Barry Garden Path

I am ignoring all the flashing red lights as I plunge ahead.     What I was once taught to avoid I now embrace.    Was it my German heritage or my Catholic school that taught me to beware of pleasurable things?    Either way, I was certainly well-educated.

When I could have been learning to understand and become aware how to indulge in the beauty of the world, I was instead taught to be wary and suspicious of anything pleasurable.    It would be best if I would simply avoid pleasurable experiences.    The teachings still go on, even in books I sometimes read.

I am escaping those dole teachings.    Instead I plunge into the rapture of sounds rising from a Beethoven concerto to the point that tears flow from my eyes.    Walking through my garden in the morning is a sensory adventure and delight to sight and touch.    My whole body thrills with glee to the experience of a beauty reaching out to me.

I have learned and absorbed the pleasure of sitting with a friend for hours, talking of our individual experiences with such intimacy that they become a shared encounter.    The pleasure of a shared presence laps against the shores of rapture.

I now gleefully accept my awareness of indulgences with a pleasure that mocks the teachings I receive.   No, I will not avoid and shy away.    I will not avoid the delights of the world.    I especially will not avoid the pleasure of human encounters that have become experiences of beauty and wonder.

The pleasure of a chance encounter with a plant, a person, a rock is a welcome delight.   I indulge in the pulsing warm water of a morning shower.   I wantonly discover the touch of a soft, dry towel.     The body I was taught not to touch is now a routine source of delight.    I take pleasure in the soft fuzzy surface of a peach, I feel the knife plunging through the texture of the peach flesh, I feel the knife strike the pit, I slowly slurp the sweetness of the peach.

Why would I listen to the advice of teachers and ancestors when the pleasures of living are mine to enjoy.    My heart, my inner self, my skin all reach out and the pleasures are mine.     We are becoming one.

When did humans divide themselves into male and female genders?    Certainly, this division was more than a separation of function, in the role each plays in reproduction.   At some time, this became a separation into categories of who we are and how we see ourselves.

At some point we became male vs. female, and the two are not always complementary.    The tension and antagonism pulls us apart.   We are pulled apart within ourselves as well as within relationship.   How do we ever put ourselves back together again?

The Creation and Fall story in the book of Genesis is a testimony to the division felt in those who wrote the story and who passed it on.    It is a felt division, a split between the genders in society and in us as individuals.    We became male and we became female.   At the core of this separation is a sense of betrayal and distance that is difficult to overcome.    One acts against the other.

This is the story that I grew up with and it resonates with the social conditions I experience.    All through my adult life I have tried to reduce the role of the male side of me and reunite the two.    I am perhaps only now figuring out how to do it.

I think I was born with both aspects in me of male and female.    I learned the role of one of these to some degree, but the two have never been rejoined.    I have spent a lot of my adult life trying to reunite these two parts of myself.

Society has helped as the rising gay tide has ignored or blurred some of the definition of separate genders.     Transgender expressions are also a strong attempt to bridge the division in individual people and in society.

My comfort with an androgynous inner self has been my way of bridging the male and female aspects of me.    I think my preference for female companions has been because of my interest in associating  with my own people.   I sometimes think that I enjoy the company of women in whom I can see a part of myself reflected.

As I plunge into deep emotional parts of myself through the experience of meditation, I am gradually uncovering some of the female aspects of myself.     This was especially evident in my recent five day meditation retreat and all the expressions of deep emotion since then.

I recognize that I am mostly male identified.    But the female part of me is becoming a more evident part of me.     I like that the separation the male and female parts of me is being diminished.

 

 

I admit that I am curious.    In fact, I kind of like that I am.   I am curious about many things:  my garden and the gardens of friends,  the shape of the edge of water, the feel of my cup of tea.    I am especially curious about people.   I watch them, I absorb them as they sit down on the bus, I smile as I watch them crowd around my pond searching for elusive fish.

It is the kind of curiosity that draws me into the kind of open-hearted awareness I increasingly experience.    This combination of curiosity and awareness is something I commonly experience with people, plants and rocks.    People are at the top of my list.

I sat last evening with a lovely friend in a quiet sidewalk cafe in St. Paul, and I was swept here and there with curiosity as I listened to her.    It became such a pleasant, aware time.    Earlier, I sat in a concert hall and was curious about a piece of music I had never heard before.   My curiosity allowed me to be transformed by a weaving disharmony that carried me through a labyrinth of new musical awareness.    It was thrilling.

