#1054: If God is love, is Valentine's day holy?

Here's how to be present:

Don't try
Just realize:
you are alive

go with the obvious:
you are breathing
and
you are in gravity
and
you are in light
and
there is sound
around

that's four anchors to the now:

your breath

the bones and flesh of your legs and spine and arms creating
the shape
whatever shape of you
is now
right now
in gravity

feel gravity's pull
feel / sense your arms and legs and spine

that's two

three:
realize experience pay attention to enjoy:
whatever light
is
right now
coming in your eyes

four:
sounds
ears
what's the nowness
of that

that's a good solid anchor

in bed
walking
fixing breakfast
eating
talking
quieting
driving a car
working
talking on phone;;

breathing
light
gravity in arms and legs and spine
sound in ears

this is you
alive
now

full
sweet
amazing wonderful


And if God is love, is Valentine's day holy?

if God is love
every day is holy

every hour

every moment

every now

wow

good

Day Thirty-six: The Importance of Love

We can wonder how this life came to be our gift. We can appreciate the glory of other people. We can practice and perfect loving other people in all the strange and amazing, and often “annoying” ways they manifest. Good.

Other people are a gift to us, and sometimes we remember, sometimes not.

Oh, well.

If we are present, we might experience other people more as what they are: amazing and complicated creatures, almost all of whom want more love, appreciation and approval in their lives and almost all of whom forget that they are not the center of the Universe.

An easy way to remember this is to be present enough to our own feelings and emotions to realize when we imagine we are the center of the Universe, to realize when we are stuck in wanting more love, appreciation and approval from others.

This is good.

They are just like us.

Can we love them just as they are, by being so present that we see people as light and sound and spark and craziness and brilliance, and don’t have any words for what we see.

Just see them in the present.

Keep awaring our own breathing and arms and legs and spine and look and allow them doing whatever they are doing and however they are.

Doing the work, over and over: here is how I feel and live in question #3, when I believe they should be such and such a way.


And here ( in Question #4 land) is how I feel and live and realize when I don’t have any attachment to them being any different than exactly as they are.

And maybe in here some kind of leadership that isn’t demanding.

Maybe in here, some sort of playfulness that isn’t mean. Don’t be too good.

Enjoy anyone and everyone you encounter today. Don’t especially believe them. Don’t take yourself seriously, except the amazing serious/ not serious gift of awareness as the gift of life and the gift of knowing, now, now, now: yes, I am alive, and knowing this as experience of your experience right not.

Not as words.

Even these directions, words. Let them be merely an indicator, a pointer of a way to go and be.

Good: enjoy me, says God.

Enjoy me, says life.

Enjoy me, says the trouble and the good times.

Enjoy me.

Yes

Day 20: A peek into the Other Universe

In the fourth question of the work of Byron Katie, we ask: #4: Who or what would I be if I didn’t have this thought, or didn’t attach to this thought?

This isn’t say, “let it go,” though if you can, great.

If you can’t, do this question: imagine just for a second or two, or longer, that the other person is doing whatever they do to drive you crazy, bother, “hurt” you.

And you see them doing it in your mind’s eye.

But you don’t have the story that they should be any different. You don’t believe the should or the shouldn’t.

You aren’t at war with “What Is.”

See how this feels.

Contrast it with how you feel when you do believe (#3) that they should be different, or that the world should be different.

Just notice.

No requirement to shift, change, or as I’ve said, to “let go.” Just notice.

And today, go for all four questions when any unhappiness comes along:

#1: Is it true?

#2: Can I absolutely know that this is true?

#3 How do I react when I attach to this thought?

#4: Who or how would I be without attaching to this thought?

See what happens.

Day Eleven, Toward Heaven, 2, emotions without words

Emotions can crowd in and “take over” our lives. Another way toward freedom and love is to separate out the sensation of an emotion and the words/ chatter/ obsessive story that usually accompanies.

Yesterday we gave ourselves a real treat, and begin to experience and “play” with emotions as actions we can vary in length, and intensity. As actions we can perhaps even see as just one choice among many (someone gives us a hard time? Try out angry. Try out curious. Try out amused. Try out loving.)


Today, we are going to come back to the core of this book: unity with nature and with now.

As creatures on the Earth, we are always in some Now.

As emotional creatures, we sometimes have “feelings” and emotions. These feelings always have a here and now set of sensations: something happens in our breathing, something happens at various places in our body.

Almost always we have words around the motion. “He should have given my more respect.” “That was a mean thing to do.” “This isn’t fair.” “So and so is so selfish.” “How can they do this to me.”

These words distract us from the present. These words tend to be of a sort that we go over and over them, and often try to talk to/ complain to someone else and get them to agree with our words, agree that we are “right” and someone else is “wrong.” But even without complaining, we can go over and over with these words.

And today the game is to keep the sensations, get into them with as much awareness and presence as possible, and to let the words slide.

Just sense how the emotions and feelings are resonating as here and now experience. Be curious and attentive to this here and now experience. Don’t dilute it with any words.

See what happens when you do that.

i'm in love and so what

one of my favorite girlfriends, Bella Bella



what a terrible way
to say it
right:

"i'm in love
and so
what?"

and yet
and yet

what is more normal
than being in
love?

what is more
natural
to our
human
being
status?

our being
is love
and
to
be
"in love"
is
just
(just!)
to wake back
up
to all
we
are

before we
coat
ourselves
with the suggestions
and advice
and misperceptions
of others

life
is
one waking
and
lucky
gift
moment
after
another

to be
in
love
is
the
so what
of being
naturally
back
where
we
always
could
be

yes