Barry Garden Path

I feel so fortunate to be finding books that address this uneasy feeling I have long had about the restrictions placed on me by religion and society.   It has been an imaginary place that I have willingly chosen to live in much of my life, but I have had a vague sense that things are not quite right.   Things seemed at least distorted, if not outright misleading.    I have followed the rules of religion and society and neither has been a reflection of reality or particularly beneficial to someone like me who easily bent to their influence.

I’m old, and at last I am having improved vision.   My cataracts are gone, and my understanding of reality is sharper.  Both are unconnected benefits of my old age.

I have many daily opportunities to think about what it means for me to get old.   In spite of everything my culture tells me, getting old is really not so bad.   In fact, I am finding it exciting and full of opportunity.   I am walking through many open doors, and not shutting down or being shut down as much as my culture led me to expect.

Even Thay seems to regard growing “old” as something we cannot escape.   Not exactly a positive endorsement of something to look forward to.

For me, growing old has meant letting go of things.    I have had to let go of many physical expectations and skills, such as running up and down stairs.    My physical strength is clearly not what it once was, and there are those unwelcome pains that come with so many movements.

These body changes have actually presented me with opportunities.    They actually make me more bodily-aware.   I am much more attentive to how I move and where all the parts of my body are.  I now exercise in a much more intentional manner, and some parts of me, such as my back, are not only stronger but seem happier.    I debate with myself whether my moving slowly is because I can’t move quicker or if it is simply my approach to walking meditation.    I do get much more out of my walk into Target than I did ten years ago.

I am aware that not all the positive qualities I am finding in getting old are experienced automatically or by every person my age.   But getting old has presented me with opportunities and open doors I never expected.

I have found a new person inside of me, and the world I live in is much more enchanting, more magical, more mystical, more difficult to understand.     So much of what I previously understood, is now an inviting mystery waiting to be explored.

The old me now realizes that no rules apply to me unless I decide to embrace them. It is my choice, no one else’s, and especially not my culture’s.   For so many years, I have seen the world through the bars of my culture, and they have set the norms on how I should act.   I now know that my culture’s view and messages have often been misleading and often dead wrong.   Yet they have penetrated and strangled my heart.    No more.

This is my time for me to question and unlearn so much of what the culture has taught me.

I am stepping out of the myth of brain atrophy, and taking heart with the good news from neuroscience about brain plasticity.    I’ve inserted myself among young minds and gone back to college.  I read and write more than I ever have.   I’m beginning to question the reality of memory loss;  I still joke about it, but I’m not sure it is true.   I actually remember more of those things I’m interested in, such as flowers.

I have developed an intolerance with social distance, and now reach out for a new intimacy with most people I meet.  Less handshakes, more hugs.   I enjoy the gradual wearing down of boundaries.   Much of my elite ego has been overthrown.   Maybe winter is the best time to trim the ego.

I have uncovered a radiant inner life.   There is an energy I easily tap into. I have become a little intoxicated with life.   I had no idea what good stuff was hidden in the basement.

I think this vitality in old age is due to my experience of the magic and wisdom of mindfulness.    It seems such a simple thing, all I had to do was relax and grow in my ability to quiet my mind.    Little by little, I have discovered  my body and my mind, and the two have become one.   It is a new world.

I am learning to turn pain, anxiety and suffering into compost, and then nourish the blooming of flowers.

It turns out that you can teach old dogs new tricks.

 

Dualism is such a part of my thinking I sometimes wonder if I will ever escape its clutches.   I have been well-taught, by school and culture alike.  There is the body, and there is the mind.   One inhabits the other, descends on it, animates it.   The two exist in support of one another, but remain distinct.   This has misdirected me into an illusion of the world.

I struggle to turn this illusion and false wisdom around.    I am convinced that there is one entity.    Mind and body are but two aspects of the same, one me.   I have thought about it so much, and I have experienced it in small ways.    Still I must remind myself of the oneness,  I must allow myself to relax and settle into the one and same reality.     Matter and mind sometimes merge.   The reality exists only in the relationship.   I am, therefore I think.

