day 90: Go outside, and see what now tastes like there

Outdoor visitors on Orcas winter day; (Strangely, they first came around on Thanksgiving)

Go outside, and be; go outside and be aware; go outside and breathe.

Take a walk, just for the pure joy of taking a walk.

Go for a walk outside for the joy of being alive in this moment, always this moment, and being outside and being alive and in life.

Go outside and be present. Whatever your way is. Following your breathing perhaps. Noticing which foot is pushing the ground.

Play a little with your feet as they touch the ground, sometimes putting your awareness on, say, your little toes, and then your ring toes, and then your middle toes, and you’re your second toe, and then your big toe.

Sometimes play with awareness more in your heels, sometimes on the left edge, sometimes the right, sometimes the toe part of your foot.

Go slowly. Leave your feet alone, leave your breathing alone, just walk, notice, enjoy.

Just be alive.

And know you are alive.

Without any words.

Just know it.

Somehow.

Taste how you know it.
Taste how you enjoy it.

Look around, easily.

Back to the feet awareness and how are your arms swinging and what is happening with your spine.

Then just being.

Just you and your awareness and your life, outdoors, present and alive.

Good.

89: Arch and round, breathing 2 ways, waking up the lungs

Arch, round, breathing two ways

Awhile ago we practiced paying attention to and enjoying our spine arch and round with our hands at the side of our face, thumbs under the ears, other fingers over the ears, pointing backward.

On the arch, we push our belly forward, come forward on our pelvis, lift our sternum, look up a little.

On the round, we bring our belly back, round our back, let our head (in our hands) come down and forward, and let our sternum sink.

Do this awhile, back and forth. Notice your breathing.

Now play with this: as you round and pull your belly in, push the air out and breathe out. Do this a number of times and then rest.

And once more, belly in, air out, round the spine, curl up as if into a ball, feel the whole spine rounding in from the top and the bottom as the air goes out. Hand on the face so that the whole ribs and back acts as a complete unit.

Rest.


Now, try this way: as you bend forward and round your back, let your stomach come in as usual, but think of filling your lungs with air to make them bigger.

That is to say: as you round, breathe in. It may seem “strange,” but strange means “different” or “new” most of the time. So hang out there in the new, the learning, the amazing. Then as you arch your back and lift your head as you hold it in your hands, breathe out, push your belly forward. So this is belly forward and breathing out.

Do it a number of times.

Rest. And do it again.

Rest. And feel your spine. Do this a bunch of times today, and enjoy your spine all day. See how curiously aware you can be about the whole thing.

88: Heaven's gate: attention on attention

Knocking at heaven’s gate:

When do we lose our attention on the present?

When can we keep it there?

This is the game of life and the game today: paying attention to what we do with our attention.


Smile a lot.

This is just finding out about who we are.

Enjoy this.

day 87, heaven, of a bit of a "hard" sort, but WORTH IT

the body thing, why not sense ourselves?

The heaven of attention

Try this game today, and it “ain’t” so easy.

One time as you breathe in, sense your left foot and as your breathe out, sense your right hand.

The next time you breathe in, sense your right foot and as you breathe out, sense your left hand.

Keep doing this, all the time, if you can.

Like now, reading this book, or hearing it.

Like when you put the book down.

And so on.

“Thoughts” will come in and take over our attention. Are they really so important? Can we sense the foot and hand and follow our breathing underneath our thoughts if they are important?

Can we let them go if they aren’t.

Don’t try too hard, and keep your effort smiling and see what happens.

It’s just life.

It’s just a day.

It’s just getting our attention back for ourselves.

86: Playing in rotation

Rotation, not standing, but oh well

Playing in our spine

Stop somewhere and stand. Stand on your own two feet and feel what that is like. What one foot feels like, and the other, and both of them, and the toes and the ankles.

Breathe.

Begin to ever so slowly turn yourself to the left and then back to the middle. Notice whether you started at the feet, or hips, or shoulders, or head or eyes.

Turn again, starting ever so gently from the head and neck. turn to the left and then back to the center several times, as if a little dance. Now add on some shifting in your weight and bringing your pelvis into the turn. Left and back. Left and back.

Rest.

See if that woke up something in you.

Now put one hand on the center of your chest and one hand low on your belly and turn a bit to the left, Keep your head facing whatever direction this is, and begin figuring out how to gently and easily move your belly one way and your chest the other. Feel the twist, the gentle, enjoyable twist in your spine. Feel good.

