Friday and the sun is shining

Some place are getting cold
and maybe they had beautiful days
somewhere between June and October

in Austin we had about
zero
and now it's
beautiful
so maybe that's "fair"

or maybe it's the way the globally
warming Earth is playing
its game this year

for whatever reason
I commend you
all
to take some time
out
doors

today

not rushing to the car

not "getting a lot done"
in your garden

not even doing your "power walk"
or walk and talk walk

and what's left:
just go out
and see where your feet
lead you

is that fair

on a Friday?

when there is
"too much to do"?

yes

why?

someday you will take
your last breath
on this planet Earth

what happens next is belief
superstition, possibility,
who knows

but the last breath comes
and as it approaches

you get to be present
to the immense glory
of being alive
and having been alive

fall
does that to people
somehow

gives the preview to the
looking back
and feeling the immense
glory and wonder of
it all

so fall out of your routine
and into the fresh air

and feel experience see hear
notice enjoy
whatever happens

good

Day Thirty: Waking to the Life we are living each moment

To be reborn, this is our birthright, as any moment when we wake back to the realization: I am alive, right now. This is my life.

To be alive—this is true. And we forget. Luckily, in every moment, including is famous one and only one right now, we can wake up to this miracle—I am alive, right now.

We can remember our breathing. Ah, yes, a good sign that we are alive, this breathing thing. We can remember our breathing and sense the breath coming in and out, the shifts in our ribs and lungs and back and sides and diaphragm area. We can notice something more profound: the shift in our sense of who and how we are, when we return home to following our breathing.

Knowing we are alive as a felt experience. Not just, “Oh, yes I am breathing.” Not just noticing the breath come in and out and sensing how our bodies are going about that. But sensing at an awareness level, how something like “Who we really are” wakes up when we bring our attention to the felt and experienced NOW.

Shift happens when we wake up to now.

This can be another set of words, another set of rules, or it can be an experience we find delightful, and uplifting, and calming all at the same time.


This might be our central “job” in life, for without being present, we are condemned to always re-acting (over and over, re and re and re acting) in the ways we’ve been programmed and taught ourselves to act.

And with awareness, we can take that little step back, that little awareness induced pause, and in that pause we can notice: now my urge is to be angry, or now I am tensing myself as I type, or now I am rushing with my food and not really tasting each bite, or now I am not listening when someone is talking but am busy preparing my next little speech.

But from the wakefulness of now, we can feel these tendencies, and in that space and time that the pause and our awareness give us, we can decide: do I really want to express my anger now? Wouldn’t the food taste better and my health feel happier if I tasted each bite? What would it be like to actually listen to this person for who they are, and not as the lead in to what important me, me, me has to say next?


This is life. A happy choice: to wake up to now.

From this wakefulness, certain Christian concepts, like praying ceaselessly, or loving your enemy, become not a tough burden, but a delightful route to being Fully Alive.

We can be what we’ve been programmed to be, or we can wake to the moment and act from what we really see and hear and notice is going on. This is huge. This is delightful.

This can be our “game” today, and is it a game or a necessity to remember we are alive in all situations, and to look out on all the others in our life and remember: they are alive?

Maybe both.

You decide, and not in words, but in your hearts while you experience yourself treating yourself as you treat yourself when you are present and you experience yourself treating other people as you are present. Experience the difference. Learning is noticing differences. Go ahead and learn. This is everything.

And if God is beyond words and concepts and limitations, what would loving God be like from the present? Maybe very different than that we’ve been programmed to believe. The discovery is yours. The experience is yours.

And start small. One breath at a time. What is the experience of coming home to yourself in the moment. Taste it, savor it, learn from it, live from it.

Good.

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.

Thoughts toward health and anti-aging

Echinacea

Nice little start on
this over at yoga/health blog,
"Thoughts toward anti-aging, and August"
and why not
ramble
a bit more?

So::::

What is health,
anyway?

Getting outside
when you feel the call.

Feeling the call
when
you have the call.

Eating good food
early in
the day.

Eating food you
grew
near your home
no car between you
and the yum
yum
your backyard
your land
a bike ride away at some other organic
clean
sweet land


Checking out
as much raw food as you can
sweetly
and non-rigidly enjoy,
and what a time of year now
is to enjoy that.

Staying present.

Loving the people
and stuff
you could let bother you
and drive you crazy.

Doing some sweet movement
where learning,
learning,
sensing,
awaring,
nowing,
and discovering
and
funning
are all
part of
the package.

More
stuff, too.

Love
laugh
land
learn

all
good

you
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