Sacraments of the Ordinary

 

In the Middle Ages, people carried a book of brief prayers called a breviary, or a Book of Hours, to help them pause for prayer. In our time, we're so busy we need to pause just to take a breath! Yet it only takes one breath to enter the kingdom of heaven on earth. This is not really a book of hours, but a book of moments.

If we go 101% into this ordinary moment, it is an extraordinary moment in eternity. Such a moment can provide energy and clarity for hours. This moment is not a "High Feast": it is what the Church once called "the Ordinary of the Seasons," a sacrament of the commonplace that re-ignites the wonder we felt in childhood.

How we limit ourselves in believing that we must do something new, something edgy, something extreme to experience a glorious adventure. If we are awake, a glass of water is breathtaking, a dandelion miraculous, the eyes of a friend an infinite journey. To the awakened heart, every atom of the earth is made out of love.

The momentary meditations in this book will refresh you throughout your busy day. They require no religious belief or sustained concentration. In fact, they invite you to de-concentrate and relax your awareness. Relaxation is power.

Spirituality is generated in the body, not out of the body. That is why the practices in this little Book of Moments do not transcend our earthly experience, but celebrate it. You can practice these moments of enlightenment in the midst of your work - at the desk, the bus stop, the garden, the kitchen sink.

Bow

Bowing is an ancient art. Most of us have forgotten how and why we bow.

A beautiful lady taught me to bow and kiss the soil: a very difficult spiritual practice! Every time I started to bow, I thought of something else I had to do before my forehead touched the ground. Have I ever completed a single bow? When I do, I will be in Heaven, and Heaven will be the Earth.

Bow just to bow. Touch your head to the earth because it's sacred beauty is an end in itself. The one who bows, the bow, and the one to whom you bow, are they not all the same?

This is how God becomes dust.
Touch your forehead to the earth,
bow down to the light in your body.
When the light within lifts up your head, crying
"Do not worship me, for I am you,"
bow down, bow down.
All around you, dripping with quietness,
flowers are doing this to rain.
The golden moth that lives one day
is doing this to flame. The moon
does it to the sun. One breath
does it to another.
Receive yourself.
Bow down and drink.
Be the mother
of your heart: this
is how dust becomes God.

Return to the Ordinary

Behind most versions of "spirituality" is a flight from the Ordinary. Do I live from one High Feast to the next, fleeing from the Ordinary in between? From one appointment to the next, fleeing from dis-appointment?

Disappointment is also revelation: a chance to return to the glowing heart of the commonplace, where I am always "in the beginning" with the Creator. All that is fresh rises from the ashes of disappointment, motherground of the commonplace. The Ordinary is the womb of creation.

Just Listen

Just listening brings you immediately into the present moment, freeing your mind from thoughts. It is the purest meditation practice, already built into the temple of your body.

In pure listening, past and future vanish.

Early in the morning, listen for the faintest furthest sound. Let your attention expand to the horizon of hearing. Let the vanishing of the bird's song lead you into deeper silence. Let each sound that arises be an invitation to the silence that follows.

Touching the Earth: Weight as a Sacrament

God said to Moses, Take off your shoes, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. ~Exodus 3:5

Go outside in your own backyard when the grass is still wet with dew. Take off your shoes. Stand with eyes closed in the cool grass and breath.

Don't just breathe through your nose: breathe through the soles of your feet. An ancient Chinese manual on the martial art of Tai Chi says, Today men breathe through their nostrils, but the ancient masters breathed through the soles of their feet.

Feel the weight of your body as a sacrament rather than a problem, a doorway to the Earth rather than something that needs to be reduced. Gravity is a sacred force: the sign of the Mother's hug.

Let your breath flow out of the ground into your legs and hips and belly. As you exhale, release the pent-up tension in your muscles. From your face right down to your ankles, give it up to gravity. All your tension discharges into the ground, yesterday's stale thoughts and worries released in the wet electrical grass. The touch of the earth brings you into this day. This is the only day there is.

Now, be a toddler just learning the dignity of standing and walking on this earth. Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh tells us that the real miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the green earth. Lakota sage Black Elk says, Let every step you take upon the earth be as a prayer.

Sakyamuni Buddha taught that there are Four Human Dignities, and they are all dignities of the body: lying down, sitting, standing, and walking. We usually take a stand in our heads, on some abstract point of politics or religious belief. Why not just stand in your bare feet, on the living earth?

Walk slowly.  Feel the sensation as your left foot lightens and lifts into the air, the right foot pressing into cool grass, spreading like a hand to receive the earth, widening with body weight. Feel your weight roll from the heel toward the ball of the foot. Feel your toes gently grasp the earth, one last caress, as the right foot leaves the ground.

Walk this way for three minutes, that's all. It is not meant to be a rigorous discipline, but a momentary wonder.

Saint Augustine wrote, solvitor ambulando: It is solved by walking.

Walk to walk, without destination, an ever-arriving pilgrim. Walk just to experience the living dignity of a human body in its ordained place, connecting heaven and earth. Your body is the electrical link between soil and sky, the sacred cord with which the Creator is bound to creation.

Awake in a human body, wherever you stand is holy ground.

I Am Love

I invite you to say it quietly inside. "I Am Love." Close your eyes, relax the muscles in your belly, breathe in a long yet gentle breath. Then as you breathe out, say it deeply. I don't tell you, I invite you, only if it feels right. "I Am Love."

Our Creator plants this song in every heart. Not "I love you," but "I Am Love."

"I love you" is possessive, contracting the heart with a silent demand for private attention. But "I Am Love" expands the heart with a love that makes no claim upon its object. Indeed, "I Am Love" has no object. It is the song of the Self, the all-pervading subjectivity, the triumph of cosmic person-hood.

Only because our being cries, "I Am Love," is "I love you" possible. Maybe we don't listen to this song because we're afraid of being consumed in the fire of love's unity.

I desperately want to individualize myself. I attempt to articulate my own personal voice. This feels like a worthy enterprise at first, yet it arises from incomplete understanding.