Rest. Notice how you feel.

Hands as above, turn to the left, and back to the middle, feeling what it is like to start with the belly, start with the chest, start with the head. Play, turn, enjoy. Rest.

Hands as above. Turn to the left. Stop. Let your eyes go more left and back as your head goes the opposite way. Do this very slowly. Enjoy this.

Throughout the day play with head and eyes and chest and pelvis in turning. Make standing around a meditation in movement today.

As part of the game, experiment with hips one way, chest the other and head the same way as the hips. Make it easy, pleasurable and turn to the right later in the day.

Sense your spine all day and give it movement it likes.

85: Permission/ suggestion: pause and do "nothing"

"Buddha barn"

Take the nothing break, as many times as you would like, enjoy, benefit, wake

Give yourself permission to do “nothing” for five or ten or fifteen minutes a number of times today. Maybe even “many times,” just sit down, or lie down, or take a walk, or stare out the window, or pull the car over and get out and look at the view, or get in the tub, or lie on your office floor or a park grass or a firm wooden floor anywhere, or sit in a comfortable chair.

And

Do

Nothing.

Yes, just be..

No cell phone.

No reading.

No “to do” list. You can play around a little tiny bit with arching and folding to get happier and more connected to yourself as a body in gravity and awareness.

But the point is to just “chill,” as they say.

Breathe, which we will anyway.

And sometimes notice your breathing and sometimes not.

Think, which you will, and as much as possible find something more interesting than thoughts to put your attention on: what you see. The sunlight. The sky. The birds.

What you hear in the moment. Birds, wind, cars, music, your own movement of breathing. Whatever.

What you are sensing, as the air comes in and out, and you are sitting or standing or walking or lying in some shape and relationship to gravity.

How it feels inside your body.

What it is like to just be. Be yourself. Now. Without any program or productivity.

Just you.

Alive.

Now.

Maybe even smiling. This is your day. This is your life.

84: What is amazing in your life?

Amazing: a friend re-discovered a new way

What is amazing in your life?


What is amazing about life?

Think about this all day.

Write a list.

Breathe the question.

Be open to all of life. How amazing to be able to read. How amazing to be able to taste. How amazing to have the blue sky. How amazing that you can drive or walk or ride a bike or play a musical instrument or pay movie and go to a movie or get a library card and check out a book.

Many times think about this.

Many times write down a bunch of things.

Enjoy.

Discover.

Recover missing delights, or re-discover what you used to delight in and have somehow forgotten the charm.

How many charmed moments and aspects of life. That people have different color hair, or skin, on eyes. That people speak different languages. That people who speak the same language think in very different ways.

That we all have certain things in common.

And so on.

Take the day.

Have some fun.

Expand out into the answer you are discovering and writing down.

83:To taste again

Coming back to Orcas Island in mid January

Tonguing along in life

We have tongues. Talk with them. Taste with them.

And in both eating and talking: we have a hard time staying present.

Oh, well.

This book is about going about life in a whole lot of fun ways that open possibilities of learning and loving life again as we did when we were young.

And when we were young, food was bliss.

The strawberry, bliss.

The banana, bliss.

The celery with peanut butter in it, bliss.

The slice of orange, the carrot, even the spinach if it was real from a garden and the adult who was cooking knew how to steam it lightly and put some nice rich spring butter on it.

Yes, bliss and then more bliss.


And then the rules came along, no elbows on the table, no playing with your food, have to eat everything even the stuff the adults have ruined by overcooking or buying it too old. Or we just don’t like it, have to eat it.

Time comes along, the clock world, hurry and eat, and eat and hurry, and it’s no fun a lot of the time.

And guess what?

We aren’t children any more.

We can take our time, it’s our time, our time is our life.

We can take our time and wrap our tongue around our food, and chew it slowly and savor every bite.


This is today’s job: to return to the soul of the soil’s gift to us, our food. Slow down, chew. Breathe while we eat. Breathe while we taste. Don’t talk or read or watch the tube while we eat. Just eat.

And when not eating today, as much as you “can” sense and enjoy sensing, your tongue.

82: Bend and arch in sitting, head connected to the back

Bending and arching in sitting, hands on face

Sit near the front edge of a chair, or bench or log or rock. Feel your spine and arms and legs. Feel breathing and gravity. Feel your feet on the ground and your head at the top of your spine.

