God's Alarm

I keep falling asleep when meditating
I don't suppose I should be so concerned since this is how I've lead my life to now
Asleep
I shouldn't be so hard on myself
God's not

This morning's Hagia Sophia
Holy Wisdom, as Merton would say

I awoke at 5 saying I must get up but instead I rolled over and slept again until 6
I got out of bed and sat on the couch but laid myself down for sleep again
At least I had made it to the couch

At about 7:15 the call of geese flying overhead gently awoke me
I tried figuring out what their honking sound was as they drew closer
There is something about geese, low flying,
rotating formation
honking, talking
that always makes me look and smile
I lay there kicking myself for my laziness and fear
Doubting my ability to do this Lenten season
without idleness
Without distraction. Quite clearly I fall asleep.
I was just dozing again
when God sent the snooze alarm through
A second flock busily making their way though our neighborhood.

I smiled and arose
with warm acceptance knowing that this morning,
this moment,
7:26 am,
God awoke me,
His Child,
so gently--Hagia Sophia.

I shouldn't be so hard on myself
God's not

Contentment

Proof 

- this photo was taken at the Sierra Buttes in 2006. It was a mistake with the white balance. Ironically, (or more likely divinely) before I made the summit, I visualized myself reaching into the mountain for its wisdom. 

I haven't posted in a while because I have been feeling quite content. I am enjoying this sense of peace; a feeling of being content with my life that I am ready to go whenever. I am resting in a sense of love and metta. I have no wants or desires. I have seen all I needed to see, been everywhere I've wanted to go, done everything that I've needed to do. From here on out I know will be icing on the cake. I don't know when I'll come back to the blog but I have let this go too.

Be well my friend for 

All is well

The Gifts of Easter Sunday

Morning meditation and prayer.

A run in the park and communing with the space.

A walk with Lynton. Warm talking and friendship in nature.

An amazing email from Bill that affirmed both Buddhist and Christian traditions in a way for me to embrace whole heartily.

An afternoon with the ladies complete with Easter Egg hunt and potluck.

Sweet intimacy with Bear

Popcorn

Evening Meditation & Prayer

It doesn't get any better than this

Thank you.

Trinity

Form, Breath, Love
Father, Mother, Child

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha

Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Red, Blue, Green

Earth, Air, Space

Making the Fortress-House into a Home

The title is words from J. Denosky (who is an enigma, but has numerous site on the web with regard to supernatural and metaphysical phenomena). I believe I read it in the story "The Life of Kira". But this sums up my transformation this past two weeks. Really coming to grips with ego attachment and how the habit of Fortress-House has been perpetuated in my mind. The release of ego by asking for God's grace is now a felt sense. One I was not previously aware of. My noble efforts to "figure out" what makes me tick, were in vain. I was trying to find God, Buddhanature, the Christ within which is an impossible task. One that can make you literally crazy. But perhaps it was the way for me because now after reaching complete surrender I was able to relax into letting Love help me. I had hammered, clawed, bitten and strained trying to find God, all to no avail. It was the surrender that allowed me to feel the grace, love and emptiness of a moment. Fleeting as it was in memory, there remains the bodily memory which shall sustain me and keep me open and willing to strive in the direction of the Awakened Heart or Home. The grasping Fortress-House of ego is now tame. Pain, love, happiness, sadness - all things are free to come and go from the Home. This is who I truly am.

Lord show me the way

Keep me safe in mind and body

Your greatest gift to me

has been free will.

May I continue to receive your grace

turning my will over to you

until it is yours

May you know that I yearn to

share with others

so they too may come to dwell in the

Home of Awakened Heart

Monks and Bodhisattvas

This is a 4 minute audio clip of Thomas Merton. It may just change your life. Do you have 4 minutes?

The Awakened Heart

This is a talk of Jack Kornfield from November 2008 about pointing the compass of our heart. It is 64 minutes. Do you have an hour? It may change your life.

The Bodhisattva Leader 

Chögyam Trungpa

Last night I awoke at 1:49 am delighted by all the insights I'd been getting. The new sense of being with and perceiving myself and others in the context of love. A feeling as if the whole world is my messenger. Not just in pleasant but unpleasant situations. The feelings of resting in the space of neutrality. And the new strength and bravery I have in my willingness to sit with the uncomfortable, sticky, discomfort, the background hum. I am finding the words of Chögyam Trungpa understandable down to my toes. I was seeing all my teachers. I do not have one teacher. I have many. I have my dreams, Sharon Salzberg, Pema, Jack Kornfield, Chögyam, Amida Schmidt, nature, art, De Mello, Merton, Bear, my mom, my dad, Philip my co-worker, Ellen, all of them, everything, all the time teaching me.

