Barry Garden Path

My imagination can make an anticipated future experience appear as if it is happening right now.   And so I respond to it.   I react in delight, anxiety, fear, etc.   It seems so real, as if I am in one of my vivid dreams.

My imagination can as effectively bring up memories of a past event,  modify parts of it, make it appear real.    And so I respond, and my reaction is part of my now.

Which illusion do I choose to live in, the past, future or now?  It seems I can only effectively respond to what is happening right now.    My now can have a lot less imagination involved, and is the only true reality.   The imagined future does not yet exist, the imagined past does not exist.    Only the now.

Is it really better to live in my now than my imagined future or past?  It seems I want most of the time to get beyond what my imagination says.   It is a different experience  which I can truly be part of.

Sometimes I escape from my now by entering someone else’s imagination by watching a movie or reading a story.  While that helps me see my now in different ways, I am still trying to live in someone else’s dream world.

What if my eyes did not respond to photons but instead registered any one of the assortment of other particles penetrating the bedroom wall in front of me?  I would not “see” what appears to be a solid object shaped by the photons bouncing off it.   I would recognize the wall as the illusion it is, formed by the photons reaching my eyes.

Instead, what would I see? Would it be a shape defined by some particle or wave or field of energy?    Would I “see” a shadow of a wall and a shadow of the tree beyond?   What if I could see both, and also infra-red?   What would that vision be like?  Just as I can hear thru and beyond a wall, could I see thru and beyond it as well?

Solids are not solids at all.   They are an illusion of impenetrable matter, “seen” because they can bounce photons.   They appear as solid as a hologram sending photons to my eyes .   Given a choice, I think I would like gama-ray vision.

For  such a long time, I’ve struggled and resisted the word “God”.   The term  has so much baggage that comes along with it, no matter how much I have tried to rid myself of the many associations, such as the old guy with a beard.  “God” is a person, just like us, made in our image.  What could be an alternate word for “God”.   For me, it is important because I experience and sense that there is more than our five senses casually tell us.  The word “God” trivializes that reality.

I would like to use the word “Force” but that has too much association with the movie.   “Spark” doesn’t quite catch the dynamic.   I don’t like “The Divine” for the same reasons I reject “God.”

I like “Humming.”   The Humming is in all reality, animates and enlivens all things.   The Humming is perceivable with my intuition, the Humming can be felt, seen, heard with an open heart.   The Humming is not a wave, field or particle but is maybe all three.   The “Humming” suggests music, the beautiful harmony in all things.  The Humming is beyond intelligence, not a person like us, yet we can know its presence.

“I’m sure” is a very self-limiting expression.   It usually means I am certain about something, and I have no doubt about it.   Certainty means that I have put aside the fundamental ambiguity of reality, the principles of quantum physics, the uncertainty principle that permeates everything real.  Most important, it means I have closed my mind.

Awareness emerges out of the gateway of doubt, not out of the rigid artifice of certainty.   Doubt is a gateway to discovery and understanding.  It opens my mind and heart to realities that  exist beyond my avowed knowledge.   Far from being a creature “plagued by doubt”, I embrace my friend Doubt and am grateful for her blessing.

Celibacy has been an issue for me, on many levels, for a very long time.   As I embrace and look forward to a new life as a non-coupled person, I see myself as  taking on a new celibacy life-style but with a different focus.

For me, and for much of western civilization, celibacy has meant “no sex” front and center.   I think that the core reason for celibacy, however, has been the importance of not being coupled with someone.   Not being coupled with someone meant that the celibate person was more free to pursue a spiritual path or provide a spiritual service to the community.

The issue of no sex was more of a consequence than a cause of celibacy.   If someone is not in a coupled relationship, the culture and its norms meant no sex…….  as they say, “no sex outside of marriage”.   St. Augustine had a major hand in this cultural drift.   It reflects a significant influence of Christianity on our thinking.

I see for me that being part of a couple has had some practical benefits.   It has been good for raising children, it has provided a structure for setting up a home and resources, and it has sometimes offered the security of a place of intimacy.   Coupling has also been a distraction and a disruption to my effort of being the kind of person I intend to be.    In fact, I don’t think I am a good partner in a couple.   Not good for me, not good for my partner.