Now take your hands and hold your head like this: with each hand place your thumb under your ears and your other fingers above the ear, and the fingers point toward the back of your head. And with this unity of head and arms and chest, fold forward: stomach in, sternum sinking and back, pelvis rocking to the back edge, head lowering.

How does breathing like to go in this mode?

Then come back to neutral and do this many times, and then rest and feel and sense and learn yourself.

Then, take the same hand head position and push your belly forward and arch your spine and rock forward on your pelvis and bring your head back a little and raise your sternum. How does breathing like to go this way? Enjoy and come back to neutral and do this many times and go slow and observe and enjoy.

Rest.

Now do, go, learn, discover enjoy both ways, rounding and arching as a back and forth game. Go slow, feel one part at a time, the spine, the ribs, the pelvis, the head, the sternum, and then all the parts together.

Really enjoy.

If any pain, go less.

A lot less.

Enjoy.

Learn. Do this a bunch of times today, and stay knowing and awaring of your spine all day.

Good

81: Liking and like and "what are we like?"

You are what you like. (sort of)

Make a list of what you like in life.

Go slowly, and write down what comes to you, one thing or place or person or activity at a time.

As you write each liked aspect of your life, do three things:

1) Remember as fully and completely that activity or thing or person. Say, you like flowers. Go out and look at some flowers, or have a memory of some flowers you really enjoyed looking at and being around.

2) Notice and savor what feels good inside you when you think about the liked aspects of your life. Notice and savor where it is in you that you have this feeling. In you can means where actually you feel good in your body when you remember and put attention on this liked aspect. In you can also mean coming to a sense of how this liking and enjoying brings you to a place of being present and something like “at one” with the liked aspect. Don’t think or analyze any of this, just get a sense of the inside and friendly affects of your liking.

3) Come to something like gratitude for this aspect of you life.

Now, the list can go on and on, and it doesn’t have to be divided up in any particular way. You could like looking at beautiful flowers. You could like pulling weeds. You could like digging in the earth. You could like figuring out irrigations systems. Instead of just putting down “gardening” to cover all these different delights, write the individual aspects down, and savor each and every one.

This list can be five things you like, or fifty. Or a hundred. Take your time. You don’t have to do this all in one sitting. Likely, you will be inspired to go out and look at flowers, or take photographs, or listen to this song or that, or write this song or sing that song, or talk to this person, or write that one.

That’s all fine.

And keep going throughout the day making a list of what you like.


And, as the list progresses, notice and savor how this list of what you like begins to paint a rather broad, and still amazingly accurate picture, of what you are like.

What you like.

What you are like.

Interesting areas to notice and savor and explore.

Have a good day paying attention to what you like and what you are like, and how one informs the other.

80: Alive and Now, Good?, Good

The heavy hand of Now. The light sweet hand of Now.
Hand it to yourself. Eighty days is a long time. You’ve gone on lots of adventures.

You can be following your breathing right now.

Sensing your five lines right now.

And go back to feeling good about yourself for having come along for eighty days.


And stay present, if you so desire and enjoy and learn from, to sensing and to breathing and to looking at what’s in front of you and hearing what’s right now.

Skip all the interpretations, if you can.

Smile at them, or do the work of Byron Katie, or let them go, or let them slide to the background as you sense the now.

Just stay present, stay happy and keep the game going.


The heavy handed reason to live in the now: when we don’t live in the now, our life is not really ours.


The light handed reason: life feels so much more bright, clear, vital and alive when we are present.


Good?

Good.

79: The listening game, part 1

What did I say? What did you say? The listening game, part 1.

We talk. Other people usually don’t listen, much. Other people talk, and a bit into their talking we are busy “thinking” about what we have to say.

So, words get passed back and forth, and we don’t listen.

So, today, find someone with whom you’d like to improve communication and listen.

Get a person and a timer and set aside 30 to 50 minutes. Breathe. Relax. This is going to improve your life.

At any rate: dive in to the talking and listening as your main emotional learning component today.

Sit down in chairs facing each other, a little bit apart, but fairly close. Smile and breathe together for a bit. Close your eyes and breathe together a little more.

Good.

Now, set the timer, 2, 3 minutes. The other person talks. Listen with as much emptiness inside as you can. Can you be “without the story” as you listen? Can you have no filling up with inner words that you might/ could use to “defend” yourself?