My "individualism" can be as self-limiting as it is expressive. "Individualism" is a subtle form of fear: fear that my ego might dissolve. I fear falling back into raw unprocessed love, the consuming fire of love before "I," love before duty or devotion, primordial love exploding as the light source of my original innocence.

What would happen if I let go of my anxiety about being "original" and "individual"? Even for a few moments, moments of deep meditation, what if I allow the voice of my little "me" to be quiet, and I sink into my real originality, the first Word of creation, "I Am Love"?

No worry. I discover that God's Word of Love articulates me far more creatively than I could articulate myself. This song, "I Am Love," sings me as the ocean raises a wave, as a diamond sparkles one facet of its infinite beauty. The more I surrender to the One, the more I become uniquely Me. This is the secret of divine Love.

A glimmer of sunlight on the sea does not worry about whether it lives an instant or a thousand years. It sparkles and dissolves, sparkles and dissolves, ever born, ever dying. Each glimmer is utterly unique, yet part of one sun.

How does my heart beat? "I Am Love." How does my breath breathe? "I Am Love." Maybe the world gets dark, maybe I suffer illusion and fear, because I forget to begin by loving myself?

Sing it 777 thousand times a day: "I Am Love." Through this song all creatures keep creating themselves, so that they can do God's work. Even a fly sings, "I Am Love" and becomes a fly.

Only we humans are vain enough to imagine that loving ourselves is a problem. Who could I love if every cell of my blood, flesh, bone and marrow were not the ocean of Love? Who could I love if each proton in each atom of my body did not sing, "I am made out of Love!"

Whisper it, friend, first like a secret, then like a bell on a temple, then like a storm that carries everything away.

Breathing the Sun

You've been working inside, staring at your computer for many hours. Perhaps you've had several days of gray weather. Then the sun comes out. Is this not grace? How will you celebrate this sacrament?

All of your energy comes from the sun. Your food is energized by photons of sunlight. Whatever you use for fuel, its warmth and fire originate in the sun. When you feel depleted, you can use the sun to re-energize: it is always there, whether behind a cloud or not.

Go outside. If you can't go out, open the window and stand in the sunlight. Close your eyes and agree to be here in your body.

Be aware of breath-in-body, each inhalation filling you from the soles of your feet to your eyeballs. Absorb the radiance dancing through your eyelids, solar energy bombarding your nerves with billions of photons. You can see this energy even with eyes closed.

Using your breath as a vehicle for the sunlight, conduct the solar energy through your forehead, down through your lungs, to your heart. Literally inhale sunlight into your solar plexus, where it is stored and distributed into every cell of your body.

Inhale today, exhale yesterday. Inhale the radiant energy that re-creates you now.

After twelve deep breaths of sunlight, spend a few moments sitting in silence. This allows the photons, conducted from breath to bloodstream, to permeate the cells of your body. You don't need to visualize or imagine this because it is actually happening in the quantum field of your energy-body. You will feel it without imagination.

Blue Sky

Go outside during a break from work, even if you are in the middle of a city. If you can't go outside, just stand at a window and look into the sky. Find a patch of blue. Look deep into the blue distance of the sky until you gaze beyond the vanishing point, beyond any focus. You are gazing at infinity. As your eyes un-focus and relax, seeing no-thing yet intensely alive with awareness, many muscles in your face relax spontaneously.

Exhale, following the breath out through your eyes into the depths of blue space. Inhale that depth. After a few breaths, close your eyes and experience the same depth,  the same vastness, inside.

Become aware of your whole body in this boundless blue sky. Infuse your body with space. The blue sky fills every cell, every atom. This is not imagination. This is how it really is. The infinite sky, the boundless vacuum, is in fact what matter is made of.

Hold Your Own Hand

We hold someone else's hand when we are in love, or when we care for them in their hour of sorrow. But do we ever hold our own hand this way?

We wring our hands in anxiety. Or we clap our hands for someone else. But do we hold our hand?

For just a minute, stop what you're doing and look deeply at your hand. Gaze into its architecture, its worn crevices, its ancient lines. Breathe in the work, the pain, the giving your hand has offered. Breathe this hand all the way into your heart. Be grateful for your hand.

Become aware of the cells in your hand, the molecules of DNA containing your mother and father, your ancestors, and all who have worked so hard to grant you this body. Hold them all in your hand. Breathe in their wisdom. Breathe out compassion.

Now very gently, place this hand in your other hand. Close your eyes and feel the warmth, the texture of one hand in the other. As you would hold the hand of your own child, pour pure love from one hand to the other. If thoughts of resistance appear in your mind, just observe them and accept them with the same pure love.

In the West when we pray, we put our hands together. In the meditation posture of the East, we lay one hand gently in the other. Why not make this very joining of our hands a meditation?

Now touch someone else this way. Then go back to work with your ancient, wise, beautiful hands.

Hands at Work

What are your hands doing this very moment? Washing a dish, typing at a keyboard, hammering a nail, throwing a frisbie? Are you aware of the energy in your hands while you work?

In body-work, we often learn grounding through our feet, but seldom learn grounding through our hands. All the nourishment we absorb from earth, sun and stars reconnects with the cosmos through the work of our hands. Through our hands we complete the circuit of receiving and offering.

Your whole body celebrates through your hands. The energy of the earth dances through your fingers - painting, writing, healing, caressing, planting seeds, shoveling dirt. If we don't complete the gesture of our incarnation in our fingertips, our body is stillborn.

Give awareness to your hand right now! Notice that you don't really have a hand: you have a complex inter-woven dance of wrist bones, knuckles, finger joints and finger tips. You hand is a whole community of destinations and beginnings.

We turn our working hands into praying hands simply by being aware of them. Pause for a moment at work or play to become aware of your hands. Don't look at them, just sense the energy flowing around and through each bone, joint, tendon, fiber. Take a gentle breath in. As you let it go out, allow your attention to sink down your arms to your fingertips.

Spend a few breaths gently connecting your heart to your hands. Many people only experience this sacred connection when the have a heart attack. Don't wait until then! Breathe from heart to hands right now. Inhaling, awareness flows from the palm up the arm into your heart. Breathing out, awareness flows back down the arm, right out into the air through the fingertips.