So I am deciding not to be coupled.   That doesn’t mean no relationships, no intimacy, no sex.  In fact my new-styled form of celibacy, no-couple celibacy, may make me a better person to be intimate with.   I certainly expect to be a more aware, mindful and loving person.

I’ve been involved in various ways with a group of people who now see themselves as the Spirit of St. Stephens etc.   They see themselves as a Catholic community, but I try to ignore that.

I have a deep affection for this community.  I had a hand in giving shape to some of their practices, practices that came from my own heart and still do.   I love the people, they are close to my heart, and I like to be in their presence.

It is painful for me, now, to be with them because they have become an aging couple who no longer create a newness in their relationship. They are a young couple who know how to be together and are committed always to be that way, to preserve what they have.   Without deepening, searching, and exploring, the heart to the community has lost its vigor.

Sometimes, I think they have found something they dearly love, and have put it in a safe place.     However, what they found is a living thing, and it must grow, change and become new.    I haven’t seen that happening much.  The Spirit has been put in a gilded cage.

I have stopped being with them and will stay that way, unless I see that they want to break out of the “same tried and true.”    Maybe let the Spirit fly again.  I might be able to help.

I’ve focused on mindfulness as though it were a thing of the mind, and it is nothing like that at all.   It really is an affair of the heart.

The mind has a role, and that is to get out of the way as fast as possible.   Clear thinking means clear out all thoughts.   Open-mindedfulness might be closer to what is needed.   Get rid of all the mental constructs so that the senses / perception can take over, really “see” what is there.   The seeing is not just with open eyes, though that can sometime help.   Instead, I try to see with an open heart.

The heart is the true organ of mindfulness, of deep perception.  Acting mindfully is not a way of thinking but a way of loving, of yielding to love.

 

For me, my body is a gateway to mindfulness.  Before each private meditation sitting, I spend time practicing Tai Chi Chih.   This practice involves body movement and the stirring of sensory energy throughout my body, but especially my hands.   This makes me very body-aware, which reminds me acutely where I am in space and time, and I become mindfully present.

I am given this experience by most things that focus on my hands, whether it is moving air,  or a position of my hands.  Touching myself,  someone else or some solid object, can have the same effect of bringing me present in a mindful manner, and with that, a glowing sensation of well-being and presence.   I touch people and dogs and flowers whenever possible and appropriate.

While this is especially true for my hands, it can be stirred by other parts of my body, and it quickly radiates to the rest of me.   Since I began wearing Crocs, which have a ridged inner-sole, I am much more of aware of the bottoms of my feet, an assist for walking-meditation.   I now understand better why I so enjoy skinny-dipping in the lake.   The sensory experience of putting food in my mouth permeates my whole self.

I am aware that my eyes have a large impact on my being present, but I am still trying to understand this.   Sometimes it feels as though my body reaches out and touches something that gets my attention, especially if it is beautiful.   Distance seems to be no limitation, no separation .   The object and I become present in the same space.    This is especially true when I stare into the night sky.  Still, if I can touch, that is what I do.

I love and use my body as I never have before.

 

I have always seen myself as a patient person.   I am finding that I can be impatient as well.   Sometimes, even recklessly impetuous.  Perhaps it is something you get to discover when you get older.   Perhaps I am feeling more secure in my footing, unlike my struggle with bodily balance.    All this time, I thought impatience was a trait of youth.

I was a much more cautious younger me.     Maybe that was just last year, maybe last week?    I experience the caution in others, and I sometime regret my impatience.   However, I realize that it is a habit I have somewhere, sometime, somehow begun to shed.   I love the bold rush that accompanies impulsivity, but it also still unsettles me.  Walking on the edge still disturbs me.    A little.   Maybe, however, I am learning where my feet can find their home, so I can run up to the edge and back again.     Their home is somewhat ambiguous but warm.  And I think I know where it is.

Some days, I feel like a drunk trying to walk the white line.   I get myself in a mindful groove, then I wander, then I find it again, then I totally lose it, then I’m back again.   So it goes.    Forming a habit of mindfulness in the center of my life is hard.