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.

92: But I don't want to forgive. Ah, to be human and stuck, welcome to the LIfe on Earth show

But I don’t want to forgive

Don’t. Until it happens not by decision but by ease.

You have someone bothering you. Oh, well.

Keep playing with question #3 and question #4 (of the Byron Katie work): Who are you and how do you react and how do you feel when you believe and attach to the thought?

(Can almost all the inner agony thoughts be boiled down to a “should” or “shouldn’t” thought? Yes.)

Compare and distinguish who you are and how you feel when you don’t believe the thought, don’t attach to it, don’t “buy into” the “should” or the “shouldn’t” about the other person.

Just go back and forth and realize the choice is yours.

It’s not about “forgiving.”

It’s about choosing where to put our attention: on the “should” or “shouldn’t” we attach to another person, or on the present where we can experience our experience right now.

Without words.

Even if the “bad” other person is right in the room, snarling at us. We can just look. No “they shouldn’t snarl” words.

They can be yelling at us. We can step farther away, so as not to hurt our ears, and watch them go through whatever they are going through.

Obviously something is bothering them.

Maybe we hurt their feelings. Maybe they don’t feel loved. Maybe they have old issues they are acting out.

Doesn’t matter. Just watch, and if it looks like they need a hug, ask if they’d like one. If it looks like they need an enemy, and you don’t feel like being yelled at anymore, bow and walk out and go do something else.

They are who they are.

It’s not forgiveness that matters. It’s the freedom to follow our breathing, and sense ourselves and look at them without demands or complaints, the freedom to be a real human being. This is what matters. Keep up living this way, today.

day 91: Go Inside, wake up to Loving the "enemy"

Peaceful "interior" of a different sort. Photo by my daughter, paintings by my son's ex-gal

Go inside, be happy, and if not….do the Work

My Christian friend, Dick Staub, offers Jesus as the way to find our lives centered in love. He and I agree a lot that one center of a real, authentic and full life, is the ability to “love your enemies.” The heart, our heart, is the heart of the matter. And our heart, holding onto any little bit of a grudge, can't love the way a heart so loves to do (and be).

Another way this could be said, is to feel good toward, and treat well, people who don’t necessarily feel go toward you, nor necessarily treat you well.

So here’s today’s project: go inside and let your mind touch, with love, those people who “bother” you the most.

Don’t struggle.

Don’t wish them to be different.

Don’t take their treatment of you personally.

Either see them with the love Jesus would, or use the help, as you know it, of Jesus, to get you to a place of love and appreciation and enjoyment of these people.

Or use the Work of Byron Katie, if you need to come to inner peace that way, or find it useful. Indeed, you could be a fine Christian, and take advantage of the four questions and the turn around to help you return to the place Jesus wants us all to live.

Either way, go inside, let your mind roam freely, and then come to the place where you can smile about the stuff that bothers most people.

This is only a life time’s work, this little section today, and a life is composed of days, and today is a day, so enjoy many times of doing little except going within and finding peace.

And making this a peace that gets work, by letting your thoughts wander the to “troubling” people, over and over, until there is no “trouble” left.

Play with, and work with this dilemma and challenge and gift of our life on Earth: other people are jerks sometimes. We are jerks sometimes.

We can be present and we can find a way to see them as the same as us and love them. This is the inner game for today.

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.

43: an asskicker, 20 good things for the "enemy"

Turns arounds good and “bad”

Find in your mind and heart someone of whom you are quite fond. Just enjoy remembering them. Then, write down three or four of their traits you really admire. Then write down three or four that you don’t admire. Think of this person, and see if you can smile and feel happy at each of these traits, the so called “good” ones and the so called “bad” ones.

If you can’t smile at the “bad” traits, then write down the whole judgment: “So and so should…” or “So and so shouldn’t…” and do the 4 questions and the turn around.

When you are done, and able to think about your friend with all the good traits and smile and all the “bad” traits and smile, then move on to this section of the work:

Write down each of these traits, good and “bad” one more time, and this time before you write the trait down, write these words, “I am….”

See, of course, how this can bring a smile to you when you find the turn around of both good and “bad” from your friend in you.



Now, for the deeper work, the heavier lifting. Pick someone along the line of an ex-spouse, or someone you “really don’t like.” And for them, write down three or four “good” traits and three or four “bad” traits. With the “enemy” type person it will be more tempting to write more “bad” than “good” traits.

Don’t.

Actually, let’s go even more. Do this: write down twice or three times as many fine qualities to this enemy of yours, than you write down “bad” traits.

See if you can smile at them all, “good” and “bad,” and if not, do the Work of Byron Katie.

Then, finishing this all up, write down all their traits, “good” and “bad” starting with, “I am….” Live today like that.

what's it like to be awake while talking

wonderful

bright

full awareness of our own bodies, breathing

light coming in, awareness

seeing, enjoying, listening to the other

no words getting ready to say in our heads

no hurry to say our bit, or our next sentence

feeling our tongue and our resonance as we speak

hearing our words as we speak

realizing if we are saying something new and
true
or
just running
some
familiar same old crap
tape

loving what the other says

curious,
excited,
in love:
who is this other person????

Christmas coming, the geese are getting worried, parenting Wed,

one day
we
will all be dead

apparently
one day
a long time ago
or long long
time ago
depending on your sense of timing
the Jesus child was born

he was clear on His life's purpose:
to be one with God
to speak for God
to help people find the Kingdom of Heaven within
to try to put out this radical message:
love your neighbor
love your enemy

a big job he/ He set out to do
and with some miracles to jazz up the interest
and some good parables
and a great salesman (Paul)
some of his/ His stuff and ideas are
still around

and some days
we love our neighbors
and love our enemies
and even
gasp
love our selves

wednesday is
"supposed" to be about parenting:

well,
sometimes the little shits
seem like enemies
and then
we have to remember:
whose idea was it to bring them into the world
and
what is it that they don't understand
and
what is it that we don't understand
about how we are contributing
to their being
in one of their awful states

and then,
as always,
when we learn how we are asleep
and operating out of habit
and control programs
and forgetting to listen,
we can breathe
and be
now
and listen to them
and our own life

and then we can be happy
and when we are really happy
the enemy thing
dissolves

and if this doesn't work
then the work will

ciao
chris