Leave aside “your side,” while listening. Try to deeply feel what they want to say, who they are, how they are, what they want in life, what their frustrations are, how you are getting in the way. Listen, listen.

Then feedback as accurately as possible whatever they said to you. It can be exact words, or close paraphrasing. Leave all interpretation and comments out.

Just tell them as clearly as possible all they said. Then ask if you have missed anything. Then: their turn to listen. See if your speaking “your side” is changing from listening well to them.

They listen. They repeat back and “get it right.”

All day, after this, experiment with how to listen more clearly to others.

78: Hopping in a New and Non-habitual Way

Hopping and paying attention.

Yes, yes. This is “movement” again, and again, this is the simplest and quickest way to activate real thinking, rather than our usual verbose roundabout not-really thinking “thinking.”

Stand some nice place. Hop your legs wide and back together. Many times.

Rest.

Slowly, combine this hopping with having your arms go out when your legs go to the side and arms back in when your legs come together. Not as many as the usual “many times.”

Rest.

Now, go slowly and figure this out: do the opposite with your arms: when your legs go out, your arms come to your side, when your legs come back together, your arms go out.

Take it easy.

Start over.

Breathe. Get an ease to this.

Let your attention and awareness get more clear.

Rest.

Now try the thinking/ awaring version, like this: as you hop your legs out, have your arms at your side. As you hop your legs back together, let your arms go to the straight out, outside position. So, this is like a reverse jumping jack, feet out, arms in, and then: feet in, arms out.

Go slow.

Catch yourself and smile when you get confused and go back to the “normal” way.

Rest.

Then do it the “normal” way on purpose.

Rest.

And the backwards way, and see if you can do two or three of one way and two or three of the other without stopping completely in between.

Have some fun. Sense your five lines all the rest of today.

77: Other people are what they are, big surprise

Other people are what they are

This is a world full of people, perhaps too full, but that is a statement that could be put to the, “Is it true?” test.

So there are either too many people, or not enough people, or just the right amount of people, and this is life, there are other people around us.

And, the world being what it is, if we have any spunk and vitality and individuality, sooner or later this is going to “rub someone else the wrong way.” Meaning, they don’t like how we act, or think, or talk, or dress, or….

The list goes on and on,

Often what people get upset about is ---surprise, surprise—what we get upset about: they don’t think we listened, or respected, or appreciated, or help, or like them enough.

We’ve had these feelings about others.

Others have these feelings about us.

This is how life is.

Good.

So, we are playing the letting other people be what they are and loving it game today.

Look at it like this: they are pretty much fully going to keep doing what they always do. Maybe a little suggestion can get through to them. Usually not.

For now, try this today: just as much as possible love whatever their point of view, their wishes, their set up in life. What are they all about? How does their world work? What is “good” for them? What is “bad?” What is going well for them? What is not going so well?

Maybe you can be of use or service, maybe not, but leave yourself out of it, except to be happily and playfully present to the other people in your life today.

See what this feels like.

See what the present can bring for you and for them.

It could be quite amazing. Enjoy finding out.

76: Real choices, all the time

If reality is “enough” then what?

Today is like this: thinking and feeling and experiencing everything as two possibilities.

One, the possibility of “this sucks.” I.e. you don’t “like” the reality. So we’re at question three in the Katie work: How do you react when you attach to the thought…that in some way Reality should be different.

Two, the possibility in question four: Who or what would you be without the story/ thought/ belief that this little chunk of reality should be different. The possibility of “loving what is.”

And that doesn’t mean you can’t go get a pair of socks if your feet are cold, it’s just the you won’t take it personally that your feet are cold. That’s what is now, and doing something about it is one of the main games and joys of life.

So we put on socks and put on smiles and write letters, and go to work and get stuck in traffic.

Some things we can change, our socks. Some things we might not be able to change, the traffic.

And everything is fair game to try out: demanding that reality be the way we want it, and “letting” reality be what it is. As if we had a choice.

See how much you can smile today as reality keeps on being “what it is” without any push or pull from us.

And if you don’t feel like smiling, see what that is about.



And how does today play out if you play with seeing and hearing and sensing reality as something you can complain about and as something you can experience and love.


Enjoy.

75: what is reality? who am I? the hard ones.....

Who am I? What is reality?

