Day Fifty-five, Being Alive

Being alive. Fully alive.

What does it mean to be alive?

This can seem like an obvious question, and it certainly seems like a relative to the “Who am I really?” question.

And it is it’s own sweet inquiry.

What does it mean to be alive?

How much of our day is spent on something that might have no real purpose to a life that is simple lived as a life.

When in our day, and when in our lives, do we act fully alive, aware of this being alive, and even more important, aware of the fully alive-ness of others?

And this can sometimes feel almost tragic, as we see from our eyes and feel from our hearts as we live in the present, that many around us are just going through some pre-established motions, not at all aware that they are alive.

And so be it. What is our “job” around other people? Is being present to being alive an avenue to help them, no sermon, just example, say, to waking to their alive-ness?

Who knows. Something worth discovering, this power of our aliveness to wake the aliveness of those around us. And then, of course, on some days and in some times, the fully aliveness of those around us is the wake up call we need.

A day of gifts today, the gift of our knowing our aliveness and their aliveness as our gift to others. Their vitality and aliveness as their gift to us.

A good day.


Come into the present today, as all days, and today with this goal: to remember we are alive and that others around us are alive and to feel, sweetly and grandly, the miracle of all that.

Day 45: Moving Head and knees in side lying

Lie on your side again, knees and legs on top of each other. Knees in front of you with the thighs more or less straight out from your body. This is not, NOT, not about “doing it right.” This is about going slow and being present and getting easy feelings in you as well as the excitement of learning.

So, pillow again under your head.

Bring both knees toward your chest, sliding them along the floor. And then bring them back to the “neutral you started in.

Do this slowly and feel the backs of you involved in this, feel your stomach, feel your spine, feel yourself curling in.

Rest.

Now, put your hands behind your head and elbow point roughly the same way your nose does. If this doesn’t work, put your bottom hand under your cheek. Here, bend and bring your head toward your knees, and back, many times, feeling chest, ribs, stomach, back.

Rest. And then combine the two: knees toward head and head toward knees and back to “neutral.” Rest again.

Now, bring your knees backward behind you, leaving your legs in the bended position. Feel the using of your back. And return back to “neutral.”

Rest.

Now using head in your hands, bring your head back many times and return back to “neutral.” Rest.

Combine these last two: head and knees both back and keep returning back to “neutral.” Rest.

Now, do the curling in with head and pelvis forward and unfurling with head and pelvis back. Feel the all of you involved in this.

Rest.

For the day, remember this in imagination and play with stomach in and using your back to round and arch yourself.

Day Twenty-Two: Be of Good Cheer

TWENTY-TWO: BE OF GOOD CHEER
The present is always here

The present is always here. Today’s game is to be present, as is the game of every day. To be present in your body, noticing both arms and both legs and spine and breathing.

And to be of good cheer.

Walking in and out of your house, sense your arms and legs and spine. Notice your breathing. Be of good cheer.

Talking to people, even people we give the story of "troublesome," or "awful," (and of course, what's the turn around there?) be of good cheer.

Driving a car, walking, riding a bicycle: be of good cheer.

Making your food: be of good cheer.


Hint: slowing down, being present, not falling into the rushing to the next thing way of being, this will immensely help this game.

The game, even as you read this: be present in your sensing, and

Be of Good Cheer.

Now, now, now.

That’s the goal.

And what happens when we “fail,” and get in a grumpy mood. Well, to hell with the whole project, right? We suck, life sucks, this is too much positive thinking crap, doesn’t the writer know about mean ex-mates, and financial troubles and health problems, to say nothing of global warming and slavery and abuse of women and pesticides and all the other “bad stuff.”

Well, actually, the writer rides a bicycle, and borrows rather than owns a car, and tries to grow or buy local most of his food, and still: the game today is to be of good cheer.


And so when we find that we’ve “messed up,” which is to say, “forgotten ourselves,” and have drifted out of good cheer, so what? The world isn’t over. We get an A+ for just playing this game, so why not be of good cheer about forgetting and remembering again. What a miracle to remember the present.