Getting older has been an amazing adventure as I have, gratefully, begun to discover my true essence.   There are times that my very existence comes into passing focus.   The unfolding of this mystery has been very much a body activity.    As I have become more aware of the energy of my body, I have surprisingly become more aware of my presence.    I have learned to quiet my mind activity and be attentive to the energy of my body.   The new world has unfolded.

Much of this has arisen because of my Tai Chi Chih practice.   The body energy has been allowed to manifest.   In a strange contradiction, the pain of my aging limbs has made me more aware of what they are.   My aging body has forced me to acknowledge and accept who and what I am.   Acceptance of the pain has opened doorways to being aware of the energy within me.   Fighting the pain, resenting it only makes it dark and more powerful.

Resistance is futile.    Acceptance is success.

My legs and hands are really me, and I know that by feeling the throbbing energy within them.   My sense of touch is alive in a new way, and opens an avenue of awareness to whatever I touch or see that I can touch.   I think that the energy flows in both directions, but this is something I want to explore more.

For now I simply am glad to have a deeper awareness of who I am, where my body is, what is around me, and what I am part of.   I know this is so because the energy tells me so.

I wonder why more of us aren’t running down the street in terror over what is happening.   There are enough terrifying things going on that it is amazing that more of us have not gone berserk.

I look out my window and up at the sky.   All seems calm and peaceful, but I know that there are climate changes in motion that will dramatically change the face of the earth and our established way of life.    Not since agriculture became essential to our species has there been much of a change in the climate we have learned to rely on.     Things have been very stable, with a few cold blips along the way.    As disruptive as those cold blips were, they were small compared for what will soon be upon us.

We have become so numerous and so well-fed because we have been able to produce an abundance of food.    There are still problems of distribution, but the food is there and available.   With the change in climate, this reliable system is about to change.   Without food, it will be difficult for the immense population of humans to survive.

Social disruption will come with climate change.    To make things more complicated, we are already in the midst of social turmoil.    The leadership of past great civilizations and the decisions they made brought about the ruin and dissolution of those huge communities.    Rome, the Maya, the Aztec all experienced dissolution of their societies.   It was a ruin caused by their own unchanging insistence on a way of life no longer sustainable.

In the US, we are experiencing a stubborn reliance on points of view that are out of sync with reality.   Over consumption is perhaps the greatest threat, accompanied by the resistance against learning from past mistakes of our species.

I am uncertain just when it will arrive, but I expect we will experience chaos and collapse in my lifetime.   However, you probably won’t see me running down the street in terror.

I have come to see sexuality as a way we naturally relate to one another and create community.   It need not be a narrow and exclusive way of relating to one another, and I also think individuals can reasonably choose to isolate themselves in an exclusive sexual relationship.    For most people, in fact, deciding on an exclusive sexual relationship with one individual is an integral part of their decision to couple, most often to raise children.

I use to think that sexuality was one way of waking up, becoming more aware of another individual.   The thrill of sharing pleasures is, I believe, a small taste of the thrill of meditation and the deep awareness that comes with total surrender to “what is”.

I still think this is true, but the waking up factor is only one side of the coin.   Sexual awareness is something that very naturally comes along with an open awareness of someone, even ourselves.   It is part of seeing someone as they really are.   To be aware of someone as a sexual individual is to see them as they actually are.  A decision whether to relate to them in a sexual way begins with and depends on this awareness.

The degree of my growing awareness depends on my ability to be aware.

Desire arises in many ways and many forms.   I get to decide how to make good use of the energy of desire.    It is my choice whether to be controlled by desire or allow it to carry me into a deeper awareness.

Unfortunately, I think humans have trivialized and abused their sexuality.  Some humans seem to expect nothing at all of sexuality except perhaps a fleeting stimulant  Or they expect so much out of their sexuality that they dole it out in stingy amounts.  So much of my culture is infected by one or both of these notions.