These questions could be all the philosophy you ever need, and guess what?

You don’t have to know the answer.

You don’t even have to ask, you can go through life just roaring along, crashing here, doing great there, falling in love here, falling in hate there, feeling young and happy and strong here, and less so over here and then you die.

Good.

And this book, my goodness, if you have followed it so far, you are someone who is game to play the game of life to a richer dimension. And that dimension is called Waking Up.

And our breathing is always here.

And gravity, can we sense our five lines in the gravity of the situation, or our situation right now.

And with the breathing in awareness and the spine and legs and arms in awareness, we could today ask a bunch of times: Who am I?

What is reality?

Just to ask, and see if we can sense and experience our answer without any words.

That might be a delightful way to live today.

Let’s try it and see.

74: What's more? Rounding and arch.

On our back, letting ourselves arch and round in the back.

Lie on your back, and enjoy just this as a break from the busy “business” of upright, and often uptight, life.

Sense your five lines, two arms, two legs and your spine.

Smile and follow your breathing.

Now, raise your feet to standing, which means your feet are on the ground and your knees toward the sky.

Push your belly out and arch your back a little so that your lower back comes off the floor a little more.

Do this a number of times. Notice your breathing.

Rest.

Then return to feet standing, knees up. Put your hands behind your head and gently, not trying to go very far, raise your head to look at your knees. Pull in your stomach as you do this and feel the lower back for toward or to the floor.

Do this a number of times, and then rest.

Now raise your knees again, and tilt them slowly side to side. Two ways. Both legs at the same time. And one leg first, and then the other.

Do this a few times and then begin to arch your back and push out your belly as you do this.

Then for a few times tighten your belly and tilt your knees in the two ways to the side.

Which makes it easiest for the knees to tilt?

Rest.

Now, as you go side to side with your knees, push your belly out when your legs go to the side and when they come back in to the middle, lift your legs a little toward the floor as if to bring the knees toward your chest. Feel this a slight rounding in the back. Then, put the feet down and tilt your legs to the other side, push our your belly.

Do this is a number of times, each time seeing if you can discover something new about how you move, what it’s like to be present, how to move easily. Keep it up discovering all day.

73; Breathing and life and now

Breathing in, breathing out

Life is simple, and can be extremely complex. There are all sorts of people around us, sometimes, and they have all sorts of things they want of us, or ideas they have about us, or missions they want to accomplish.

We can have a score of projects we are either engaged in and hoping to be setting in motion.

We can have demands and responsibilities in our life, families and jobs and commitments to various organizations. We can have various circles of friends, each requiring its own set of rules and maintenance actions.

And that’s all good.

All food for waking up, IF the waking up is seen as something that is a full time activity, not something just for sitting on the pillow or the chair and doing our MEDITATION.

We can meditate ten hours a day, and if in the eleventh we can’t remember ourselves while we are eating our oatmeal or steak or talking to our friend, then the meditation is not broad enough.

All of life is a meditation, which is to say, all of life is a chance to live in the present.

Can you feel the Now of you, Now?

Can you add on your breathing as you read this?

Can you take as your aim today to follow your breathing as you go about everything?

Do this as a chance not to be good, but to be calm and happy as an ongoing state in anything and everything you do.

It seems “hard,” and it is, and so what? Have some fun waking up to your breathing from now until you go into sleep tonight and maybe even in your sleep, be aware of your breathing.

Pleasurably aware.

Good.

72: What to do?

What to do? Wake up while talking.

Yesterday we were playing with being more awake to ourselves while we are moving our tongues around and talking to other people. But, there is another side to this sweet story.

Yes. The other person.

To person to whom we were talking, also know as, the person we were talking to.

Good.

Waking up in talking is hard, silly, amazing, fun, and one of the last stages of really being awake.

Sitting in your room or cave and being calm and clear, that’s nice, and then we go out and get involved in the world.

We talk.

Presumably to other people.

They listen, or pretend to listen, or do a bad or good job of listening, but they are there.

Can we hear our words and sense the vibration (not spiritually “energy” vibration, but the actual vibration in our throats and chests and head) of our speaking, AND look at and see the other person as they listen.

Watching their interest or disinterest. Watching their eyes. Watching their breathing. Watching their happiness or unhappiness.

Watching them struggling to pretend to listen while actually just rehearsing inside the words they are going to say next. (Just the way we do, so often, so often, so often.)

