Barry Garden Path

There are times that I have a deep sense of seeing people just as they are. I see them as they are present before me, standing or moving in my presence. Their flesh and blood are so obvious. I’ve noticed that I see them independent of whatever they are wearing.

This isn’t the same thing as seeing them naked. It is not even about the kind of seeing that I do with my eyes. Imagination is only faintly in play. I am simply aware of the body they exist as, the space they physically occupy.

This means activating a vision that goes beyond common, ordinary experience. For me, it involves developing and using an awareness that is centered in and surges through my whole body. It is not unlike the vision I have inside me when I visit the plants in my garden. There is the obvious sensory experience of sight, touch and smell. And there is also a vision that is active deep inside of me.

This has reminded me that the clothing we wear mostly conceals what our body is like, what we are really like as we physically, materially exist in time and space. At best, clothing signals to others what we want them to imagine what we really are like. Clothing signals attitude, status, cleanliness, wealth and so many other things. It also gives hints of the individual body beneath the clothing. It hints at who we really are. The hints are sometimes subtle, sometimes bold and clear.

Having the vision to see who we really are, independent of clothing, is something beyond sensory or imaginary awareness. I think that nakedness makes that vision easier, but in our culture, it also makes it more complicated. Nakedness confronts me with the physical presence of someone without the distracting, often unreliable influence of clothes.

For me it is as simple as being able to be aware of a person’s hands if those hands are not buried in mittens. I am more aware of the presence of their arms or feet or face if they are not somehow covered. Clothing, for the most part, centers on the sensory or stirs imaginary sensory experience. Clothing often suggests a presence, and only that.

I want to further develop an inner vision that doesn’t rely on sensory experience or stimulation, real or suggested. The starting point for me is to be deeply aware of my own body and be in deep contact with its presence. That vision of awareness is like a spark that can reach out to others. My vision begins inside of me, then other things get a lot more clear.

I love to get little glimpses of what humans really are like. These are the small nuances of interaction, the small acts of kindness or acknowledgement. They show the social tendernesses that are all part of being human. They seem to come naturally.

There are so many daily glimpses into the humanity of people I meet. The “thank you” someone says when you hold the door for them. The smile from a stranger as you pass them leaving Trader Joe’s. People who move their feet or their body so you can pass more easily. Neighbors who walk in the street so you can pass them at a comfortable distance during the pandemic.

I smile at the generosity of neighbors who comment about my garden as they pass by. I absorb the gentle bows of people who I meditate with. I watch the care that children show as they walk on the narrow paths of my garden, careful that they not step on plants.

I see the spacious smiles of friends I visit on FaceTime. I accept the welcome of other gardeners who open their gardens for my enjoyment. All these glimpses are reminders that humans are social and kind by nature. These gestures of kindness seem to happen with little or no effort.

Spoonful by spoonful, people hand out the generosity that comes so easily when they allow it. And I get many glimpses that allow me to enjoy the bright inner workings of people I meet.

For some time now, I have resisted being entertained. There are many exceptions of course, but being entertained has somehow seemed to me an excuse for not doing something real.

Entertainment has seemed to me to be an escape from reality, or at least an illusory way of dealing with it. I have sometimes wanted to be relieved of reality, and for that reason I found ways to be entertained. I am easily distracted by the shiny objects of the entertainment world. I am very familiar with entertainment and use it, even while I may resist it.

I know that my primary entertainment room has been my mind. So many times I have stood on the curb of reality, and in my mind watched the parade of jugglers, acrobats and sword-swallowers passing by. Those have been the times that my body has been in one place, and my mind has gone off to be absorbed in something somewhere else altogether.

In my culture, I am very familiar with references to the entertainment room present in many homes. These are designated places I am invited to go in order to step outside of the reality of ordinary living. I am so easily entertained by images projected on a screen not so much to communicate but to create and invite me into an imaginary experience of escape. I sometimes go there.

I know very well how I can select a drama or an adventure and for 40 minutes or three hours I am apart from my body and think I am experiencing a reality not truly my own.

I am amused when I hear the expression of “entertaining friends,” when someone speaks of others coming to their home to visit. It seems that the expectation is not just that they will have an experience of interacting with one another. It seems instead that the host will skillfully lead their visitors out of their ordinary but real experience. The visitors will be entertained. They will have a good time.

Perhaps my resistance to the idea of being entertained is all dreamed up and is unfounded. As I look around, entertainment is such a firm part of the culture. But there is something fundamental that bothers me about entertainment.

I think I would prefer to be engaged with my common and ordinary world where things are real, not imagined or concocted for my entertainment. Not preferring escape, I like the presence of what I can truly see and touch. I prefer experience and I like to be amazed by the real movement of life.

I like to experience music played by others and the joy I have in hearing it. I am not so interested in a music performance put on so that I can be entertained.

