Barry Garden Path

I had been thinking about being open to desire, and so I began re-reading Mark Epstein’s book by that same title. He helps me sort out the power and paradox of desire. I appreciate his sharing his multi-year account of how he struggled to sort out the dynamics of desire. The first time I read his book, I was pleased and gratified to find my intuition about desire put into words by Epstein. I resonated with the reflections of someone like him who had been schooled both in eastern thought and western psychiatry.

Both in the east and in the west, there is a strong tendency to suppress desire, push it out of the way, ignore it. To me this seems such a waste of dynamic energy and misses the opportunity for enlightenment. To my buddhist mind, it ignores the invitation to walk the middle path.

I would rather befriend desire and not push it away. I want to invite Mara to tea. The power of desire is in its energy and its relentless pursuit of the beloved, whether the beloved is a person, plant or piece of rock. The paradox of desire is the importance of not grasping the beloved, not clinging to some outcome. The middle path requires giving up any notion of possessing the object of desire. Desire invites free-fall without any grasping for recovery.

Desire has often been associated with the sensory alone, and so it has been held in a prison of mistrust and suspicion. In the east and west, desire has been kept at a distance, typically under the control of a monkish mind that does not want to deal with desire. Fortunately, there have been hidden traits in both eastern and western thought which did not regard desire as the enemy but as the sacred. That is the path I choose to follow.

Desire is part of the natural energy of the universe. It is the attraction between the earth and the sun, it is the dynamic activity contained in an atom, it is the pursuit of an object of love. Resistance to desire is against the nature of things, as is clinging to the object of desire. Desire is a power and a paradox I joyfully embrace.

I live in a world where I am surrounded by circles of engagement. Within each circle, there are different levels of engagement, different levels of intimacy. As my heart reaches out, the broader circles seem more distant and I have a wispy kind of engagement. Closer in, the circles become more of a free fall arena, my heart is open with great exposure and boundaries become blurred.

No more needs be said.

Culture cheapens love by attempting to make it safe. Whether it is love for people or anything else, love is surrounded by cheapening safety devices and protections. Everything, everyone is expected to come with a safety jacket.

Outcomes are guaranteed and promises are made of life-long stability and reliance. Whether it is a loving relationship with another person or with the watch I put on my wrist, I have been taught to expect something akin to a lifetime guarantee. By attempting to dispel the reality of risk by casting an illusion of safety, love is cheapened. The bud is stifled from opening.

Uncertainty is the essence of existence. Attempting to shield from uncertainty robs me of the exhilaration of living fully. Love is all about opening my heart to embrace whatever presents, to things as they really are. A safe love, a safe life is an existence robbed of its essence, its savor. It is much less than it can be. It is cheap.

“….the gift of knowing self as free fall…..” – RWT

Humans are essentially unpredictable. As is my every day. This is especially a problem for someone with Autism of any kind. Then again, maybe it is a challenge we all have to address. Or not.

I have spent much of my life gradually coming to an acceptance of this reality, but often still wishing for predictability. I am also aware that I often offer a path of uncertainty to my companions. Barrygardenpath is a generous, open invitation but it is not predictable.

All around me are strands of the eternal. These are not something waiting for me in the future, but are all around me right now. They envelope me and welcome me as soon as my mind pushes back the blankets of sleep. I become aware that I am brushing up against the strands of the eternal as I touch the cold granite of my bathroom counter. They shape the tiniest crevices of my hands as I push against the carpet, lying flat and face-down on the floor.

I too easily forget what it is to experience this magical aspect of my world. I try to remind myself of it and feel it when I walk through the long wet grass of my garden and acknowledge plants one by one, group by greening group.

I know that strands of the eternal have woven the multi-layered, mis-matched fabric of my life. I can still feel the soft embrace of the velvet forest as it has repeatedly invited me into a world just beyond what my eyes and skin could perceive. I welcome the memory of those times when the eternal strands were so self-revealing that I could easily take hold of them. I knew this was where I belonged.

I might too easily forget the experience of eternal strands that were woven into the moments I spent with those individuals I have opened my heart to love. First loves were an explore, and thereafter I gradually learned that this embracing of the eternal strands was to become a daily way of living. I keep the memory alive by daily again acknowledging all who have allowed me to become interwoven into the fabric of their lives as they too explored their own eternal strands.

I am aware that all around me there are hearts reluctant to surrender to the reckless open-heartedness required to enjoy the deep joy of these eternal strands. They know there is little safety in being in love with the world, being in love with other individuals with abandon. Falling into the realm of the eternal is like stepping from an open door of an airplane, believing somehow I will be able to fly.