It’s all good, and it’s a big job and it’s an amazing one, paying attention in the moment inward to real here and now sensations as we talk, and outward to the physical sight and sound of the other person.

This is a game. This is a life: waking up to other people as we are in conversation with them.

71: Sun of a gun

Son of a gun

People swear sometimes and sometimes they don’t. It’s all a matter of style and milieu and taste and training.

Swear in your head today if you never do.

Don’t swear today if you usually do.

Listen to your words today, as you speak them out of your mouth, no matter whether they are swearing or non swearing or just ordinary, “How are you doing?” “I’m fine, how are you words.”

Hear the sounds coming out of your mouth.

Relax.

Say things over just to hear if you can say the last sentence in a slightly different way.

Say things over just to hear with your sweet set of ears, tuned in to sound and to your vibration in mouth and chest and head, hear again, the words you said.

The words aren’t important.

You are, in the sense that you can wake up to now and sense your words as you are making words come out of your mouth.

Son of a gun.

You can say silly old fashioned things, and just enjoy the freedom to talk “differently” than you usually do.

You can enjoy the flavor of the words in your mouthy.

You can feel the breathing as you talk.

You can walk your talk, as in feeling and sensing your legs as you talk.

You can be aware of yourself as alive while you talk.

YOU CAN HAVE FUN, SUN OF A GONE, WHILE YOU TALK.

YES.,

70: Plenty, the simple version

Of what do we have plenty?

Plenty of breath.

Plenty of now.

Plenty of awareness.

Take a feeling of plenty into today in these three areas: breath, now, awareness.

We can always be aware of our toes or our nose or our ???

We can always be aware that we have awareness.

When we lose awareness we can come back to Now, and realize that we have awareness again and we can savor the now.

That’s it today: plenty of now.

Plenty of breath.

Plenty of awareness.

69: What to leave behind

What to leave behind?

Yesterday, leave yesterday behind, unless there is something sweet that brings a smile to your heart, and then bring that back a bit, and let it go, too.

What to leave behind:

Grudges, and things other people “did to you.” If they aren’t doing it now, feel happy, it’s over. If they are doing it right this moment, ask them to stop, or leave the room. If someone is say, on-going-ly mean in your life, learn to love them as a person, and maybe leave the situation, maybe not. (Leave behind blaming and see if you can discover the pain in them that is leading to the meanness. What can you do to ease this pain?)

All sorts of amazing things can happen just by leaving behind the “they are bad” story.

Worries in the mind. Leave that behind.

A fearful attitude about all the “things you need to get done.” Leave that behind.

The feeling of slavery and concern that comes from getting hooked into other people’s approval or disapproval: leave that behind.

What’s left? The present. Leave everything else behind.

That’s the game today, leave, leave, and wake up to Now.

68: Breathing out two ways

More breath, now some variation.

Breathe out and see if you have a tendency to bring your belly in or push it out.
Play around and see what you like best.

Now breathe in and see which way, belly in (and chest expanded) or belly out is the way you like to breathe in.

Now lie on your back, and breathe out and pull your belly in. Do this slowly. Don’t think about the in breath, just let it happen. Each out breathe, pull your belly in and push the air out through your nose. Don’t move any part of your spine, for now, nor your pelvis. Just push the air out and pull your belly in a number of times.

Rest.

Now, again letting the in breath take care of itself, push the air out, but in rapid little bursts. Then rest a bit and do another rapid series of belly in out breaths.

Rest.

Now try the opposite: push your belly out as you breathe out. Again don’t worry about the in breath. But you might wan to “practice” with sucking the belly in and expanding your chest on the in breath a few times, if you need some help figuring out how to push your belly out on the out breath.

Then just forget the in breath and push your belly out, slowly, as you push your breath out.

Rest.

Now, do this fast, in spurts, belly out breath out. Several times.

Rest.

Now play with opposing: three times belly out on the out breath, and three times belly in. Do this back and forth.

Rest. Play with your breathing off and on during the day.

67: To heaven, one breath remembered/ sensed/felt/ enjoyed at a time

One breath and awakening at a time

We breathe in. The first sentence of the book was something to that effect. Maybe the last will be a breathing sentence also.

This is our sentence in life: you want to live, breathe. It’s the law of motion, the law of life. No breathing, no fire inside (metaphorical, and the real deal: oxygen combining with our food to combine real heat in our real bodies), no fire inside no energy, no energy, no motion, no motion, no life.