Now gently return to your work, keeping some awareness in the hands. Several times a day, right in the midst of your daily tasks, rest awareness in the hands.

When the Mind Wanders

"Be a wanderer," Jesus says in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

Sometimes people complain, "I can't meditate because my mind wanders." If your meditation doesn't work, you must have turned it into a job!

Stop working during meditation. The sign of life is the wave. All energy manifests in waves of rest and activity. When we work, we are active, then we rest. And when we rest, we restore energy by not-working. That is the Sabbath, and God's Sabbath rest is as sacred as God's work.

Meditation is not work but play! You mind wanders because it follows its innate tendency to play. In Sanskrit texts this playfulness is divine: it is called lilla. The scriptures of India tell us that God's deepest motive for creating the universe was simply lilla, to play.

Instead of trying to stop the mind and control it, just ride the waves of wandering. Let the very tendency of the mind to wander refresh you. And let your very non-resistance of wandering be your only object of meditation. Regard nothing your mind does, nowhere it goes, as a distraction.

What we mean when we say that our mind has wandered is that we have lost awareness. Awareness of what? We only wander in relation to some place else. If there is nowhere else to be but where we are, then wandering is a dance, and we are always dancing at the center of the universe.

So the next time you meditate, let your mind wander in all directions at once, expanding like a blossom to the edges of the universe. Just watch. How wonderful! When you are awake, a wander is a wonder.

The Greatest Yoga Teacher on Earth

Unconscious breathing is just an organic process to sustain biological life. Likewise, disembodied awareness is just empty space. But put breath and awareness together, and a miracle happens. Healing wisdom is born. Now you have conscious breath, which is filled with divine creative energy. Ancident traditions honor that energy with terms such as prana, chi, ruach elohim, or holy spirit.

Awareness touching Breath is the kiss of Christ and Mary Magdalene, the embrace of Shiva and Shakti. As this living Breath bathes sensation in the body, Christ is born. Christ is the offspring of Breathe and Awareness as a fully embodied human being. That holy child is you.

The science of Yoga is simply this love affair between Breath and Awareness in a human body. Let your own sacred body teach you Yoga. Let your flesh teach you to breathe: for your own breath is the supreme Yoga asana.

Forget technique. Forget correct Yoga posture. Just luxuriate in the movement of this incomparable breath, the miracle that can't be resisted, because it is happening now.

Let your inhalation open the smallest segment of your spine. Let your exhalation send currents of light into your joints and muscles. What we're talking about here has no fancy Sanskrit name: it is simply a good old-fashioned stretch.

With attention in the body-of-breath, experience every micro-movement of your stretch. You can practice this stretch in the quiet of the morning even when you are still lying in bed. Or you can do it standing. You can certainly use it as a break in your business day or study.

Reach your arms over your head. Stretch one leg at a time, pointing the toes of each foot. Breathe in again and stretch your torso, your spine. Keep stretching as you breathe, but don't hold a position. Keep some subtle movement happening in the body, like a great tree gently swaying. With each breath, lengthen a segment of your spine, gently opening a little more space between the vertebrae. Do this even in your neck, by drawing the chin slowly down toward your chest.

Observe your body from the tip of your toes to the crown of your head: use the stretch to open up and breathe through tense stuck places. Let the Breath itself do the opening, ever so gently. Your Breath is the mover, your awareness is the giver of life. Let Breath massage and open up the body's space, let Awareness pour healing energy into that space. Awaken all the numb stuck places.

One slow luxurious stretch, enjoyed without comparing yourself to any other body, could be the best Yoga class you ever attend, guided by the best Yoga teacher on earth.

Elemental Healing

Healing Mandala by St. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th C. 

To heal ourselves is to heal the world. The elements of our body are already holy. Our bodies are full of sacred medicine. The deepest healing practice is not to administer medicine, but to remove blocks from healing channels that are already there. The amazing truth is, awareness itself can remove these blocks. Awareness dissolves obstructions.

Shamanism is the activation of the human body as the link between earth and stars, awakening the body's elemental powers by simply anointing bones, blood, tears and breath with the sparkling awareness I Am.

 Elemental Healing Meditation

Water is healing, I am made of Water.
I drink fresh and deep and slow,
speaking to the Water,

Thank you, Water, I love You.

Air is healing, I am made of Air.
I breathe fresh and deep and slow
down through my roots,
up through the soft spot on my crown.
My breath connects the earth and stars.

Thank you, Air, I love You.

Earth is healing, I am made of Earth.
I sit on a mossy stone in the forest
feeling my weight as a blessing, a sacred path.
I surrender to gravity, the Mother's hug.

Thank you, Earth, I love You.

Fire is healing, I am made of Fire.
I stand in the morning sun and close my eyes.
I see sunlight sparkling inside me.
I draw seven breaths of sunlight through my forehead,
in-breathing down to my heart,
out-breathing to every cell of my flesh.

Thank you, Fire, I love You.

Water, Air, Earth and Fire,
Thank You, I love You.
You are medicine, I am made of You.
Awake in my body, You heal me.

Anointing You with gratitude, I heal You.

With my gratitude, I heal the Water.
With my gratitude, I heal the Air.
With my gratitude, I heal the Earth.
With my gratitude, I heal the Stars.

Eating a Grape

You can enjoy any fresh natural food this way. Even a sip of water can be magic. Jesus did this with bread and wine.

Hold a grape in your hand and look at it carefully. If this grape were placed in a bowl with a hundred other grapes, what would you look for to recognize this one?

Now look even more deeply into the grape. It contains the rain, the clouds, the sky that watered it. It's skin and meat contain the minerals of the earth. Many trees and flowers and animals have died and returned to the loam to form the nutrients in this grape. The fire of the sun sparkles inside this grape, and protons from ancient stars. This grape contains all the elements: earth, water, fire, sky. This grape is full of death and rebirth.