I’ve been lost and floundering in the big picture. I’ve been unable to bring into focus any notion of how the inequities of racism are ever going to be dealt with. I cannot see a world path that has white people treating people of color as equal humans. So today I am paying attention to the small picture, and that is enough for now.

Today I will be present wherever I happen to be. I will really notice the people that pass along the sidewalk along my home. I expect to be very aware when kids come into my back yard to see the fish. I will listen attentively when people stop to talk with me. I will be very involved with my small world.

I began by time spent on my pillow, focused on where I was and what I was doing. My space was small but it had an immense feeling of spaciousness. I walked through my garden and the fresh green world allowed me to enter. My focus never went beyond the curb but lingered on this small area of my garden.

I think that before I can absorb the larger picture in a meaningful way, I need to ground myself right where I am. I will spend time in my small world. I will be sitting, walking, chatting, observing, listening.

I am surrounded by the question today of how will we ever bridge the chasm that exists between white people and people of color. How will I bridge the chasm that exists between me and people of color?

There is no hope for me where there is no realistic expectation of a desired outcome. I do not see a basis for hope. I wish I did. The chasm seems so wide and deep. I do not see a way that my society can ever come together. So I all I can do is at least work on my own personal chasm.

Where do I begin? I have started by doing what comes easy to me: I read. I create a link with people of color that is primarily intellectual, but the emotional link creeps in. I read authors of color whom I respect, and that includes some who make me feel uncomfortable by what they say. I look at my own racism through their lenses.

I am moving through a small stack of books of poetry and essays by authors of color. They include people like Danusha Lameris, Ta-Nehisi Coates, John A. Powell, Ruth King, Langston Hughes, Joy Harjo, Adrienne Maree Brown, and so on. I sit, I listen, I pay attention. I ignore any of my internal narratives that try to emerge.

I also sit in meetings and listen to the women of color who contradict me. I ignore my urge to respond or resist. I bend, I yield, I listen attentively. I create a space in which we can both exist. I tell my ego to be quiet and take a rest.

I also pay attention to my reactions to people of color. I am becoming a little more honest and transparent with myself. I notice and study my own racism. I am increasingly aware that my life-long conditioning has fashioned me as a racist. Every one of my reactions to people of color is shaped by experiences and nurturing that began in the white baby bed in the hospital where I was born. I have been feeding on a diet of white privilege all my life.

I accept that all my white friends and white non-friends are racists as well. Everything they do, everything they say has the nutriments of white privilege. All white public figures are raised on the same diet of white privilege and continue to benefit from it. I notice and acknowledge the racism we all share.

None of what I am doing bridges the chasm I experience. All it does is provide a personal foundation, a beginning. Perhaps I will learn from someone who can see a way forward. I watch. I listen. I pay attention.

I recognize and enjoy three main characteristics of my times of deep concentration. I’m learning to pay attention to this wholesome triad. My best times sitting on my pillow are marked by three jewels that sparkle and glow. They make those moments spent sitting time well spent. The three are like three legs on a sturdy kind of focused attention.

Relaxation is a key element of my concentration. My mind lets go of its usual business and my body settles into a deep, relaxed state. Activity seems to stop in my mind and my body. Everything seems to shut down, but in reality it is becoming totally alive. My mind and body have nothing to do.

Spaciousness replaces my sense of form and containment. I no longer feel the limits of time or space. My mind / body reaches out and experiences no sense of limits. I am aware of nothing in particular, but instead my mind reaches out to everything that exists. I enter a void that is thriving with potential.

Brightness infuses my mind and body. This is more than a visual experience, even though flashes of light often come out of the void. There is a kind of high energy that bursts out of my mind and body. The sense of illumination surrounds me and comes from within me.

If I am having a good day, this triad of relaxation, spaciousness and brightness stays with me for awhile. Sometimes it is a passing experience, and I have to return to my breath to take me back to that same spot. Naturally, it is a triad that I am always glad to visit. Sometimes, I take the triad with me into the meandering moments of my day.

It is a relief to look outside and see that the destruction and mayhem has not spread to my neighborhood.   I can only faintly imagine what it must be like to live in parts of the city directly affected by the rioting.  The fear and trauma must be very hard to bear.  

As much as I think outsiders have had some role in the destruction, I am deeply concerned that many local people joined in the action.   It is so hard for me to understand.  I wonder about the societal conditions that have brought about this departure from basic humanity and conditioned such actions.  I wonder how accountability will be acknowledged or assigned.   Where do I fit in as part of the cause of it all?

Today I am hearing people who want to own the destruction because it signifies their rage and the depth of their frustration. I understand what they are saying, and I suppose I can understand that someone would self-immolate as a sign of protest. But I don’t understand how harming someone else is a suitable way to show your own anger.

Above all, on this day after a day of danger, I want to be aware of my part in this whole affair. The urgency of the situation has intensified. I want to be attentive how my patience about changing an unjust system is contributing to the continued problem. The time for being patient for change has passed. The best time for change is now.

