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I often look at faces deliberately on the bus.   Mostly when people are getting aboard and their eyes are searching for where they will sit.  Sometimes it is as if I am seeing a human face for the first time, and I  am a little surprised at what I see.

I am slightly aware that my eyes are entering their space, their world, uninvited.   My eyes willingly betray my presence, much  closer to some than they want.   Then they must decide whether to see what they have casually noticed.

Some people are totally unaware that I have opened my eyes and my heart to them, so close yet not really present.  Others become aware and then quickly avert their eyes.   Our connecting in space is not something they want.

And there are some who glance and wonder what is happening.  Some smile, and they acknowledge my presence as I have theirs.

My being alone is something that has been on the edge of my attention for a long time.   Now it has moved front and center.    As much as I enjoy living by myself and immersing myself in my aloneness, I routinely feel a strong attraction to breeching that aloneness.

I know that having a strong feeling of being alone is essential to my growing in awareness, mindfulness.   It is part of letting go, not relying on the comfort of another’s presence, living completely in my own  skin.   Being alone is an essential part of the human condition, and I have been learning how to be comfortable with it, how to welcome it.    It has not been an easy path.

At the same time I am convinced that I must have companions that I love and support, that love and support me.   I welcome other humans who can be with me in the intimacy of mutual awareness.   I want to give support and attract the support of others, while still being anchored in my aloneness.   For me, it means embracing the desire without grasping.

It has become the paradox of being part of the one and still being aware of being alone.

I am burdened by a culture that has confused companionship with the trappings of coupling.   It has put unspoken expectations on relations between men and women, and severely limited how men become companions with other men.  It certainly is a distraction for me, even made it more difficult to experience and accept being alone.

I know I have companions, and for that I am grateful.   I am still unsure what we can and will share, and I am uncertain of my grasp on my aloneness.

I think that a time of great pain and suffering is coming for the human race and the rest of our world.    It will be a time to embrace and support our close companions.   It will be a time to open our hearts and compassion for all those who suffer.

It actually has already begun.

It’s begun and I wonder how much I will see in my lifetime.   I hope to get a chance to see the next big change in the human species.   There was a point when we humans evolved in consciousness and we were able to have a major impact on the earth.   Perhaps some 20,000 years ago, we began to reshape our living space, and we began to push that space out of balance.   Now that world is involved in a major adjustment.   We have pushed it beyond a major tipping point.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are experiencing push back from the earth.   We made adjustments to our world, including the elimination of competing human species.   We have spread across the planet like a cloud of locusts and left a path of greedy consumption.   That must change.

Like the gypsy moth, the population of humans must crash for us to survive.   Many people will suffer and die.    That process has already begun.

I am certain there will be surviving humans.   Hopefully it will be those who have learned how to live in harmony and in balance with the world of which they are a part.   There will be fewer humans, and hopefully it will be those whose consciousness makes they acutely aware of their place in the big picture.   It is simply the survival of the fittest, and that will be those who have evolved to a higher level of awareness, learned how to use that intellect they inherited from their ancestors.

During my meditation class last evening, I watched the teacher, Mark, and  mused that this must be what it is like after 30 years of meditation practice.  His years have served him well.

I am excited about the impact on me by my past year of practice.  I have been reminded that I may be experiencing the effect of not one year but nearly 50 years of preparation for this day.  It has been a long time since the first indistinguishable seeds of contemplation were planted, without flourish and with little attention.  I never really learned to meditate during my years as a monk, but I think I developed an appetite.   And I am grateful for all those who planted that insistent longing.

Now those seeds have tentatively emerged after so many years of apparent dormancy.   They shape my comfort, even familiarity with the developing awareness that comes with meditation.   It is an awareness that often unfolds with ease and I feel the delight of being human.

Maybe those seeds haven’t been as dormant as I think.   Perhaps I have been rehearsing in subtle ways all these years.   No matter its cause, today is a great day to feel alive and awake, it is a great day of hope.

For a moment I am curious about what lies ahead.    Then I return to the delightful wonders of today.

These days, I am cutting down plants in my garden.   From time to time, my attention wanders to next spring when my plants will return.   Then I snap back to the snip – snip sound of my cutting shears and the feel of the firm stems  that grew all summer.

I flood my compost bins with the husks of my lovely, beloved plants.   I hand their severed stalks over to the denizens of decomposition.   I do this with the confidence of one who anticipates the earthy fragrance of the fine compost my tiny helpers will produce.