Humanity fills this grape. Many hands have labored to till and water its soil, prune its vine, and bring it to harvest: hands of laborers, packers, shippers, grocery clerks. The juice of this grape runs with human toil and tears. Somehow the tender sweetness of this grape has been preserved for you across a continent of commerce. To notice all this in a grape is prayer, grace unspoken.

Lift the grape up to your nostrils and smell it. Gently roll it in your fingers next to your ear and see if it has a sound. Now hold this grape in your palm and breathe a breath of gratitude. Put the grape in your mouth, crush it in your teeth. Taste its flavor as pure sensation without words, without the label, "grape." Chew it slowly and swallow it.

Sit quietly and observe the lingering sensations in your mouth and tongue, the bouquet fading like sunset on your tongue. Follow these flavors and sensations as they dissolve into pure Presence, into the silence of Being without desire.

In Grief

Don't try to be with the person who died. Just be with their death.

Rest in the death, the absence of your beloved.

The overwhelming gift of being with death is this: it is not only your loved one's death, it is your death too.

Death is the void. The void is infinite. The infinite is the field of possibility. From this vast negation creation is born.

On Easter morning, in the garden, Mary Magdalene reached out to touch Jesus, who was dead. He said, "Do not cling to me."

Do not cling to your beloved, who is dead. Instead, just rest in their absence. Rest in their death.

This may sound terrible, but it is the only way through grief, because grief is the gateway to Presence. And only in Presence, where there is no past, no future, will you meet your beloved, who is right here.

This is a mystery. I am with you.

Look 20?

"It is shameful not to look 20." When did you start hearing this voice? When you were 25? When will you stop listening to it? When you're 85?

This is not your voice. It is the voice of someone trying to sell you something. And what they're always selling is an ancient myth: the Fountain of Youth. It may take the form of a diet, an anti-wrinkle cream, a yoga CD, or a spiritual practice to "reverse the aging process." Whatever it is, please don't be shamed into buying.

"I want you to feel good about yourself. Buy my product: it will improve your self-esteem." This is a subtle form of shaming. You cannot feel self-harmony when you itch for a new product, another diet, one more technique for your spiritual repertoire. You can only feel self-harmony in the present moment, by relinquishing the shame of needing to be someone else.

Only a demon Barbie from the stars is without spots, wrinkles or body-fat. Look at a baby: pinch it! You too have a right to softness.

Honor your age. Bathe in the ripples of your body's stream. You are of earth, you have hills and valleys. 

The play of transformation begins by loving your flesh exactly as it is.

Meditate On Your Body
Close your eyes and let all those tempting new products scroll before your inner sight. Let them go as they arise, with a smile on your face. See the ads for perfect bodies, see the yoga models, see the media images of perfect happiness as you broaden your grin and let it all run out like a cartoon. You are smiling because you know that none of these images is who you are.

With a long relaxed exhalation, let go these pictures go. Then breathe in the fresh clear air of the present moment, free of all images.

After a few breathes of release and presence, release and presence, become aware of your body.

Occupy your body, every molecule of your flesh, just as it is. Let your awareness bathe each age spot and wrinkle: not to remove it, but to welcome it as part of you. Become aware of your weight, the force of gravity that hugs you to the earth. Surrender your weight to gravity. Experience gravity as the Mother's embrace.

Be aware of your body's softness. Welcome its waves, belly, hips and thighs. Saturate your whole body with awareness. Rest in your flesh, without changing a thing.

Sense the glow of your body's electromagnetic field. You don't need to imagine or visualize: the field of energy pervading your body is very real and measurable. It emanates from your heart. Feel this glow within every cell of bone, muscle, fat, and skin; then feel it extend around your form, like an aureole around a candle's flame, the light that shines beyond the bulb.

Your mind is at harmony with your body now.

Delight In a Flower

Delight is purer than discipline. Discipline too often means doing what I "should" because I lack the courage to do what I love.

Trust in delight. Does it require discipline for your eye to follow a flower to its center? Is the eye not focused by sheer delight?

Gaze into the stillness of the flower. See how delight deepens delight, until the heart discovers the joy of silence. 

The frail-wristed morning glory opens its pale hand and receives the whole sun. Despite all the injustice, all the sorrow on the earth, this miracle happens. This flower is brave. So gaze into the smallest blossom, as you would gaze into the face of a saint.

Softening Your Perception

 "Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age." ~William Blake

The practice of softening our perception softens the world we perceive.  

Anoint the earth through your senses. Redeem creation by perceiving it more gracefully. Pour your inner light outward through intentional acts of sacramental seeing, hearing, smelling, touching. A soft caress of perception infuses Prakriti with Purusha, the womb of Mary-Matter with Christ-Consciousness.

Until now our senses have been receptors, passive recipients of a world flowing into us. But in the dawning age, we become transmitters, blessing the world with wands of sensation. Sensation activates the hidden potential of matter. Perception is blessing. Awareness is a priestly function.

Sunbeams radiate, not into our eyes, but from them. Thrush music rises from inner silence, reverberating from our ears. Our hearing is half the song. Breathe out the musk of awakening. This world is a garden: we are the Spring.

Practice: the Energy Around the Flower

Practice this exercise no more than a minute or two, without concentration or strain. Then resume your work. If you are on a hike in the wilderness or a daily walk, you can pause to do this little exercise now and then for short moments. Please be without force or concentration. In fact, this exercise asks you to de-concentrate: to diffuse your attention to the creature's periphery, where hints of the Creator glow through the thinnest veil of physical things.

Begin by perceiving the space around a flower, a leaf, any still small living creature. Later, practice this with a person's face.

Notice the subtle fractal luminosity at the outline of the object, between spirit and matter, where form dissolves into space.

Usually we focus on an object, and the space around it is periphery. In this intentional act of softening, let your focus gently shift to the empty space around the object, so that the object is peripheral to the space around it.

The surrounding void deepens in substance, while the form it contains becomes less concrete, more transparent. See that form like a ray of sunlight refracted by water in a still green pond.