So be it.

And most life doesn’t require and/ or have the gift that we humans have, the gift of awareness.

We can be aware that we are breathing.

Right now, we can be aware that we are breathing.

And right now, too.


This is so cool. You don’t have to wait until the “time is right” to be aware of your breathing. You can be healthy or not so. You can be beautiful, or not so. Young or old, rich or poor, blah or blah, you get the point and even while reading these little ink spots on the page, or pixels on the computer, or hearing these vibrations in the air, you are either: breathing in, at a pause between breathing in and breathing out, breathing out, or at a pause between breathing out and breathing in.

Holding the breath you have to be in one of those pauses, and whatever we start up doing once the holding is done gives us a clue where the pause was.

And that doesn’t matter.

Doesn’t even matter that we are breathing in or out.

Just the game matters, and only to you if you want it to. What fun can you have today seeing sensing noticing feeling enjoying exploring just where you are in the breathing game?

That’s it.

Heaven is this moment with nothing more required. Following or sensing our breathing is one way to come to the moment. Keep returning and returning. Enjoy. Enjoy.

66: Pick up Sticks

Pick up sticks

Lean over and touch the ground.

Did you keep your legs straight?

I hope not. We don’t need to “try” so hard when we move in ways that are fun and interesting as we do them easily.

That sentence is worth reading a few times.

And again, bend your knees, and lean down and touch the ground and let your hands hang out on the ground and let your head flop freely. And here, straighten your legs just a little, just as much as is easy, not any more and go from more bent to back here to easy.

And as you do this, slowly, easily rotate your head right ad left. And enjoy this. And aware this.

And rest, standing up “straight-ish.”

Then bend toward the ground again, and in the leaning over position, rotate your hips right and left, in a slow and easy and gently way that makes sense to your spine, feeling the vertebrae twisting more down at the bottom of your spine (which is higher up in the air) and less at the top of your spine (which is closer to the ground.)

Do this awhile and rest just leaning/ hanging over like this and play with the possibility of turning / rotating your head in one direction, while your hips rotate in the other.

Then come to a standing rest.

Now, come near a wall, or a chair to balance, and lift one knee towards your chest and take it with one hand, and pull it towards your chest. Do this slowly and experiment with a way that just seems to move the leg and a way the seems to let your pelvis curl in as if it, too, wanted to come nearer your head.

Notice your breathing, and see what form of breathing would make this most easy.

Undo and rest. And then play with the other knee and leg like this. Rest. And then touch the floor again. Feel good. Notice spine all day. And if you see any sticks, pick up a few.

65: Feeling Alive

Feeling alive

Coffee and cookies can get you feeling “good” for awhile, as can a drink or two, or your very special football/ baseball/ basketball team “winning” their game.

You can smile at a child who smiles back.

You can make a green smoothie of Kale and banana, or parsley and pear.

You can take a long quiet walk in Nature.

You can jump on a trampoline or take a brisk walk or run and bike at a bit of a pace.

You can smile and breathe easily, smiling each time you breathe out and feeling and sensing yourself as you breathe in.

Or you can smile and breathe easily each time you breathe in, and sense and feel your five lines as you breathe out.

You can sit in a chair and do as nothing as you can, and let your breathing and your thoughts entertain you, and when your thoughts start to run you, back off from them and just watch, and let them float on by.

You can write down all the thoughts that bother you and do the work of Byron Katie, or you can crumble them up and burn them, or you can look at the words of the thoughts and sense yourself as a living being right now, and realize how much more real you are right now as a living being than those words on that paper.

You can take a walk and recite to yourself five or ten or fifty things you like about being alive.

You can do all sorts of things to enjoy this Being Alive, Feeling Alive thing.

Try some of the above, or make up your own and have an ordinary day that is a wonderful day.

How simple and repeatable and low impact and worry hurry money free can your happiness today be? How simple? How discovered rather than planned? How ongoing without efforting, as you go about your “usual” day?

64: There's always more, but what...?

Sixty four and more, but more what?

More love, we could say, in total New Age bullshit splendor, and it would actually be true, but what does it mean?

Well, this is the essence of Christianity: love God, love your neighbor, love your enemy.

Does this sound like love everything? If our neighbor is the Earth, and it is, the commandment seems to be: Love it All.