I am aware that I routinely invite others into the world of curiosity.    I encourage them to be curious about me as I am about them.    I know that this may have some unfavorable aspects of ego-building in it.    But I am also inviting them into a relationship built on curiosity and awareness, theirs and mine.     I too am curious and want them to be with me.

It is a dance of curiosity and awareness.    It is a dance that always requires a partner, whether it be a person, plant or rock.    We lean toward one another in an exchange of curiosity that easily morphs into awareness.

I have often encouraged my son to be curious, especially when I hear something like, “I don’t care about that.”   I  am myself learning the meaning of my own words.    I don’t think I fully understood the invitation I was offering and promoting.

I encourage others to be curious about many wonderful things:   school, retirement, gardening, friends, the world.   I often remind myself that it is time for me  to be mindful.    How much more exciting, energizing and effective to remind myself to be curious.

 

It is very hard to shed the myth of singularity.   The notion of loving one person and only one person still haunts me in so many ways.    And that notion is absolutely wrong.   It is so contrary to my experience, and yet it still lurks in the periphery of my awareness.

I have been taught in thousands of ways that loving more than one person somehow diminishes the love you have of each.     It just doesn’t work that way.    As I distance myself more and more from this unreliable notion of singularity, I find that the depth of love and affection simply grows as the perimeter of people I love expands.     I have been misled.

While a lot of people rely on the idea of “just one love” in their lives, singularity is just not true.   It actually causes problems such as jealousy, possessiveness, and control.     By its nature, singularity is exclusive, it excludes the rest of humankind.     I lived on the path of singularity for much of my life, and I am realizing how shallow a life that was.    It even had a truncating effect on my love for my singular lover.

As I relax and just allow the openness to happen, I find that a lot of people can find an ardent place in my heart.    It is still true that I focus individually on those I love.    When I am with someone, my attention and felt ardor is focused on them.    I am typically not thinking about someone else, nor am I making comparisons.    The person with me or receiving attention in any way is the only one I am aware of.

So what to do?    Simply indulge, day by day, encounter by encounter.    When I am with someone, the connection I feel is out in the open, shared, felt.   When we are not together, we are connected in multiple other but more subtle ways.

I choose not to express love in measured out or equal dollops.    It simply gushes out in whatever way the situation allows.   I find that the size of outpouring is often related to the ability or willingness of someone to receive love.    The degree of felt, experienced intimacy is a mutually agreed-upon item.     However, I don’t always get this right unless we talk about it.

I probably have never totally bought into the notion of singularity, because there have always been an assortment of men and women I have loved, been in love with.   I have, however, been confused about how to express that love, and mostly remained silent about it.

The silence is slowly being lifted.     I am gradually taking the bold step of saying “I love you” in relatively clear terms.    I’m still mostly indirect in how I say it, but the expressed affection whispers it in soft ways.    There are people I have loved for many years that I hope to be able to tell how close to my heart they are.    Hopefully that will be some day before either of us dies.

The untruth of singularity has kept both my tongue and my heart silent for too long.     Already, I am finding that some people are not at all sure how to handle love clearly or indirectly spoken.     I’m also not so adept in how to speak it.    Nevertheless, I still think that it is a message we all benefit from hearing.   I know what it is like to live a life of muffled messages of love because of the stifling constriction of singularity.    I wish to put that aside.

I wish for all those I love that they be free of the notions of singularity with all its pernicious attributes.     I wish the same for myself.

 

Every morning it is a choice.  I gradually wake from a world of unconscious awareness and I am faced with an immediate option of choosing to embrace a new day or not.   This is no simple choice, but it is mine to make.   Mine to seize or to ignore.    Life is that way for humans.

I have a latent awareness that lets me choose whether or not to experience what being alive means.    It is mine.   It will follow me through the day.    It will tug at my consciousness again and again and again.

This is an unknown day.    It could be a day of immense happiness or incredible sadness.   It is hard to predict, even when I try.   Predicting is something I unfortunately try to do before my feet even touch the floor.    I still have a choice whether I will embrace, experience it in the fullness or silently and passively drift through the day.

Choosing to be mindful is a choice to be engaged, to feel engaged, to be intimately engaged.

I am aware that every step I take can be filled with the joy of movement and contact.     Or it can happen in a totally unaware way without any of the experience and engagement that I am capable of feeling.

When I first wake, I typically have hints of what the day might be like.    I predict what actions I might take, the people I might get together with.   To some degree, I have a moment of awareness and engagement, even though the reality of the day is uncertain.    My only choice, however, is about the now, how much am I open to what is happening right now as I sit on the edge of my bed.