My culture did not prepare me for body awareness.   I obligingly accepted the teaching that I am to hide who I am under layers of cloth, even pretend that the outer layers said who I was, better than the flesh beneath.     All along, I have been stuffed under those layers, masked from my own awareness and from those around me.

How refreshing and useful to be “natural”.   To have those moments when I am simply alive under my skin.   No pretense, no secret.   These are all those times when I press my skin up against the world and it touches me.   The level of intimacy thrills me.

I am grateful for all those times I have felt the world present against my skin,  the rising sun striking all of me as I stood at the end of my dock, the water slipping over me as I swam in my lake, the warm fleece cloak against my skin as I sat on my cushion.   Those are times I am awakened to the world present around me, and to my own presence inside my skin.   I have learned to know what it feels like to be in my own body, inside my own skin.

Sometimes, all things on both sides of my skin become one.   A lovely paradox.  Breath-taking.

This it the first time I’ve thought about the afterlife in quite a while.   I don’t think it really makes much difference if there is or is not an afterlife.     So why put much energy into it.   Certainly not something to worry about.

If I were correct in thinking that there was an afterlife, and so lived my life in a wholesome, fully-human, mindful manner, I would walk thru the pearly gates fully prepared for what lies ahead.    If I were wrong and there was no afterlife, I would have lived a great life in the years I have been alive in the midst of a glorious, wonderful world.

If I were correct in thinking that there was no afterlife, and so lived my life to its fullest, I would have lived an exciting, insightful life.   End of story.  If I were wrong and there actually was an afterlife, I would walk thru the pearly gates in astonishment, everyone would shout “Surprise!” and I would be fully prepared for the party.

So why bother about trying to sort it all out.   There is, after all, no indication one way or another.    I only have the imagination of other humans to rely on.   And I know how unreliable that is.    Better for me to get on with life, experience it to its fullness, do what I can to avoid suffering and summon delight.  Every day.

I was drifting toward a quiet finale of a life I thought had been well-lived. I had a sense of having lived not one but several lives in one lifetime and had pretty much resigned myself that things were winding down.   There were some loose ends and unresolved items, but I was OK with that.   Was I in for a surprise.

I’ve been jolted back awake, finding that there is an aspect of me that has been playing hide and seek with me for years.    My senses have come alive in a way I have never experienced them before.    My awareness is sharper and brighter than I have ever known consciousness to be.

I am uncovering a new sense of myself that I only had short glimpses of in the past.    So much of my identity has been tied up with the house I lived in, the clothes I was wearing, the books I was reading, the things I had done.   These were some the things that distinguished me, set me aside, made me different.   Now I have a growing awareness of my sameness, my connectedness.   My appetite for that connection has been aroused.

With both good and bad aspects, I realize that my development and my daily life is intimately connected not only with other humans but the entire world around me.    That is often a satisfying realization, but also sometimes disturbing.

However, that is a part of life I don’t think I have truly grasped in the past.  Now I feel like I have found a new life, full of uncertainty, possibility and exploration. It is going to take a while for me to learn what this is all about.    So I signed up for another twenty or so years.

I am feeling sad the more I realize that so many humans are born like puppies and die pretty much like other animals.   I am learning what it means for me to squander my inheritance of being human.  I am becoming aware that I could live my whole life and, except for passing moments, not experience what it really means to be human.  Not even know what is possible.

It saddens me that there are so many people who are wandering in an imaginary dream-world, unaware that they are capable of so much more.  Some are born that way with an impaired ability to understand.    Some are simply ignorant and lack the needed knowledge.   Some chose the path of being unaware because they avoid the pain of letting go of the world they think they know.

I have spent much of my life in ignorance and delusion.  There have also been many distractions along the way.   For years, I relied on religious belief to fill the gaps of my knowledge, and now I realize how much I was living in someone else’s dreamy imagination.   I was unaware of what many people had learned thousands of years ago and what others had uncovered in the past century.  I was uninformed, unconscious,  and I allowed my culture  to take over.

I am grateful that I am beginning to understand that there is an alternate reality and humans have the ability to live in it.   My consciousness is finally beginning to awaken.   Someone finally turned on the lights.

I am sad that so much of humanity seems to be unaware and stuck in a world of thrashing teenagers.   There is hope because I see some adults in the room.