And how, it has been asked for millennia, how to get there?

Well, kind of like this: do the work of Mss Byron Katie and you end up loving everything.

And here’s the gift: some person snarls at us. We do the Work, and we end up loving them. They keep snarling, or not, their business. We love and are free.

More love.

How to pull that off. Ah, a nice muscle to develop, eh? And that’s the game today: love more.

Love what?

Love anything, and if you can’t, if I can’t, if we can’t, we can do the Work of Byron Katie.

Or ask God to help.

Either way, get it done: go to the love, and don’t be judgmental of ourselves if we “can’t,” because we can, it’s just “work,” which is why it’s called the “Work” of Byron Katie.

Ask the questions: Is it true? Can I absolutely know it’s true? Who and how am I when I believe and attach to the thought? Who and how am I when I don’t have the thought, or don’t attach to the thought?

And the turn around, what is their to learn about me from my judgments of others,

Lots.

And that learning can be one more thing, one more complicated and simple all at one dance of life, one more dance to love. Go to it today. Have joyful, learning fun and waking up to loving it all, today. And all your days.

63: Seeing the tree, part 2

Looking at a tree, 2

Some have said: if you want to learn about Love, spend time in Nature.

I am one of those people.

We’ve had one look at a tree day, already, back some thirty days, so time to put Nature in our hearts and minds and awareness as the center of our day.

(Of course, if we are playing the sensing our 5 lines game, the two arms, two legs and one spine, we are in the nature of being alive in a human body, and the nature of having an awareness to be aware of being alive and to be aware of our 5 lines. This is a particularly useful way to live one’s live.
End of mini-sermon.)

Today, sensing our five lines or not, let’s turn a sweet and useful part of our attention on nature outside our windows, nature outside our homes, nature outside our eyes and skulls and brains.

Of course, this body, this long tall skeleton on two feet with the look see listen hear smell and taste stuff up top was designed in Nature and by Nature, so hey, let’s make today a day of:

“Be aware of the miracle of being in a human body while being out in Nature, or looking out at Nature, or imagining Nature.”

What’s out there to look at touch listen to feel smell taste? Depends on where you are the season your cloths and time and space and spirit.

And, get out some, even ten minutes, no matter how cold, even in the gosh darn rain, a little bit, and see what you can do to fall in love with the source of Earthly life.

Let Nature remind you of God. Let your connection to God remind you of Nature. Let one spill into each other in the silence and peace and ease that is being in the present.

Do your best, but don’t try too hard. Just be awake to Now, Nature and Love/ God. See how they flow in and out together.

62: Down and up, rotation, enjoyment, coming to now

Lean down, reach up, breathe, twist, enjoy.

Sit in a chair or on a low bench of rock. Breathe and feel yourself in a more or less upright position. Now take your right hand inside your left knee and feel down your leg to the heel of your left foot, maybe even to the floor. Go up and down the lower left leg with your right hand. If your hand can go farther than the floor, let it scoot along the edge of your foot and around to the other side, and then come back up again.

Come up each time to a more or less upright position.

Rest.

Then try the whole thing the other way: lean down with your left hand on the inside of your right calf and head toward the heel, and maybe even around your foot, and then back up. Don’t strain or effort. Just do what’s enjoyable and each time come back to more or less upright.

Rest

Now get fancier, take your right hand down the inside of your left calf again, and when you bring the right hand up, keep bringing it higher and higher until it’s at face height, and then let it keep going up and to the right, rotating your spine to the right as you go, and watching your hand going up and to the right with your eyes and turning your head to see it, too. Then come back down, all the way to your left foot.

Go slowly and enjoy this, feeling your shape the whole time. Then rest.

And do the other side, left hand down the inside of your right calf and then up and to the left, as you arch and twist to the left and watch your hand with head and eyes. A number of easy and enjoyable times.

Rest.

If you want to get fancy, do this in standing, taking one hand down the opposite leg toward the floor, and then up and to it’s own side as you twist your spine and head to watch the hand. Go slowly, figure this out and enjoy it.

Rest and then play this game on the other side, left hand down to right foot, and then up, up and rotating to the left as your whole spine unfurls that way. Breathe and enjoy this.

Breathe and enjoy your day.

What would a day be like of “thinking” less (in the words in the head = “thinking” way) and sensing our arms and legs and spine more?