Fully alive, completely awake

The essence of life is that it's challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy.

From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that's life.

~ Pema Chodron

The thing I seem to be practicing these days is just this. Pema Chodron has such a simple, beautiful way to express what life is and how to navigate one's way through it with grace, compassion and joy. Challenging, sweet, bitter, completely awake... How I welcome each moment!

Anniversaries

For Marriage

As spring unfolds the dream of the earth,

May you bring each other’s hearts to birth.

As the ocean finds calm in the view of land

May you love the gaze of each other’s mind.

As the wind arises free and wild,

May nothing negative control your lives.

As kindly as the moonlight might search the dark,

So gentle may you be when light grows scarce.

As surprised as the silence that music opens,

May your words for each other be touched with reverence.

As warmly as the air draws in the light,

May you welcome each other’s every gift.

As elegant as dreams absorbing the night,

May sleep find you clear of anger and hurt.

And as twilight harvests the day’s colors,

May love bring you home to each other.

~  John O’Donohue ~

One of the happiest days of my life was three years ago today, when I witnessed my baby girl marry the love of her life. There is something so magical about Love. It contagious and everyone feels it. It brings a spaciousness, an openness, a deep sense of well being. It might last a few hours, days, years or a lifetime; whatever time you are immersed in it, be grateful. 


Love doesn't ever go away, but the feeling usually fades in and out.  I can't help be think it has to do with us rather than with Love.  For isn't Love all there is? Isn't it always here? Aren't we always steeping in it? It's just we aren't always open to it...


Happy anniversary to a very special couple! May Love bring you home to each other for many, many more years...

Join the Community of Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion, 

and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes 

to see with the other eye.

~RUMI ~

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks

I love this image. Most of my life I've been a people-pleaser and the idea of drinking in my passion and being a disgrace is quite simply ~ perfect. The community of spirit nourishes me daily and I feel the delight. It seems my lesson is to live wholeheartedly, with courage and authenticity. I think it means to just be my self; to allow each moment to unfold and know that who I am is more than okay.


I was introduced to Brene Brown through a friend who emailed me a video clip. Here is a woman who has spent 10 years researching shame and guilt. What became clear to her was that being authentic each day will cultivate the courage to be emotionally honest, to set boundaries, to be vulnerable and compassionate with ourselves and others. And out of this will come wholehearted living and loving allowing each of us to be who we are without guilt, shame or fear.

After watching her PBS program last night, I deeply connected with this community of the spirit. What do I see? Grace, joy and gratitude.