Here is a recent post to Shambhala SunSpace Blog, "The Warrior Tradition: Conquering Fear," by Chögyam Trungpa

Here is just one of messages messages within the text of the article:

"The path of fearlessness is connected with what we do right now, today, rather than with anything theoretical or waiting for a cue from somewhere else. The basic vision of warriorship is that there is goodness in everyone. We are all good in ourselves. So we have our own warrior society within our own body. We have everything we need to make the journey already."

Serendipity

So being still somewhat reflective yesterday but not nearly as emotional as I was on Tuesday, I tapped into the Shambhala SunSpace Blog. I scrolled down and saw an article about Sharon Salzberg - To Love Abundantly by Trish Deitch Rohrer. I relate so much with Sharon. Trish does an excellent job of capturing Salzberg and incorporates her observations as well as commentary from folks like Joseph Goldstein, Ram Dass and another of my favorites Amita Schmidt. Sharon's book, Faith, is one of my all time favorites. This article was published just after Faith came out in 2003.  Anyway, it was perfect to hear her talk of her mindset, struggles and desires. But the quote that hit home for me and summed up my feelings these last few days was this:

"That in order to be free from suffering - and therefore to be able to give abundantly to others - one must endeavor to love oneself abundantly."

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

Touching Love of Self

Soon after my last post and just before going to bed, I had the realization that my guardedness was a habit. A habit of thought, reaction, posturing. What was different with this realization was that I didn't beat myself up for this inbred habit, but down to my toes believed that through my practice I could change this habit. The positive spin Carolyn had put on my understanding of fear-that my sense of fear was really awareness with a guarded quality- again set in motion my yearning to want to learn to change. I went to bed wondering how I could relax this guardedness.

I awoke a bit before 3 am. Awoke myself with a start, I was in the midst of a lesson. This will be my third such lesson I have received from the dream state. I was being taken back, remembering when my mother had died and the guilty feelings I had realizing that in fact mom had died miserable and lonely and this sense of rage I had with God for letting this happen. I had known all my life that if my mom didn't get what she needed she would die before her time. I knew it. I had tried everything in my power to take care of her, but short of moving in to be her care taker and provider, this would not happen. So what I had feared probably from infancy had indeed happened.

And then I was pushed to a remembering of when Crystal died. From the moment we had learned of her terminal prognosis, I knew she would be afraid of death. Every week I would ask her if she was afraid and for almost nine months she would adamantly reiterate that she was not afraid. This insistence on her part had me fully coming to believe and admire her heroic journey through the death process. But a week before she died she lay in bed and I beside her. She turned to me and said "Patty I don't feel a thing, I don't feel God" My heart broke. I tried to console her but I had no words for I myself had lost that connection with God. I put my arm around her and we quietly cried. From that point on she suffered from what Hospice called "Terminal Agitation". It had gotten to the point where she asked me to kill her with an overdose of morphine. I was so empathetic with her suffering that I told her I would help. Hospice figured this out and was swift with intervention. They drugged her up, brought the chaplain in, and took me to the side to say that this was not the way. Crystal died but the thought of the fear she felt remained burning with me.

In the span of about five minutes, these rememberings put me smack dab in the middle of my most intense fears which in turn made me realize the guarded nature I had felt for most of my life. The sense of suffering we go through when we contemplate our mortality. I had even realized how this knowledge or groundlessness of not really knowing what happens after we die and the fear of losing our (ego) self was the basis of drive in my life. I had written a small poem about it.

Heaven may close my eyes

So I need to build my bridges

I got out of bed and had to go cry hard. I cried deeply at the arising of this old pain but as I cried and stayed with the pain I became gradually aware of my own beautifully deep sensitivity for others pain. And for a moment I felt my buddhanature, my bodhisattva and that indeed fear and love where two sides of the same coin. I experienced for the first time ever in my life a profound sense of love for who I was as a person.

For the next hour I sat, in and out of meditation riding the realizations I was having. I felt an acceptance of my intuitive self. I no longer saw myself as an emotional basket case. I began to get a sense of purpose and understanding about the happenings of my life and the dots began to connect and take shape as my path within the dharma of this my life time.