Soft perception is not imaginary, just indirect. Through indirection, we perceive what is more subtle. Quantum science teaches us that the object that seems concrete is ever dissolving into subtler layers of energy. At the subtlest level of the physical world, particles arise and dissolve instantaneously in a vacuum. Ultimately, these particles are but waves of emptiness.

In softening our perception, we see the true pointalism of matter - to borrow a term from art history. We allow old patterns to gracefully deconstruct into finer and finer particles of light. We let the radiance of Creator outshine the mirage of creation.

Buddha's Heart Sutra begins, "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form." Softening our perception puts this sutra into practice. The goal of this exercise is, in St. Paul's words, "to behold all things created anew." (2 Cor. 5:17)

On a golden afternoon, practice this in the forest with a wildflower. Then practice with someone you love in a moment of stillness, softening your gaze from direct encounter to the aureole at the edge of the physical form. Soon you will sense your beloved enfolded in compassion.

Next, practice in a mundane public place: waiting in line at the supermarket, sitting on a train, attending a meeting at work. You will awaken compassion for the ordinary, and for the stranger. You will begin to see the beauty that envelopes all wondrous weary human beings.

Finally, practice soft perception in a negative situation: while gazing at someone in deep distress, someone dying, or someone with whom you are in conflict. As their face dissolves into its luminous essence, this face becomes the light of Christ. There really are no negative situations.

When you acclimate to this practice, allow your awareness to descend from the head to the heart: quite literally, from the brain to the warm area in the chest. Even while using your eyes, ears and nostrils, the source of your attention can flow from the heart. As this shift occurs, you literally see through the eye of the heart, and the world around you becomes a Sacred Garden.

Information is Over-rated

Ignorance is information that overshadows awareness. Enlightenment is awareness out-shining information. Even correct information is ignorant when it blocks the simple empty clarity of awareness. Being aware is far more important than knowing.

Waking and Sleeping

 Waking

This morning, you are under no obligation to resume yesterday.

As you wake up, cherish the luminous silence of being nobody, just for a moment, before the mind of yesterday returns, with all the sorrows called "me."

Each morning, awaken into Presence this way and let it last a little longer, before yesterday's mind descends upon you with the burden of worries you think you must carry over.

If you practice this each day, one fine morning you will simply stay in Presence, without assuming the weight of yesterday's mind.

Sleeping

We take night for granted. Have you ever turned off every light, even the light of thinking and naming, and just listened to the silence? Have you ever gazed into the darkness of pure night? Not what the night contains, but night itself?

That darkness is radiant with mysterious Presence! It is God wondering, 'Who am I?'

Good night.

Holy Water

For thousands of years shamans and priests have magnetized water with words of blessing, then used it to anoint and baptize bodies, or sprinkle fields and temples. Holy water.

Now science proves that water responds to environmental stimuli, including words, music, even feelings, and carries that information in molecular patterns. If you look at molecules of water that have been near a battle, they will be organized much differently than water that has been near a joyful community, or a ceremony of worship.

We use water every day without talking to it, without blessing it. We use water unconsciously. Why not bless the water before you bathe or swim, before you use it to cook, and certainly when you drink it. If you live near a lake or river or the sea, breathe peace, breathe love, breathe joy over the waters, so that the waters may carry your heart's blessing to others.

After rising in the morning and washing out your mouth, drink one or more large glasses of water to cleanse, stimulate, and bless the organs of your body. That blessing will wash every cell. Hold the cup of water next to your heart and gaze down into it, silently or quietly humming, "Ommmm...." Then speak any blessing you like. Here is what I say:

"Thank you, water. I love you. Thank you, water, I love you. Peace, peace, peace."

Soon this will be regarded not as magic, but technology.

Motivational Breathing?

What is the motive for breathing?

Remembering this question allows me to become aware that breath has no motive and requires no effort. To see that I have no motive, no desire to breathe, is to cease taking my breath. I can allow each breath to be given.

Observe the givenness of a breath. Receive the grace of this breath, then offer it back: this is the purest form of prayer.

As often, throughout the day, as I become aware of a given breath, I am in the state of grace. I am in the deepest and most effortless meditation.

Zest

If you truly felt a zest for living, would you care so much about what you eat? About whether you get "liberated"? About what your astrologer says, or your life coach, or even your scripture?

These obsessions arise from a sense of lack somewhere inside us. The lack cannot be filled by food, starry alignments, religious rules, or any remedy from outside. 

Lack only dissolves when we observe it from deep inside, and hug it with awareness, filling our wound with compassion. This is the work of the Guru: not the external Guru, but the Guru-principle within. A true Master does not impose rules and injunctions from above. A true Master awakens the Guru inside, the bubbling spring that wells up in tears of gratitude, filling our emptiness with perfect Joy, which in the final discernment, is our own awareness.

Honor Your Desire

 William Blake: "Bring Me Your Arrows of Desire." 

Most of us are not doing exactly what we love because we are not really sure what we love. We are not sure what we love because we do not let the blue flame of our desire burn strong enough to consume our fear. We do not let our desire burn strong because we try to suppress it. We suppress our desire because some ancient book or long dead master told us that our deepest longing was a problem, a sin. 

Now look clearly into the blue flame of your most passionate longing. See how pure it is. And when you know clearly what you love, become that living flame. For That is God.

When Did You Consent

Ask yourself: When did I consent to play the victim? When did I consent to lack? When did I consent to the authority of my doubts? When did I consent to a government of memories? When did I consent to fear both pain and pleasure? When did I consent to this numbness in my chest? When did I consent to the proposition that my joy must be earned? When did I consent to regard this moment as less than a miracle? When did I consent to stop dancing? When did I consent to ignore the spring of sparkling beauty that bubbles up unbidden from my perfectly broken heart?

When You Feel Poor

Remember: you were not created in the image of a beggar. You were created in the image of a Creator. You were created to create: not just to create beauty, but abundance. 

Breathe in the truth, I am a creator. Now what it is you feel like creating? What's keeping you from doing it now?

Dollar Meditation In Economic Worry

Take a dollar out of your pocket and look deeply into it, knowing that this dollar is part of every dollar on earth, pulsating with the labor and service of men and women everywhere. This dollar is not "mine": it is the human community.

