Barry Garden Path

I have a friend Jack who brings me both joy and sadness.   I truly love Jack, and I feel his love for me, though that is a word he would never use.  We can laugh together and reminisce about the experiences we have shared.   He is transparent enough with me that I an truly a witness to him and his life.   He listens well to me and probes into my life in a way that affirms my presence and his interest in me.

I am sometimes sad when I talk with Jack because he seems to have so little hope.  He seems to be open to so little of the future and is pained with the uncertainty.    His world sounds like a threatening disturbance, not a place of curiosity and interest.   He seems to be the source of so much of the pain he is trying to avoid.

I want him to be able to take delight in what he does, rather than see it as a burden, something he has to do.   I wish he could take over his life and choose what he does .   Sometimes it seems that he is the pawn of his life and those around him. He has a choice in so many things, yet he seems to be stuck in a mode of damage control.

I want so many things for Jack, but especially for him to experience delight and joy.    I want him to feel the thrill of looking out the window and seeing the glow of blue lights on a Fir tree.    I want him to feel the rush of excitement on the adventure he is about to take.    I want him to look forward to the new day when he gets up in the morning.   In short, I want to share with him the joys of being alive.

To my dearest friends, “I want to unfold in your sight.”   I want to be clear, I want there to be no doubt about me.   There should be no hidden corners.   I will be as transparent to you as I am to myself.   I think there is no reason to be otherwise, and there is all the incentive to unfold before you.

Where I am closed, I am false.   I am less real than I can be, and that is neither good for you or for me.  I have the ability to be an illusory figure, but that is not what I want.  I have been taught and warned to be a calculating illusionist.   That is not a role I chose to play.    I want to be a reality you can rely on and not a wispy apparition rising from your imagination or mine.

All this I expect of myself and want from you.

I am in awe of my experience of touch.   It is the closest thing to being in the same space with a person, a tree, the floor.   There is something enlivening that transpires when I touch anything mindfully.   It gives me pleasure, it gives me delight.

That point of contact is where I can seem to put my whole essence, my entire being.    It is the focus of my attention and the life force in me.   I like to think that whatever I touch has the same experience.    It knows me in a way that I experience it.    Our essences pass back and forth between us.

This is the experience I have when I put my palm against the large maple in my backyard.    I know it in a way that is so much more real than what I know though my other senses.    It communicates its presence, its essence in a way that I would otherwise miss.

This is equally true when I touch with another human person.  Sometimes it is touch I do not want and it is terribly unpleasant.    That was the experience I had of being pinioned in an airplane seat, pressed against the massive arm of a corpulent man who flowed from his seat into mine.

Mostly, however, touch is an experience of pleasure and delight.   It is a communication I welcome and treasure.   It is a hand on my shoulder as my Son thanks me for something I did for him.    It is the warmth of a hug with a friend I am happy to have in my life.    It is the passing touch in a lively conversation that deepens the communication.

Touch can be so nourishing.    I share who I am, and I partake.

I am only beginning to know what it feels like to let go, and I am grateful that the experience is creeping invitedly into the hours of my life.   I know what it feels like because I am slowly becoming accustomed to meditating, even for brief periods of time.    As my mind becomes emptied, my whole body becomes charged with a sensory awareness independent of a specific stimulus.    It is the feeling of floating in salt water.   I can feel my muscles relax, one by one, as I let go of my body.

I feel a vibrant energy, a life force throughout, an all embracing warmth, a glow.   I feel un-attached.   I am all-accepting.  I have let go.

This is the feeling I want to have when facing death. This is the letting go I want to bring to encounters that threaten me with inner turmoil.   This is what I experience as awareness.   This is the openness and total acceptance that is my chosen path to loving someone.  I am beginning to think it is part of all of these, and I have much to learn about each.

It is the deep feeling of letting go that I hope allows me to open my heart to the young man with drooping pants shuffling past me down Hennepin Avenue.   It is the same letting go I want to give to my Son when he sets out on a path that only he can choose.   It is the letting go I want to bring with me when I walk with a special person in my garden.

I never want to be so old that I no longer continue to unfold.    I am in wonder at all the new possibilities that continue to present themselves.   Unforeseen and unpredicted.   There are even new physical improvements that I never dreamed possible.

Mostly I am awed by the possibilities of my inner space.   As I discover new insights and mental skills, I can only wonder at what might lie ahead.   I am discovering that I have many more human skills within me that I never knew about before.   I am slowly learning to use my mind in new ways and manage myself in a strange new way.

I am concluding that humans have great adaptability built into their genetic code, but we only make use of a small part.   There is so much there, but we limit ourselves by so many pre-conceived notions about what the world is about.  We constantly miss the opportunity of discovery.