This seems to happen all the time to me, and I am no where close to sorting it out. I just know that in spite of many experiences that feel like reaching into thin air, there are also moments when I clearly brush up against the eternal strands. This happens anew again and again. I experience how the eternal strands yield to my touch, and I am reminded of the world to which I belong.

I believe in magic. It is what comes out of the floor when I lie face-down on the carpet and feel the vast solid foundation of the world beneath me. There is magic when I step through the stone gateway into the wildflower garden and feel the welcoming embrace of the expectant plants.

Because of magic, the touch of a green face towel reveals its thrilling texture as I put it back into its metal ring. I sit and talk with a beloved friend without urgency, and the electric magic radiates all around us.

The magic is always there. I just have to pay attention. For me, paying attention means that I let go of all interfering beliefs and surrender to the transparent belief in magic. Each morning, I settle quickly on to the edge of my bed, and because I have let go of all else, all notions, the magic grabs me and opens my awareness to more than I could otherwise see or feel. Magic whisks me away.

I have spent years living in a world of belief created by religion, and I now see that those efforts were attempting to create their own form of magic. So much of my religious belief required surrendering to a reality I could only imagine to be present. The imagined belief helped capture something of the magic, but it got so complicated by doctrine and obscured by illusion. It was a magic largely based on nothing real, nothing actually present.

I am now choosing more to pay attention to a magic that rises not out of my imagination but out of what is actually present. It is a magic radiating out of what manifests immediately before me or inside may body. This is a magic that comes directly out of the vast universe. It invites me to experience it through all the forms I encounter. I may be touching the floor of my bedroom, but the magic of the reality beyond the fuzzy carpet works on me.

Looking back, I now realize how often I have walked on the margins of this magical world and never realized what I needed to do to enter in. There were those who invited me, but I wasn’t aware how to respond. Perhaps there were times that I did actually cross over and partially recognized where I was.

Today, I choose to allow the magic of the universe to work on me more routinely, again and again. More and more, I am finding myself in a magical world. I think I can be at home here. I invite my companions to join me and enter this magical world.

I know how this story ends. What interests me is what is on the pages I turn, one after another. This book is written in the present tense only. There is no future, no speculation, no predictions. It is mine to savor, feel the heft of the book constantly, one page at a time.

Promises are easy to make, but they are only as substantial as is my willingness to live in the present.

Emotions have gotten a bad rap. Not the shallow, distracting , ephemeral flutter often associated with them, emotions can go very deep and are intimately intertwined with awareness. But only if I allow that to happen.

It has taken me all these years to realize the importance and the possible depth of emotional engagement. After all the time I spent essentially living in my head, I learned that the mind can connect in a richer, more insightful and more joyful way if the heart is involved.

This is a lesson I have learned by the absence of emotional engagement as forcefully as its captivating presence.

Allowing emotions to be engaged without constriction is a joy of being alive. It is what happens when the mind totally relaxes into its natural state. Nothing needs be expressed when emotions are allowed to plunge into the seemingly bottomless depths of mind. For me, it has been all about learning to let go of mind constraints in a way that allows my focus to plunge while staying in touch, staying intimately aware.

Without the focus, the intense awareness, emotion can be but a burst of unaware, unrealized energy.

Perhaps this is something everyone learns and does naturally. For me, it has required practice and learning. I have needed to become adept at opening the door so that I can see, be aware and feel.

Every morning, I practice at feeling deeply. It is the rapture of a relaxed but focused, attentive mind. Its probes the depth of joy, of bliss. It is the exuberance of feeling what it is to be fully alive.

I have not learned by thinking about it. I learned by doing it.

As I look out through my window, I instantly get pulled into a world full of life. All around me, the trees, the house, the singing birds, the soil, the brightening sun all have a life that reaches out and envelopes me. It seems so shallow for me to speak of things being inanimate when everything is so filled with the animation of existence.

It especially becomes apparent that there is a commonness we all share. I am just like the trees, the walkways, the flitting birds. I share with all of them a common animation. The deep churning ocean from which all emerges is our common essence, where we are all at home. We are all one in our foundation. The aliveness flows through us all and manifests in so many different and explosive ways.

It is common for me to speak of the uniqueness of everyone, of everything. But today I am drawn into the common aliveness we all share. The dynamic nature of all things has called out to me and reminds me of the aliveness I share with all things.