I became acutely aware I needed to share with my father the love I felt from him as a young infant when he would come home from work and hold me over his heart and rock me in the rocking chair for an hour each night. How he had saved me from my postpartum alcoholic mother who refused to hold me and give me love the first months of my life. I knew that my father felt really really bad for abandoning my brother and me. I needed to let him know that that love was his redemption. That he no longer needed to feel the guilt. That love he shared with me then was in fact who he is now. I could forgive him for leaving us with her, my mother, the raging, abusive, alcoholic, nightmare. As I sat I felt his suffering and knew it to be real and now. I needed to break through my fear and uncomfortableness and share this with him now. On February 1, he turned 72. I need to spend time with my daddy.

Finally, I felt the suffering and fear my partner feels about being alone. And I knew the burn of anxiety that races through her body when she senses her aloneness. I did not know what to do but to continue to meet her, to be with her in the moment and make her feel that I am her with her now.

I crawled back to bed about 4:30 and half dozed until the alarm went off at 5. I arose exhausted but relaxed. For the rest of the day I was teary eyed at this acceptance of self and love I had found beneath the waves of fear. That even though I have been ice, my nature is water. That even though I have been frozen with fear and guardedness my nature is of the Buddha... buddhanature. I am beginning to melt.

Where To Begin?

So many things have happened in the last few weeks. A profound change in my thinking. The messages are becoming overwhelming, fun, delightful, mysterious... a little bit of everything. Through this I am trying to rest in my new thought processing mechanism and that is as if I am in a giant swimming pool of buddhanature mind energy. More on this in a minute.

What I am looking forward to right now...but again trying not to grasp or cling... is an older man who I know only as an aquaintance met me in the parking lot yesterday on my way to lunch. He asked me if I knew and Adelle or Adaline. I asked for him to give me a context. He said a friend or a relative. I could not recall any one by that name. He said that he was told by them to give me a book. I really raked my brain since I am not good with names at all. No nothing. He said well I don't know if you believe in this stuff or not but have you ever gone into a trance and gotten messages? I was neither skeptical or to enthused but I did say yes. No trance for me but I definitely have gotten messages and heard voices. He said well they told me, demanded I get you this book that I have. Then he said that it has to do with death and what happens after we die. Talk about stop me dead in my tracks. No pun intended there. But the night before I had just watched my movie Proof. And that is my main quest...question... why can't we know what happens after we die. Anyway, my brain has been running with this and thinking back and at 12:30 he is supposed to be out in the parking lot to give me the book. By the way, when I realized he was getting messages I asked him if it could be Madaline? He said that the hair on the back of his neck went up so that must be who it was who wanted me to have the book. Madaline is my grandmother on my Father's side. What a fun story to share with him and my brother (since we don't talk about this kind of stuff... it would be fun to see their reaction).

So more about swimming in buddhanature energy. If I am... really just buddhanature love, wisdom, and all then trying to float in that space and let thoughts and emotions float on past is what I need to be trying to do. So, I am pretending that I am in a giant swimming pool and the water is the space and everyone I see and everything I feel is like my thoughts and emotions. And as I move through space/water that is buddhanature and it is mainly what there is around me. Buddhanature is space and like the feeling of water it is holding me. It is comforting and it makes me a part of everything else in the pool. I feel my heart chakra expand. Oh and words... have you ever been able to hear someone under water? No. So words have really no place other than sound. I can't attach meaning to them. Anyway....more to follow after lunch.

Intimate Energy

This can be a confusing thing for me. A deep energy steeped in grasping and aversion but at its root the same energy. Recently I have had some highly charged dreams. Upon awakening this energy is still very present within me. I want to grab it and make it real or push it away and rid myself of the images and feelings. This highly charged state, though quite seductive, is allowing me to practice restraint both physically and mentally.  

My background with this is around a molestation that happened when I was 15. Often I find myself with this intimate energy in dreams and flashbacks. Trying to cut the root of the story line that plays in my head has become key to my practice. Recognizing it and then coming back to love without the added effects. I have a tendency to grab on to people, both men and women and idealize them. Move them into that realm of worship. People who kindle the spirit energy within me. I am always betrayed emotionally because I forget they are human. Meditation has allowed me to see this and then restrain from running with the charged emotions and feelings. I am gaining confidence in my own internal wisdom.