Awakening - Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

April 16 - One Drop of Truth at a Time

~It is the fullness of our attention to whatever is near that has birds fly out of God's mouth.~

The months relax and the ice enclosing a bent-over branch thaws, and the snow drops and the branch springs back up after its deathlike sleep. The tree coming into spring teaches us how to let go into renewal. For this is how the freeze around a broken heart thaws. In another part of the world, small brilliant fish mouth pebbles along the ocean sand, sucking off bits of food and spitting back the rest. This is how they comb the bottom, and these small limbless creatures teach us how to suffer and move on, how to sift through what is nourishing and how to give back the rest. And high in the mountains, away from the eyes of others, a small cave with its singular drip collects clear water that is the heartbeat of the mountain. So the center of the Earth itself shows us how to be: one drop of clearness at a time, collecting in the moist center that keeps the soul alive.

These are just a few examples of an essential relatedness that exists between all things. In practice, if we look closely with our whole being at anything - plants, trees, the human heart, emptiness, fish, even the worn gears of a watch - the same core of deep instruction will rise before us in a language that waits beneath words. The world, it seems, both natural and constructed, is an endless net of particular lessons, each made of the same compelling thread that is always hiding in the open, simply waiting for our complete attention to reveal itself. By pulling at these threads, I have discovered, again and again, the deep and common way of things that is embedded in everything.

So when confusion or pain seems to tighten what is possible, when sadness or frustration shrinks your sense of well-being, when worry or fear agitates the peace right out of you, try lending your attention to the nearest thing. Try watching how the dust lifts and resettles when you blow on it. Watch how the pawprints of your neighbor's retriever, if stared at long enough, turn into unexpected symbols. Watch how the one shell your brought back three years ago from the sea reveals itself, at last, as a face that is telling you how to continue. Give your full attention over to the nearest patch of life - to how an apple peels and juices - and after a while each thing attended will reveal yet another way back to the center.

 

This entry is the way I see the world and interact with it.

I don't know about the quote though, birds out of God's mouth ?

 

I didn't get that part either June...

 

I like this one but I really love the title....One Drop of Truth at a Time.

And yeah....I'm not getting the whole birds thing either.

 

April 17 - A Wisdom Moment of Trust

~If you can't cross over alive, how can you cross when you're dead?~ - Kabir

The need to step into what we fear and, in so doing, disperse its hold on us is powerfully brought to life by a moment in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. After searching everywhere within reason and memory for the Holy Grail, Jones stands on an enormous precipice, a deep chasm before him, the Grail waiting on the other side. His father, wounded and depending on the Grail to heal, cries out possible interpretations of the clues Jones has been given to reach the Grail.

After what seems a lifetime of inner debate and escalating fear, he dares, against everything he knows, to step into the void above the chasm, and as he does, an enormous stone foundation appears beneath his feet, a bridge that was there all along.

This is a moment of risk and trust, a wisdom moment that repeats itself in our lives in both small and large ways. Over and over, the cup we need to drink from, the ancient ever-healing cup of wholeness waits beyond some deep chasm we are afraid to cross.

Often we are driven to the edge by the cries and clues of elders and loved ones, only to find that nothing makes sense, that there seems nowhere to go. And then the atom of risk begins to replay itself in those brought to the edge.

Then, when all known ways of seeing have failed, we sometimes dare to step into the void. Whether that void is a chasm of purpose or self-esteem or a ravine in relationship or a canyon of addiction, this crazy-wisdom step - that begins with risk and lands in trust - reveals a foundaton that was there all along, but which is only made visible by our risk to think and see in new ways and our trust to step into what we fear.

 

This has me sitting here thinking of all the things I've been afraid to step into for fear of what may or may not happen.

I need to sit with this one a little longer and really let it sink in.

 

It's definitely a sink in and think it over entry.

 

April 18 - The Purpose of full Attention

~This is the ongoing purpose of full attention: to find a thousand ways to be pierced into wholeness.~

A most profound and helpful learning came to me when struggling with the pain of having a rib removed. For weeks I felt a corset of pain girdling each breath. But watching the winter water of a stream begin to thaw and flow, over and over, I finally saw that to make it through the pain, I had to be more like water and less like ice.

For when trees fell into the ice, the river shattered. But when large limbs fell into the flowing water, the river embraced the weight and flowed around it. The trees and winter water were teaching me that the pain was more pointed and hurtful when I was tense and solid as ice. Then, each breath was shattering. But when I could thaw the fear and tenseness I carried, the pain was more absorbed, and I could, like the thawing stream, move on - not pain-free, but no longer shattered.

It is this way with much of nature. By opening fully to our own experience, we can feel and see the resilience of life around us. Feeling our woundedness, we can learn from the hollowed stump how to root smaller greens. Feeling our sadness, we can learn from the leaves too tired to be blown along how to surrender. Feeling our tenderness, we can learn from the caterpillar how to endure the tremble that precedes the appearance of wings. But it is only by showing up, by denying nothing, that other living things reveal to us the secrets of how they manage to live. In deep counterpoint to the old saying, "An eye for an eys," there is a deeper law that guides us to wholeness: a truth of being for a truth of being. So the purpose of full attention is to invite through personal surrender the particular example of life force in whatever is around us to show itself: a truth of being for a truth of being.