Being What I Am

I agree to be here, 101% here. I agree to be my weight on the seat, to be my age, to be my body. I agree to be this breath. I agree to be surrounded by the mind of a thousand gnat-like thoughts, and I agree not to resist any of it, not to try to change one thing. And I agree to be the space in which all this is happening, without division, the seamless continuity of body, mind, environment, space, thought, emptiness, without distinction.

Do I have any edges now? Am I not the luminous center of an infinite circumference whose only possible name is Joy?

Poop and Tinkle

We say grace before we eat and drink. Why not say grace before we poop and tinkle?

The food that comes into our mouths is a sacred gift from the the sun and the earth, the wind and rain. It is process through our bodies and transmuted into consciousness. Then it is expelled as "waste." But nothing is truly wasted. Our waste becomes the fertilizer for growing more food, flowers, green grass. Someday the concept of waste will disappear because we use everything.

Keep the place where you urinate and defecate clean and pure, like an alter for your body. It is the place where you will make an offering of what you have eaten and drunk, so that it may be used by microbes, insects and plants. What you give back as "waste" may someday be part of your grandchild's body.

Say a blessing before you go to the bathroom. "I return these elements of sun and rain, wind and soil, that have passed through my body, to the sacred Earth. Thank you. Thank."

Then enjoy every sensation of urinating or defecating with mindfulness, just as you would enjoy every taste of a mindful meal. Just as you attend to your breath in meditation, from the nostrils down to the belly, so pay attention to every sensation from the stomach to the anus as you release the warm steaming feces from your intestines, bowels, and rectum. Notice the pleasure of emptiness after you have eliminated the feces completely. Dwell fully in that sense of completion, fulfillment, the end of a cycle, the returning of the body to the earth. The process of defecating is like a bow.

If there is guilt or disgust over this pleasure, use the occasion to observe the mind: just observe without judgement. See how silly our social conditioning is, and how much meaningless taboo we have attached to these natural bodily functions.

The experience of elimination should be energizing, relaxing, and warm, like a massage of the digestive system from within. If there is strain, pain, or incompleteness, your body is teaching you that your diet is not healthy for you. Pay attention and learn from your poop and tinkle how to eat more healthy foods, using the pleasure you take in going to the bathroom as a measure of your health.

Eat well. Poop with joy. Sleep deeply.

When You Feel Like Criticizing

What nourishes the earth, and the heart, more: vibrations of criticism or praise?

If you feel like criticizing others, practice this exercise. Just start praising! Say, "For one minute I will praise what is good, what is beautiful, what is nourishing, the little miracles all around me. Then I'll criticize."

After one minute of praising, see if the need to criticize is still there.

Taking Sides

We spend a lot of energy taking sides without even knowing what the game is. What if the game is getting free, and there are no sides?

Change Your Mind

Why do you feel guilty about changing your mind? Changing your mind is a sacrament.

Silence Calls

Silence is the deepest calling. Whatever else I do, inner silence is my first vocation.

Don't Practice Kindness

Here is a practice requiring deep faith: don't try to be kind. 

You don't have to practice kindness. Kindness is who you are. Kindness is already your nature.

Getting Clear About Pain

Why choose to suffer?

When I identify with the labels and stories that I superimpose on my pain, I choose suffering. Then I need to talk about it constantly, to myself and to others, even if there is no actual pain at this moment.

Why not carry pain as pure energy, not labeling it with thoughts, not turning into a melodrama or a story about a poor suffering "me"? When there is no compulsion to tell a story about my pain, there is no suffering, but only an intense presence of energy and sensation.

Suffering and pain are completely separate. Pain is simply part of our energy-field. Suffering is a story we make up about it, creating a past and future.

I cannot be not liberated from pain. But I can be liberated from my story about it, from identifying pain as who I am.

Then I can embrace pain as part of the seamless whole, the energy-field of  body, earth, and stars. My pain is not bound to my form: it merges with the pain of all creatures. No man is an island, and no particle is separate from the field.

Do feelings have boundaries? Do bodies have edges? Pain and pleasure are waves of one ocean, made of one water. I allow both pain and pleasure to dissolve into waves of bliss. In the energy of ananda, the labels "pain" and "pleasure" disappear. There is just aliveness in the body.

The dissolution of pain into bliss can only happen when I am fully present. In Presence, there is the melting away of past and future, and the dissolving of any beliefs, any stories, about a "me."

This is not a philosophy for intellectuals, but a survival technique for those who choose to live instead of suffer.

Planning

Often it is asked, "If living in the Now is so essential to spiritual life, how can you ever make plans to ensure the future?"

Of course we need to  spend a little time making plans. But we are in the Now when we are making plans for the future. In fact, it is especially important to practice mindfulness of the present moment while making plans for the future.

Mood Swings

One moment a peak, next moment a trough. Moods rise and fall like waves, but who is the ocean?

Walking, Standing, Sitting, Lying Down

Sakyamuni Buddha taught that there are Four Dignities in human life: Walking, Standing, Sitting, Lying Down.

I saw a child standing by a field. The child asked, "What is life?"

I knelt and whispered, "Life is walking, standing, sitting, lying down. These are the Four Dignities. Do them well, and all else is accomplished."

The child replied, "Lying in my bed, I awoke. I sat up, saw the sun at the window. I stood, stretched, then walked here."

"Well done!" I said to the child. "You lay down, and sat up, and walked, and here you stand so beautifully, just so! You stand like a mountain whose streams nourish the earth.

"You walk wonderfully. You move your body like a host of monarch butterflies, like a well fed lion, like a river in a valley.

"When you sit, your body is a forest of still trees stirring with blossoms. All victories rehearse themselves in the calm of your breathing. Warrior angels of heaven are at ease, yet ready to serve, in your sinews and tendons.

"When you lie down to sleep, your body is a field full of buried glowing seeds. Your body is an ocean where mysterious and powerful swimmers play. They rise glittering darkly, then plunge back into luminous night. Your body is the unfathomable movement of waves. Your body is the moon's chariot. The sun rises from the center of your body each morning.