For so long I have tried to uncover the meaning and identify the pattern of things, and what I missed is the fundamental randomness and ambiguity of everything.    There is no certain pattern and reality exists only in my encounter.   There is no static world, all is evolving.   Equally important, my awareness is evolving too.

Even this life-form we call human has constantly changed for 3.5 billion years, becoming something “not quite the same” with each passing moment.   I am the result of a roll of the genetic dice.   I am a little different in my make-up, my inner pattern from my ancestors who lived a hundred years ago.  Even my consciousness is evolved.   I can unfold possibilities not available to them.

The randomness of this continuous change is exciting.    The stream of existence is constantly not the same and is unpredictable.    I am sad that religion has misled me into thinking that I would find certainty if only I believed.  I grasped for certainty when I needed to let go of certainty.  All the while, I needed to embrace the uncertainty, randomness and ambiguity of all things.

So this new day presents itself to me.   It is another opportunity to delve deeper, to unfold another layer, to discover another possibility.

In the unfolding of this new day,

In the waking eyes of morning.

I commit that I will not dishonor my heart with hatred.

I humbly offer myself as a Guardian of Nature,

A Healer of Misery,

A Messenger of Wonder,

An Architect of Peace, and

A Fountain of Loving Kindness.

All summer long, I stood under the ancient Maple in my yard and looked up into the branches.   I loved being under all the leaves waving above me and hanging down from the drooping branches.   An umbrella of dark green was all I saw and I felt so embraced by the canopy above me.   It was a cool and comforting place.   I was enveloped by the protective dome.

Now the leaves are gone, and when I stand under the branches, I see the world beyond.   There are bright silver stars at night and I see the deep blue of the day sky.   My tree is still there, but now I know that there is more to see while standing under it.

For nearly all my life, I have enjoyed the comfort and thrill of the illusioned world around me.    My eyes never saw beyond the color and shape, my touch never penetrated beyond the hard and warm surfaces.  I never knew that beyond the curtain of appearances was a whole additional reality.   My senses were caught up in an illusion and only gave me a vague impression of what is really there.

The wonderful world of unseen dimensions, hidden activity, and invisible realities is beginning to be revealed.    Some of the reveal is taught by those who explain the unfolding realities of modern physics.   Some is realized by my shedding the dominating thoughts of my mind.   Some comes from opening my senses in a new way to the deeper world around me.

I have loved my summer tree.   And now I know there is more.

I have been trying to sort out just what I intend my relationships to be like.   It is a question that applies to my dearest, most intimate companions and to casual acquaintances.   I suppose, in a strange way, it also applies to those whose behavior I despise.

This issue is especially keen in my mind as I absorb the meaning of what it means for me to be alone.   I am discovering myself in ways I never have before.    That is both exciting and a little destabilizing.    As I see myself standing alone, what does that mean about my relationship with anyone standing close to me.   How can I be part of one another’s presence without losing touch with my own presence, a problem I have occasionally had.

I think what I most have to give to my companions and want from them is witness.   This is a deep, loving acknowledgement of who they are.   To my closest and most intimate companions, I offer a witness that includes a loving acknowledgement of their presence.   I intend to give unflinching acceptance, first of all to those closest to me.

I intend to listen to their stories, and offer to tell mine.     I will assist and support them.   I will encourage them in their pursuits.   It is what I have to offer as a friend and companion.    It is what I ask of those I invite into the intimacies of my life.

I  think this applies to the whole spectrum of companions, from my most intimate lover all the way to the bigots and racists whose behavior I despise.     It is something I intend to do unconditionally but in different degrees.   I hope to judge wisely how and when to be a witness and when to seek it.

Being an observer can mean a couple of things for me.    Some ways of being an observer I am trying to cultivate.   There are others I am trying to  distance myself from.

Eckhart Tolle made me aware of the value of becoming a “watcher.”   It was an important element and tool that I began to use to become more aware, more present.    I especially became a watcher of what was happening in me.    This included my sensations, my feelings, my thoughts.   Almost like stepping back and seeing me and parts of me in a mirror.   Strangely, by stepping back, being less caught up in my thoughts and feelings,  I actually became more aware of them.   In some ways I became more of a disengaged watcher.

This, of course, became an important element of my meditation practice.   Sometimes I am almost stepping outside myself and observing what I am doing or feeling or thinking.   The effect has been to intensify the feelings, the sensations, the experience of being present.

And there lies the paradox for me.    By being more of an observer, I can be more engaged in what I am observing.    This is true of my own body, everything  and everyone around me.   As a witness, I  become more connected to the observed.

I don’t often like to become a “passive” observer of someone else’s imagination.    Entertainment put on a screen is that for me.    There are times for that kind of engagement, connection with someone’s imagination.  There are times to be a spectator.    I like to keep that at a minimum.

Paradoxical as it is, I do like and take delight in being an observer of myself and those around me.   Then I am able, with abandon,  to fall head over heels into that reality.