Yes, when in pain, be like flowing water. When suffering near the bottom, feed off what you can, like the brilliant ocean fish, and spit back the rest. When feeling burdened, watch small birds to see how they begin to fly. When feeling finished, watch newborn animals open their wet little eyes and imitate their innocence. Once giving full attention, you will come back - one drop at a time - into the tide of the living.

 

This just makes me think about how wonderful nature truly is and how much we can learn merely by observing it.

Beautiful Caroline. Really beautiful. :-*

 

a nice meditation

 

April 19 - Outwaiting Clouds

~The bud in half-bloom outwaits the cloud.~

Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart, and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside. Yes, just because I can't make it to the light today doesn't mean that the light has vanished. In truth, the heart, like the Earth, is continually blanketed by ever-changing atmospheres that come and go between who we are and how we live our days.

So faith, it seems, can be defined as the effort to believe in light when we're covered by clouds, and though it feels like the sun will never come again, the truth is it has never stopped burning its light. In fact, its heat and warmth is burning steadily, right now, on the far side of whatever cloud we are under.

If we could only suspend our judgement when clouded in the heart. For many skepticisms are born from conclusions drawn while unable to see, as if any kind of understanding will prevent the clouds from coming or going, again and again.

But no cloud lasts forever. The Earth and all that grows from it knows this well. So does the heart and everything that grows from it, in spite of all our very understandable pains.

 

Wow... found this one to be really moving especially since I was under that cloud last week but had the faith that I would come through it and I did.

 

Oh gosh Caroline...that was me today. I felt like I had a huge cloud hanging over me most of the day but then I started feeling better and more hopeful as the day went on.

I'm glad you were able to get through your cloudiness sweetie. :-*

 

Thanks Lulu sweetie... glad you are feeling better too. :-*

I loved this part [~The bud in half-bloom outwaits the cloud.~
The buds in my garden are outwaiting the clouds and waiting for the sun.

 

I liked that part too Caroline. I have a few buds on my rose bushes that are just waiting to bloom.

 

April 20 - Birds and Ornithologists

~Birds don't need ornithologists to fly.~

We spend so much time wanting to be seen and named: as intelligent or good or handsome or pretty or successful or popular or as nobody's fool. Yet the spirit doesn't know it's being spiritual anymore than water rushing knows it's a stream, and the heart doesn't know it's expanding with compassion anymore than a hawk spreading its wings knows it's being a hawk. Nor does someone acting out of live often realize they are being kind.

From an early age, we are taught that to live fully is to be accepted, and to be accepted, we need to be seen. So we base success and even love on the effort to be seen, on how much we stand out.

However, the often painful truth we discover along the way is that to survive in an inner way that matters - that keeps us connected to all that has ever lived and is living - we sorely need to know how to be accepting.

By this I don't mean being passive. By this I mean inhabiting our capacity to see and affirm the common pulse of life we find in others, no matter how different they may seem from us.

When we do this, we no longer need to be different to be valued and no longer need to be accepted to know love. In short, we no longer need an audience to fly. We simply have to extend our sincerity to each abiding day and we will be in accord with all that is valuable.

Like flowers waiting on rain, our hearts wait on love. As much as we want to be seen and known, it is the giving of attention that keeps us awake. For giving attention opens us to love. And accepting that deep things wait like seed between us is believing in the world. So wake me by accepting me, and the world will sprout us up like grass.

 

Another really good one Caroline. I like the line, "Like flowers waiting on rain, our hearts wait for love." Loving and accepting others for who they are is what I really try to strive for in my life. It's not always easy but I do the very best I can.

 

The passage reminded me of the journey with MM waiting for validation from doctors and others, waiting for labels that don't mean anything but which we think will bring the cure. When we learn to listen to our bodies and ourselves then we take the first step.

 

April 21 - The Gift of Surprise

~Another name for God is surprise.~ - Brother David Steindl-Rast

While rushing to complete your dearest plans that you tell no one, you can bump into another and groceries will fly, and while picking up the ketchup, you might fall in love. Or in your second year of college, while studying what Mommy and Daddy want you to be, you can accidentally open a book on Albert Schweitzer and discover that you feel compelled to go to Africa. Or, understanding geometry, you might decide to become a gardener, finding endless joy in creating landscapes. Or the death of your grandmother might open a side of you that is starving for history. In my case, losing a rib to cancer made me discover the Adam in me.

It seems that any moment of interest or pain or adversity can surprise us into the larger totality of life, breaking out current limits and allowing us the chance to redefine ourselves in regard to the larger sense that is upon us. That we are opened - so suddenly, so often - is the way the soul unfolds on Earth.

We can never be prepared for everything. No one person can anticipate all of life. In fact, overpreparation is yet another way to wall ourselves in from life. Rather, we can only prepare for how we might respond to the gift of surprise that often moves in on us faster than our reflex to resist.

Life is surprising, thank God, and God, the chance to know Oneness, lives in surprise. For God is seldom in our plans, but always in the unexpected.

 

Life is definitely surprising...that's for sure! **Like**