Rather than create a path of awareness, sexuality has often been a tool of dominance and power.   Rape is an instance of extreme dominance and power.    Marriage has in most traditions become  a structure of ownership, one person over the other.    Most  forms of marriage put the male as the owner, the female as the one possessed.    It is a social contract based on ownership, rights, privileges, guarantees, etc.

For me, touch is an important way of relating to people I get to know.   If I don’t feel I am being intrusive, I even touch strangers.   It is natural for me, it is a way of becoming more aware, it is a way of relating, it is a way of affirming one anothers presence.   I think that sexuality can be described the same way.

My problem is that I don’t think many other humans think the same way. So far, I think I am a community of one.

 

 

I have been having such a good time exploring how to step out of time.   The more I explore, the more it becomes a real part of me.

This morning I spent ten glorious minutes in a world with no time.   Everything was happening right now, and I was part of it.    I had this deep feeling of what it is to be in the middle of the Big Bang as it happened all around me.   The years of earth development telescoped into an instant.   Everything came together in a breath.

The future did not have a time assigned to it any more than the past.   I got to sit in the middle of an expanded sense that everything is happening right now.

I love stepping out of time and being attentive to everything that is happening right now.   Its is a wide and deep horizon and it is a thrill to be there.

A couple days ago I got to put my fingers against a pillar of natural stone sitting in front of a friends home.   All time was erased and I was there, touching a stone-without-time.   It was all there, the fire, the molten rock, the heat, the cold surface of the stone that always is.    The heaving, the flowing, the sitting still, the constant movement  ……. it was all there, captured in a simple touch.

Everything is in constant change.   While time is the measure I use to keep track of change, the increments are something people have invented.   There is no way to freeze the moment, and “now” is all there is.

All things are in motion, the mountain, the wood of my house, the growing plants.   The land on which I stand is moving.   My bed, out of which I rose  this morning, is in a different place from where it was yesterday morning.    Everything that exists is real because it is in relationship with something else, and that relationship constantly changes.

Nothing is static.   There is no permanence.

So much of my days are devoted to being connected.    It is a joy to be connected to my plants, to my body, to people I see.    This has been such a deep desire in me that it has gotten out of balance from time to time.    Now I know better how to be connected, deeply aware of things just as they are, not as I want or imagine them to be.

It is important for me not to make my experience different from what happens.   I want to accept what is, not resist it, welcome it, be attentive to what is being felt.   I want neither to be controlled nor attempt to control whatever I experience.

Reality is in being connected.   Relationship is reality.

 

I have such an established pattern of rushing to the next moment.   I am looking ahead, where I am going, what I am going to do next, what I intend to get from the other side of the room.   I learned a long time ago that when I am using my bandsaw to cut wood, it is always better if I focus about a quarter of an inch ahead of where the blade is cutting.   It is much easier to cut on the line if I am looking a little bit ahead.

My life is not like that.   I find I am better if I pay attention to what I am doing right now, and only think about the future as needed.   This is where I live.   I miss something if I rush into the next moment or linger in some memory of the past.  My mind loves to plan and to remember.   The rest of me seems to thrive best when I am paying attention to the moment.

For me that doesn’t mean paying attention to something happening outside of me.   My greatest delight is when I am absorbed in watching myself pay attention.   If the bell is ringing, I hear it.    But I am absorbed in the act of hearing, not so much in the ringing bell.   For me it is almost a paradox that when I am attentive to the act of hearing, I become most intense in my awareness of the bell.

It becomes a ringing bell in a most intimate way.  I don’t particularly feel alert or attentive.   I am quite relaxed, and I enjoy the bell as it rings.   It takes on a reality and my curiosity rises.

Some day I hope to understand this.

I continue to be mystified by my senses, how they can both distract from awareness and heighten awareness.    The taste of a luscious peach can draw me into intense awareness.   The anticipated taste of any food can pull me into compulsive sensory behavior.

In some ways, I’m not surprised that humans have been suspicious of the senses and have become wary of sensual pleasure of any kind.   This caution is a waste and missed opportunity .

When I choose, my senses can be a welcoming gateway into awareness and delight.   I am getting better in how I choose that path.