"Honor this body till the end of days, when the secret of dust is revealed. Let your body be the kiss of earth and sky. Then you can make peace with every other body. You can honor the humblest creature, and breathe light into the heart of pain.

"Your body is the place where God came to dance, the temple that Christ calls home, the lake where the Spirit of the Mother floats swan-like in the form of breath. The Word that created the universe murmurs in your heartbeat.

Don't ask for a miracle. Just be your body."

In the Midst of Chaos

I am the radiant rainbow serpent of wisdom, and the chaos around me is my old skin sloughing off.

Renounce Perfection

Perfection is a mistake. I'm not as perfect as I was yesterday. This means I'm making progress in pathlessness.

Politics

"When you think everything is someone else's fault, you will suffer a lot." ~the Dalai Lama

Love doesn't need to occupy anything. In fact, the word "occupy" has traditionally been used to describe an act of imperial colonization. To occupy is a form of aggression, whether we occupy another person's territory, or the land. We are all pilgrims and wanderers on this world. Who has a right to occupy anything?

If you must occupy, please occupy gently: the Earth is a sacred garden.

Fully awake, you need no politics at all, because the real revolution is to breathe, the radical act is to be present, and the world is nourished by your secret joy. 

Let ideology dissolves into a smile.

Drop this Thought

For thinking-addicts, here is a one-moment meditation: DROP THIS THOUGHT.

The practice is unbelievably simple, so don't believe in it. Don't even do it.

Trying not to think wastes energy. But dropping this thought increases energy. When you drop a thought, the energy that was bound up in that thought returns to you as pure awareness - sparkling, limitless, joyful. The moment you drop this thought, an explosion of transparency fills the universe, and blesses creation.

Barely Cope: Instructions for Panic

"What can I do when I feel like I am barely coping, and about to have a panic attack?"

You need to know this: the only way out of your maze is to Be in the place where you are.

If you are barely coping, here are the instructions for you at this moment: barely cope.

Barely cope, but do not compare yourself to anyone else, and do not compare this moment to any other moment. It's the wanting to be elsewhere that causes you to suffer.

Barely cope, without resistance, without comparison, and your bare coping is suddenly full of Presence.

This moment of barely coping has the same fullness as the most wonderful moment! The content of this moment may be different, but the Presence is always the same; it is boundlessly complete because there is no other moment.

"But what can I do about this panicked breathless sensation in my chest when I am barely coping"?

Instead of avoiding this panicky feeling, feel it 100%. Commit to spending the next few minutes being with the sensation as it is. This is your path out of the maze.

It sounds obvious, but it may come as a revelation to discover that you feel breathless because you are not breathing. When breath is constricted, you will undoubtedly feel panic, because this sensation is how the body tells you that you need to breathe. Your body, and every sensation, is your spiritual guide.

Just becoming aware of your breathing, instead of trying to focus on something else, will gradually slow the panic response. Stay with the breath and notice every physical sensation. Then, when you are ready, take one slow marvelous breath, filling your whole body.

Amazingly, millions of people have never completed a single breath, from the nostrils right down to the belly. Do it now. In the midst of a panic attack, this breath is your only duty. Savor every inch of your breath-body: the cool sensation of inhalation in the nostrils, the brush of air down the back of your throat with the sound of a breeze, the slow expansion of chest and ribs, the softening and widening of your belly, and the sense of touching bottom, grounding in the pit of the stomach. One breath can be the path to heaven.

Now breathe out, following this same sequence of sensations in reverse, from belly to nostrils.

Yes, it's a hectic day. So what? It's the only day you have. In fact, it is the perfect day because there is no alternative. "This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it." (Psalm 118)

Vow to be Human

I vow to be healed by the next person I meet. I will bathe in the radiance of humanity.

Don't Like Everybody

Somehow, we bought into the notion that we're supposed to like everybody. This is a great waste of energy. There will always be some people you don't like, and with good reason! So why waste energy trying to like everyone when there are so many people you can love?

Surrender the effort to like people. Simply refrain from doing, speaking, or wishing them harm. Then your love can blossom.

When Someone Pushes You Button
(This will take about three minutes when you first do it. When it becomes a regular practice, you can do it with two or three breaths.)

What if there is someone we really don't like, and we can't get toxic feelings about them out of our mind and body? In that case, practice this ancient breath meditation:

Become aware of your breath, moving into your chest. Visualize the person who rubs you the wrong way, and feel the contraction, the irritation around your heart. Welcome those sensations without resistance and breathe them into your chest. Accept the negative feelings as feelings, as energy, in your body, until they dissolve into the space of the heart.

Now visualize that same person as a little child, a toddler or a baby. Breathing in, see that person again, bathed in gentle golden light. See them smiling and happy. Breathing out, send peace and joy upon them, releasing all the breath from your chest, as if it is radiating light from your heart. This is called, "Loving your enemy." It is practiced for your sake, not for your enemy's sake. But who knows? This practice may send waves of silent blessing to them, wherever you are; and it will certainly transform the way you encounter them the next time you meet.

Be Incomparable

Life coaches and inspirational speakers often tell us we're not thinking "big" enough. But is the path to happiness and sustainability really to "think big"?

The very concept of "big" makes the mind smaller.

Big is only big in comparison with small, and comparison is the root of our anxiety. You are incomparable. You don't have to think bigger than anybody. And you are uniquely happy, until you begin comparing yourself with others.

Comparison stifles creativity. Comparison doesn't allow us to do what is new, just what is slightly better than the competition.

Beauty doesn't have to be big. Beauty more often lies in the small, the delicate, the local. Beauty happens off the grid of comparison.

Be incomparable.

Painting: 'Tiny Flowers' by Alexis Baranek

Blessed Be The Small

Blessed be the small. Bow down to the particular. Namaste to the missed detail that might have altered the plan.

Praise the radiant singularity of a whisker on the leathery cheek of the man who waits in line for soup and shelter.

God is hollower than an atom in the green weed: that's what hallowed means.