Every moment, I am moving in a sea of air, and yet I am scarcely aware of its presence. I cannot see air, and I am about as aware of air as a fish is aware it lives in water. I become aware of air when it moves across my skin, but I typically ignore its reliable presence. I may see the effects of air, but I never see air.

I know air when I feel its movement or when its warmth or chill contacts my skin. I know in my head that I do not live in a vacuum but in a sea of air no less real than a sea of liquid water. However, this reality is easy to be as invisible to me as the unseen realities that exist altogether outside my senses.

I depend on the substance of the air to supply my body constantly with the oxygen it needs to survive. I rely on the movement of air to carry wastes from my body, otherwise I would quickly die.

I cannot see the air, but it makes its presence felt in ways I only occasionally notice. I am convinced it has substance because birds and airplanes can use it to move through space. Unlike me, they can tread on the buoyant substance of air.

Air obviously rushes around because trees respond it it by waving their leaves. I turn my face to air or away from it depending on whether I find its presence pleasant or not. I sometimes bundle up to shield my body from the chill of air. Other times I bask in the warmth of air against my bare skin. In these moments I have a glimmer of awareness of the sea of air in which I live.

It must have weight because if I move outside of my heavy atmosphere, my body would expand and explode because of the unfettered air trapped inside. If air were compressed into a liquid or solid, as people sometimes do, I would be able to see it. As it exists around me, it is totally transparent except for particles it carries. It can make its presence known to my eyes by air bending light to color the sky blue or create a rose sunset.

Air is such a common, natural part of my living that I hardly notice it. However, there are times I become focused on air passing through the ends of my nostrils. In those moments, the awareness of air becomes for me a door to deep concentration.

What is typically so elusive in my ordinary experience becomes a means for the most extraordinary experience of concentration. Having experienced the air in my nostrils, I am truly able to leave the experience of air and become aware of my world in a more exciting way. Even as much as I need and rely on air, there are these moments I deliberately leave air behind.

Each new morning has so many familiar aspects that I seem simply to be repeating what I have done before. It is an experience I have often these days. The pills I take, the warm water of the shower, my sliding razor, the rug under my stretches, the cushion on which I sit and quietly concentrate. They all seem so familiar, such a soothing repeat. I’ve been here before.

Each day seems at times to be a revisit of familiar terrain. The continuity is so impactful that I begin to see each repeat as the same continuous action. Each repeat seems almost so seamlessly connected to what went before that they begin to murmur that this is a continuous, flowing NOW. The repeat quietly suggests that there is no before-NOW, no future-NOW. Just NOW.

The margins, the fading distinction between yesterday NOW and tomorrow NOW is beginning to be more blurred. The repeats say that there is no need to rush forward, no need to regret what is revealed by a backwards glance.

I only have the present moment to experience, and the repeat underscores that notion. I will do this again and again until the realization sinks in that this is one enduring experience.

I only have the present moment to experience. What seemed a repeat of again and again is becoming a deep well of an undefined present. The repeat is full of no longer real past and of not yet real future .

It is not yet time to repeat. There will never be a time to repeat. There is only the continuous NOW.

The shadow of an afterlife obscures the experience of what stands before me right now. Any notion of time added to a continuing existence inhibits my ability to plunge into the impermanence of existence. It restricts my ability to let go of notions of permanence and perpetuation, and I am less able to enter the depth of being.

I was well-schooled in the christian preoccupation with what is yet to come, what will occur after I leave the world of senses. The shadow of that notion has hidden the rich, all-embracing nature of the present moment and limited my ability to enter into it. The more I distance myself from that shadowing mythology of heaven and hell, the more sacred and precious the present becomes.

Even my preparing in small ways for my temporal future, for next week, shadows what is directly before me. Without a shadow of the future, I can more mindfully touch the loose soil around the Pansies as I push them into the open holes I’ve made in the ground. My fingers more earnestly sense what really exists. There is no shadow of the future. The sensation is both one of impermanence and one of touching all that exists. My fingers push into the timeless now. Without the shadow of what is yet to come, I know more deeply what touches my skin.

Without the shadow of what is yet to be, I am able to touch and see what is otherwise partly obscured. I relax, and there is no tension to the future. I am able to more deeply experience the body of myself and others with a fulness that is otherwise obscured by any leaning to the future. The sound of the chime in my garden drifts into a relaxed world of a forever now when I listen with no notion of continuance, of what will happen next.

I realize that much of my experience of life, of reality has been shadowed by the belief of an afterlife. It has distracted me from what is truly happening right now. The whole notion of merit or sin, the idea of future reward or punishment, have shielded me from a full experience of what is always happening right now.

I intend to plunge into a deep earthly experience. I desire a sacred earthly awareness that allows me to enter into the widest dimension of what is. I want my encounter of being to happen outside the shadows.