I still don’t know how much that openness will flow and continue through the day.    I  don’t yet know if I can embrace the accidental, unanticipated encounters.    Will I be able to absorb the anticipated disappointments of encounters not acknowledged by others?

My choice is not only to be aware.    A basic awareness comes naturally, and I will not avoid it except by distraction, or going back to “sleep” in a figurative manner.   But I can choose to really feel, beginning with the carpet under my bare feet, the cool hard surface of the bathroom counter, the warm and alive outpouring of the shower.

These are all choices I can make repeatedly and they set patterns of awareness I want to carry with me throughout the day.

So I sit on my cushion  and I open all my pores of awareness, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet.    I allow my body to relax and feel with all its strength.    It is a moment of being aware that this is what it can feel like. This is what the day can be like.   This is a taste of what it is like to feel fully human.

I freely give myself to it as I hope to give myself to every subsequent moment of the day.    It is a time to fully embrace both happiness and sadness, real and anticipated in my imagination.    It is an embrace I feel through my whole sitting self.    I want to learn how to experience everything I do in this manner.

I choose to live this day.    I choose it in its raw fulness.   I choose my aloneness.   I choose my garden.   I choose my friends.   I choose my planned activities.   I choose all the surprises.

I want to experience them all and feel them just as I deeply feel the softness of the carpet, the coldness of the counter, the heat of the shower.     I choose not to miss what this day might present.

 

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

– Rilke

I keep recognizing how difficult it is for me to stay in the now, in the present.    I also think I witness the same difficulty in people I brush up against.   Even when I am focusing on the now in how I interact with others, it doesn’t go well when someone else isn’t doing the same.   No matter which way I go,  I seem to repeatedly run into difficulty.

I seem to be involved in a dance that others want to play.   I often become aware that they are anticipating the future at the expense of the now.    Not staying in the now causes tension and suffering.    It isn’t enough that I am present in the now.   In fact, that seems to cause tension when someone else is not ready to do the same.

Sometimes when I express all that is right now, it is too much for others.    The boldness to be fully present is sometimes too much.    The consequences are destabilizing for them and for me.   When clarity is important to me, it sometimes runs contrary to someone else’s wishes for ambiguity.    So things do not go well.

Robert Bly has told the story of Iron John in which he tells of the boy with the golden hair.    For a long time, the boy with the golden hair keeps his head covered lest the shine be too blinding and too revealing.     Then the time finally comes when he removes his head covering and only then reveals who he really is.    I think there is a lesson here for me.

It is time for me to learn how to be present in the now, but be more reserved in displaying to others just what that means.    Being transparently present is my wish and ideal, but I want to add patience when dealing with others.

It is nice to live in the present, and that is a difficult enough task.    Added to it is the challenge of seeing the now as perhaps extending into what others might regard as the future.

There may be no past or future in my now, but that is seldom the perspective of most of my companions.     However, when we do meet in a common now it is pure joy.

 

 

 

 

 

I get it.  I have lived with a word and concept for many years.    But it only fully revealed itself to me a little over a week ago.    And I expect there is more revealing to come.

Near the end of the retreat, we were all gathered in a huge circle next to the lake, singing songs.   Someone shouted out the first words of a song as an invitation to sing it, “We friends……..”     I was totally unprepared, I didn’t see it coming.   I never joined in, never got out a word of the song because this overwhelming feeling just fountained from deep inside me and the tears started flowing.   I knew instantly that I had opened a deeper level of my heart and the key had the word “friend” written on it.

I can see now that this had been gradually arising as so many people at the retreat opened their hearts in attentive, respectful and affectionate ways.   Each gesture of opening was an invitation for me to do the same.    I was ready when I arrived at the retreat, and the awareness of others gave  me all the encouragement it needed.    Their revelation as friends gave me the encouragement to do the same.

I have become aware that my friends do more than support and care for me. They help me keep my heart open to the world, they tend to my heart each in their own way.    I am realizing that when they present themselves before me they invite me to embrace them and the world with my own heart.

I am aware that my friends are all over the spectrum on this, some able to display the kind of open-hearted encouragement more than others.    Individuals show me their open-heartedness in many ways and to different degrees.   But what I am only now noticing  is that they open my own awareness to an amazing depth.   I think I am ready, but their friend key is an important part of my open feeling.

