue is especially keen in my mind as I absorb the meaning of what it means for me to be alone.   I am discovering myself in ways I never have before.    That is both exciting and a little destabilizing.    As I see myself standing alone, what does that mean about my relationship with anyone standing close to me.   How can I be part of one another’s presence without losing touch with my own presence, a problem I have occasionally had.

I think what I most have to give to my companions and want from them is witness.   This is a deep, loving acknowledgement of who they are.   To my closest and most intimate companions, I offer a witness that includes a loving acknowledgement of their presence.   I intend to give unflinching acceptance, first of all to those closest to me.

I intend to listen to their stories, and offer to tell mine.     I will assist and support them.   I will encourage them in their pursuits.   It is what I have to offer as a friend and companion.    It is what I ask of those I invite into the intimacies of my life.

I  think this applies to the whole spectrum of companions, from my most intimate lover all the way to the bigots and racists whose behavior I despise.     It is something I intend to do unconditionally but in different degrees.   I hope to judge wisely how and when to be a witness and when to seek it.

 

Being an observer can mean a couple of things for me.    Some ways of being an observer I am trying to cultivate.   There are others I am trying to  distance myself from.

Eckhart Tolle made me aware of the value of becoming a “watcher.”   It was an important element and tool that I began to use to become more aware, more present.    I especially became a watcher of what was happening in me.    This included my sensations, my feelings, my thoughts.   Almost like stepping back and seeing me and parts of me in a mirror.   Strangely, by stepping back, being less caught up in my thoughts and feelings,  I actually became more aware of them.   In some ways I became more of a disengaged watcher.

This, of course, became an important element of my meditation practice.   Sometimes I am almost stepping outside myself and observing what I am doing or feeling or thinking.   The effect has been to intensify the feelings, the sensations, the experience of being present.

And there lies the paradox for me.    By being more of an observer, I can be more engaged in what I am observing.    This is true of my own body, everything  and everyone around me.   As a witness, I  become more connected to the observed.

I don’t often like to become a “passive” observer of someone else’s imagination.    Entertainment put on a screen is that for me.    There are times for that kind of engagement, connection with someone’s imagination.  There are times to be a spectator.    I like to keep that at a minimum.

Paradoxical as it is, I do like and take delight in being an observer of myself and those around me.   Then I am able, with abandon,  to fall head over heels into that reality.

Ripening, for me, is another name for getting older.   This is not the over-ripe mass of brown apple pulp.   Rather, it is the bright red crispness and luscious sweetness of ripened fruit at its peak.   I think of a piece of fruit as it was destined to become.   Full of flavor, tasty.  This is what it means to get older.

I have emerged from an illusion.   There was a time I celebrated the age of flowering.   It was a moment of fragrance, full of promise, fancy to behold.   I never knew I was only experiencing a forecast of the magnificence yet to come.

Now I know what it means to begin ripening, and I think for me the process has only begun.   The lovely petals of the flowers have long disappeared and the swelling fullness of my humanity is only now beginning to express itself.

My mind has moved to a new skill level, and the memory of what I imagined was my prime time has faded.   This is closer to what I was meant to be.   The toddler Barry was no more human than an acorn is an oak tree.   I was only a faint promise of what was yet to be.

I love the feeling of getting older, this time of ripening.  My heart swells with the fullness of newly aroused anticipation and the glow of ripening is beginning to emerge.   I am becoming a part of the universe in a way I never imagined was possible.  For me, it is a process that has only begun.  I know the best is yet to come, a period when I can more fully experience my oneness with my world.

I never knew there was this hidden path to joy and oneness.  Now I am determined there will be no dried and rotten husk.    I excitedly lean toward the day when it is time to eat and be eaten.

I am beginning to get a glimpse at what it means to develop a skillful mind.   This election cycle, for all its pain, has been a good teacher.  Developing a skillful mind, I think, is simply taking charge of my mind.   For me, it is taking charge of my thoughts.   Telling my mind what it is allowed to think.   My mind is no longer in charge, there has been a coup.

Meditation has been my chosen tool.    It has allowed me to take charge, to bring my mind under my control.    I am practicing being in charge, and my mind is getting the message, finally.   My mind is jealous of its power.   It tries constantly to regain its mystery of my thoughts, of my feelings, of my life.   It asserts itself out of habit, and I have to remind it there is someone else now in charge.   My practice gives me the skill I need.

I now see that my mind is something to be mastered, to serve me.   It is not to hold me in its service, as I think it has for years.   Using my mind the way I choose is truly a skill to be learned.   Perhaps it is much like learning to walk, something I mastered at an early age.    Then I gradually took charge of walking where I wanted   It is only then that I truly had the skill of walking.

I smile when I think of all the effort I have made to take charge of my feelings.   All the while I think my feelings were taking their lead from my thoughts.    Now I am working on taking charge of my thoughts, and I think my feelings faithfully follow.   I am taking charge of my mind.   My mind is becoming better skilled at following directions.   I am becoming more fully human, and that is who is meant to be in charge.

All the talk of building bridges has left me pretty much unmoved and uninterested.    Most bridges are built from both sides, and I am fatigued and realistic about what has actually been done in recent decades.    Both sides have to be ready to construct the bridge, and I have not been seeing many signs that that kind of readiness is present.

Until the bridge can be open to my companions, my family, my community, I’m not going to put my energy into the effort.   When members of all religions, all sexual preferences, all ethnic backgrounds are welcome at the other side of the bridge, then I say “Let’s get going.”

Until then, I am more interested in putting my efforts into the members of my community, my family, my companions.    These are members of my Beloved Community, and I welcome all who want to join it.    But we all have to be able to walk across the bridge.

Repeating an untruth can make it seem true to an unskilled mind.   It is becoming a common experience for me to recognize how much I can create my own reality.   It is a habit of mind, my thoughts are gate-keepers.   It is easy for me to absorb untruths, illusions when I entertain them uncritically.

Repeated untruths become familiar and so they become easier to absorb.   The gate-keeper lets down its guard and admits the familiar uncritically.  The dimensions of untruths take on all the appearance of reality.    A truly discerning mind sees all as uncertain, ambiguous, illusory.

For me this has been true in areas of religion where repeated illusions took on the credibility of being real.    It has happened in relationships where familiarity created an illusion or expectation that became my reality.   How often I have “seen” or “heard” what I expected or wanted to see and hear.   How often have I seen and heard the familiar uncritically, without being attentive and mindful.

I have been tested during this election time.    The media has reported so many untruths in uncritical fashion.   There have been times that I began to accept untruths as reality.    This has been so much of the story of this election, and the reason I stopped paying attention to the news.   My ability to critically filter what I heard and read became over-taxed.    I became weary and weakened in my ability and desire to repel the attacks of so many illusions.   So I put down the paper and turned off the radio.