Let the whirlwind of seeing spiral deeper into littleness, vippasana, the gesture of an eye, polishing the sacred chaos of edges with perception, a sunbeam surrendering its morning Mass of photons to a petal of unfolding iris.  

Satori of the finite, freedom of the bound, delectable glory of the appointed sip of tea, dissolving mind with razor grace in fractal amazement at the calculus of limits in the infinitesimal dot on a lady bug.

Ayn sof tip of lily-stamen, dandylion tattagatta, quidditas of crimson-speckled moth-wing.

Whatness of the merest object bathed in subjectivity, a pixel of sunrise reflected in the finch's eye, singing her ineluctable one note: "now!"

Photo by Peter Shefler

Awareness Is The Only Discipline

In the final analysis, awareness is the only discipline. You can transform the world just by being aware of it. But most of us are not aware. We are just thinking.

For a few minutes a day, morning and evening, become aware of awareness - simple, silent, crystal clear. Nothing but that!

Whether our meditation is devotional or impersonal, Eastern or Western, metaphysical or earth-centered, whether our vehicle is the breath or the mantra, a candle or a prayer, it has only one purpose: to settle our attention into pure awareness, free from thought, like cloudy water settling to transparency.

In the process of settling, our murky awareness passes through finer and finer states, some quite fascinating: realms of color, inner music, poetic thoughts, images of beauty past. All these states are just dust, but awareness is clear water; just passing clouds, but awareness is the empty sky.

Do I want to land on a little cloud and cling to a memory, or may I become the vast blue clarity, without form or limitastion? I grow weary gazing at even the most lovely object, but can I ever grow weary of gazing at what gazes?

Seeking psychic, mystical or celestial encounters, I will never come home to my own awareness. Such spiritual window-shopping is but inner sensationalism, just a subtler form of restless promiscuity, hooking up without true satisfaction. I can go bar-hopping in the heavens, just as I do on earth.

The poet Shelley wrote, "Deep truth is imageless." Meditation doesn't seek visions. It awakens the one who sees. Meditation doesn't go anywhere. It awakens the go-er, who is her own goal.

Stop, traveler: you are already home. Give up seeking, pilgrim: even now your feet are planted on sacred ground. Be empty, seeker of wealth: "blessed are the poor in Spirit." Your nakedness is a sparkling gown of compassion, clothing the whole earth. Being here just as you are is the revelation.

Pure and Impure

Om apavitrah pavitro va, sarvavastham gato-pi va,
yah smaret pundarikaksam, sa bahya-bhyantarah sucih

"Whether pure or impure, whether full of purities or impurities,
one who gazes on the lotus-eyed Lord gains inner and outer purity!"

~Vedic mantra



Freedom is undivided breathing, and undivided seeing. We breathe in the chaos of the world, all that stresses us, all from which we would cleanse ourselves. Breathe in all from which we would escape. And without the slightest resistance, welcome it into the core of our hearts.

We often visualize breathing in a taintless transcendental light. We try to cleanse ourselves with holy white purity. Yet this very attempt to cleanse creates division between the pure and impure, darkness and light, God and matter. And the division is our conflict: the distinction causes the very stress we seek to dissolve.

Can we relax our vision and see the seamless undivided whole? See the world's impurity as it truly is: a mirage in brilliant clarity? This radical vision purifies both the world and the seer, because they are a single continuum of energy, one end of the spectrum vibrating as consciousness and the opposite end as matter. Purity of seeing relieves the stress on what is seen. Thus Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Into your bold and boundless heart, breathe in the chaos of creation, the poignant terrible lovely broken earth. Breathe in the mirage, along with the pure, still, empty desert air.

शिवोऽहम् शिवॊऽहम्
Shivo'ham, Shivo'ham!

Let Go of This to Let God of That

To let go of an attachment, let go of its opposite.

So often we suffer an unwanted entanglement, yet we can't stop clinging to it. When this happens, consider that any emotional attachment is connected to its opposite, because all human qualities arise in polarity.

This is a very gentle way of releasing attachment. First, I notice the emotional quality that I invest in what entangles me. Then, instead of contending with that, I simply become aware of its opposite. I notice what I invest with the opposite emotional resonance. For if I am attached to that, I am sure to be just as compulsive about this. The energy of these attachments may be positive or negative, consisting of craving or aversion. So we are talking here about fears as well as desires.

Instead of resisting that, I just become aware of this, bathing it in relaxed attention. Not judgment or analysis, just observation. Now something interesting happens. As my attraction to this relaxes, my clinging to that releases its grip also. Relaxing one grip automatically relaxes my grip on its opposite.

This is a practice of non-violence toward oneself.

Stretchmarks in the Void

Compassion is who you are when you're not trying to be anyone else.

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You are not this aging body or this mind full of yesterdays. You are the Beauty that is never one moment old.

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At any moment, wherever you are, just rest awareness in the very agitation, the very distraction that is happening, without trying to place your attention anywhere else. This is instant freedom.

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There is only one safe place in the entire world: a heart surrendered to its song.

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I don't know anything. What a relief! To abandon certainty is the beginning of freedom. To known nothing is the beginning of prayer.

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Through the effortless magic of agreeing to be uncertain, transform uncertainty into possibility.

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The greatest wealth is to love the little things in your own back yard, just because they are there. Enter the kingdom of little things. Find something very small and hold it in your hand. It may be a weed or a pebble. Cherish the mere Thingness of this little thing.

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Being truly present to our children is greater than any gift in a box under the tree. Even if we have nothing else to give, we can give Christmas presence.

* Christ was born in human flesh just to show us that every atom of this body is sacred. The kingdom of God is here on earth as we consent to radiate exactly who we are.

True Faith

True faith means not asking for any other blessing but this breath, at this moment, from the One who breathes you. 

 Caress your chest with this breath. Loving your own heart softens the whole world. A practice for any moment.

Now gaze into the eyes of a friend, partner, child, or perfect stranger. Carry their gaze into your chest with this breath. Nourish your heart with the pain and beauty of the world. A practice for dissolving the illusion of separateness.