I began noticing this early at the retreat and it has continued to evolve.    Even when I think of an absent friend, I often feel their presence down to the bottom of my heart.    I am able to remind my heart that my friends are there not just in their assurances and support, but especially in their welcoming and accepting my open heart.    The awareness is so penetrating and I have seen it growing for some time.    But the thunderbolt only struck about a week ago.

The mindful movements that I do every morning have been part of the gradual change, as I extend my heart out to each of the friends who come to mind.   My opening up to their presence at the retreat has taken the awareness to such a depth that at times I can scarcely contain my response to them.    They may not even be present.

They allow me to be present to them, and so I am deeply aware of them.    The bow between two people captures all this and is felt with such deep awareness if they are open to the exchange of awareness.

I now notice that naming ourselves as friends has so much more meaning and is felt at such a deeper level.   The realities may have been there before, but now I am aware and allow myself to feel its depth.

My own recent invitation to become friends with someone has showed me all that simple word and expression can mean, what possibilities it can include.     So much is often hidden, but it can now be revealed with more clarity.

Friend is such a powerful word.

 

Being romantic is a tricky notion.    It can mean a lot of different things.    For me, most but not all of them are negative.

A few days ago, when I heard myself telling someone that I wasn’t offering an invitation to a romantic relationship, I paused.    Just what did I mean, and why is it so easy for me to say that I’m not interested in a romantic relationship.    Actually, I could easily add that I don’t see it in my best interest.

There probably are come common notions or implications when people speak of romance.    For me it isn’t quite that simple.

Romance, I think, speaks of fantasy, something not based on reality.   It relies for its energy on what could be or might be, not what is here and now. A lot of relationships are built on this shifting base, and often end up interesting and exciting  but very shaky and ultimately disappointing.

Romance is dependent more on dreams than on what actually exists between two people.    It is not exclusively that way, of course, but romance depends heavily on fantasy.    If two people have a romantic relationship, it usually has more to do with their hopes of what might happen between them than the reality of what actually exists now.   It might even have some of the power and effect of psychedelics.  Its sustenance relies on a heavy dose of serotonin.

In my culture, romance has so much to do with the desire to possess, and that is why I have such a negative reaction.   When people are in a romantic relationship or want to be, it has more to do with themselves and their security than with one another.    Romance is heavily fueled by wanting the assurance of the other being present, always.  The other is of significance only to the degree that they can be possessed.

The cultural representation of romance is dripping with expressions of ‘one and only’, ‘together forever,’ ‘happy ever after.’  All notions of desired stability and possession rather than open-hearted awareness.

Romance usually has the connotation of a sexual relationship.    If people say they have a romantic relationship, it is customary code to signal that they are being sexual with one another.    Romance often has a goal and expression of sharing sexual pleasures with one another.

The two notions of romance and sexual activity have gotten so aligned with one another that some of their attributes are shared.    ‘One and only’ is often part of romance, just as it is typically an expectation when people share sexual pleasures. The goal has the attribute of permanence or at least lasting a very long time.

Both romance and sharing pleasures are typically expected to get memorialized in marriage.   ‘Happy ever after’ is often the pictured outcome of romance.   People ask, “So when are you getting married?”

I don’t think that a close friendship is any less loving or dynamic than a romantic relationship.  In fact, in some ways it is more wholesome.   With a close friendship, it is more evident that the aim is not to possess, contain or restrict.   Basically, it lacks some of the negative attributes I see in romance.

I do not seek to lock anyone or be locked  in a one-on-one relationship, and so I don’t see a romantic relationship in my future.    I want my close friends to know that their freedom and singularity remain intact.   There is no illusion that we will ever be ‘one.’   Unlike a typical romance, there is no implication that they will ultimately be just like me.   There is little value in our being or becoming alike.

I do not want to possess or be possessed by anyone.   I suppose I am giving up the mythological notion of stability and accepting the uncertainty of relationships.    I am both interested in and intertwined in deep, loving relationships.   Each is unique and none of them has the notion that we are or might ever be a couple.

I do not want to be coupled.   I want a community of companions who are willing to walk closely beside me but have their own independent lives.    We might share many things together, even the pleasures of closeness, but as clearly separate individuals.

The irony of this is that I am actually ‘a romantic’ in a certain sense of the term.    I am simply not one who craves romantic relationships, in spite of their occasional attractiveness.     I want my friendships to be based on reality, what is here and now.

I am aware that even my being a romantic can have kind of a dreamy, ethereal  aspect.   I know that is part of me, a product of my imagination, and I can easily go to that place.    However, I want my friendships to be grounded in what is real and not in floating loosely in what my imagination creates.   I am choosing against romance.

 

 

 

 

 

I will no longer give myself to anything that does not cause me joy.   I choose joy above all else, and that is more than enough.    My heart is open and alert, ready to encircle whatever or whoever presents.    That act of embracing will give me the greatest joy.

I have been taught this simple act of joy by my garden.    My garden asks only that I give it gestures of care and affection, not that I labor and work.   I try in return not to work in my garden, but only do gardening to the extent that it gives me pleasure and joy.    I stop my efforts in my garden when I no longer have the stamina or interest to generate joy.

I am not sure what has changed, my garden or me.    I know that we have come to an understanding and acceptance that mutual pleasure is most important in how we come together.

The same is true of people.    I only allow myself to do what gives me joy.    I try to avoid interaction that is a burden and only seek connections that produce joy.    Hopefully, the joy that results is mutual.

This has become my habit only because of the change in me.    My heart has found a more joy-filled way to welcome engagement.   Even encounter with people, plants and rocks is becoming a moment of open embrace.   I choose the path of joy and it willingly finds me.   I embrace who and what presents, and I am embraced.

It is a relatively simple way to live, even though it has taken me many years to find it.    All I need to do is observe who or what is before me.    When I relax and unfold the portals of my heart, so does the world before me.     Men and women become my brothers and sisters, trees become my welcome companions, rocks become the supporting elements of my stalwart world .   We meet in an explosion of joy.

Even what might seem unpleasant or a burden slowly unfolds to be a new source of joy.    There is some element of humor and surprise in things that would otherwise disturb.    There are times I can find that opening into the presence of the unpleasant and even the absurd becomes a miracle of joy.

Perhaps everything is best experienced as ambiguous, uncertain and unpredictable.     For me, that means that all things, everyone, has an element that can produce joy.    If allowed to find it, my heart will naturally embrace that element of joy.

It has been a difficult but deepening lesson in acceptance.    Once again, “The Other Shore” has been a help in sorting things out.    I think that I both understand better and accept what is possible in connecting with other people.  While I see limitless, formless possibilities,  I also  try to balance that with the realities of now.

I both have a clearer awareness of what is possible in my connections with people, and see better the persistent limitations.    My days of retreat both deepened my general awareness of reality and improved my insight into the kind of connections that are possible.    I am grateful for all the connections I experienced last week, and I am accepting that they are in my past.    They have shown me what is possible, and opened my own heart to those expanded possibilities.

It has been a difficult lesson in non-grasping, of not trying to make last what only happened in a ‘now’ I can no longer experience.   Actually, the ‘now’ that was there a week ago is still part of me if I can simply relax and allow it to be.   I think the dimension of time is sometimes fading for me.

Most of the connections I felt with people were with women, as is my general pattern.   I think most men seem incapable, unskilled in the kind of connections possible between humans.   It is mostly women that seem to be capable of allowing the kind of openness I experience, but only a select group of them as well.

When I think back to last week, the women I remember most were those who were not afraid to show an open heart.    The men I remember who showed the same open-heartedness were few, but there were some.

It is the same in my Sangha and the rest of my life.    The people who express the courage to go deep, to connect with awareness, are typically women.    There are perhaps two men in my life who are willing to meet me on a deep level.    They are far outnumbered by the women willing to do the same.

I lament that the women I know are mostly shackled by circumstances of their lives, including the customs of primary relationships and sexual preferences.    I often notice how cautious both men and women are about taking the plunge.    So I simply go on loving them as best we can.

Now, however, that I know what deep awareness may feel like, I am faced with figuring out how to integrate that experience into my life.    It is one thing to finally accept that the past is gone, but the present is with me.

I know that the deep connection is not something likely to happen routinely, but I am consciously open to it now.    I am also accepting of all the various plateaus that I share with my loving companions.

I know that it has been my mistake to try to capture closeness by choosing to live with someone.    I am not convinced that sharing pleasures is a favorable path, pleasant as that might be.    I am also not about to attempt to stabilize or preserve connections by setting up expectations.    Even while I am aware of what is possible, I am much more accepting of what is present now.

I am so grateful for those who have opened my heart to new levels.    Like Orpheus, I dare not look back but attend only to the now.     This is what I accept, knowing better now what is possible.

I release the past, and in that small gesture, I have become free.    But my heart has been forever changed.