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.

Day Two: Arms and Legs of Our Lives

We walk about on two legs. We reach out into the world with two arms, hands at the end. Might our life be more present if we were sensing our arms and legs and hands and feet as we went about our day?

Can we sense our arms and legs while sensing our breathing and being present?

That's the game for today.

Hard?

Sure.

And being awake is pretty amazing. Give it a go and see what life opens up for you.

Hands are handy. Fingers are amazing. Sense from shoulder blade out to fingers while you are walking, talking, reading, work.

Hard, and very wow.

Feet hold us up, often are forgotten, we can sense them, and the toes even sometimes and sense all the way up to our hip sockets. This is a lot of us. This is a lot of very concrete "paying attention" to ourselves.

This can work wonders for wanting "attention" from others.

And arms and legs and fingers and toes, what a lot of awaring practice this can be.

Work pleasurably hard. Laugh when you forget, find lots of pleasure and curiosity when you succeed.

This is just you, in this moment, breathing and having these two wonderful arms, two wonderful hands, two wonderful legs, two wonderful feet. (Most of us, and to realize that all don't make the sensing and waking to ourselves all the more precious, don't you think?)

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.

day 42: what to do: less, and wait, and pause and YES

WHAT TO DO:
Take a pause

You’ve finished one thing and have been “thinking” toward the end of that thing about the “next thing,” and are about to rush from the one to the next, and

Don’t.

Sit down. Look at the sky. Follow your breathing. Sense your five lines. Think about a funny line from a book or a movie or your life.

Take a stroll.

Hop a bit.

Lie down and wiggle around.

Do something else. Not eating, that is too easy a break and often doesn’t really give us the emptiness that refuels.

Don’t talk on the phone.

Just a little bit of nothing.

Be “between things” and be empty. Cultivate this as a spiritual and a practical game.

Do this once or ten times a day.

Do it right now before you read the end of this section.


Really, put the book down and do nothing.


Ah, isn’t that nice, the nothing of coming back to breathing and gravity and bones and awareness.

This is our true nature.


We need quiet to hear our intuition.

We need sensing and presence to be really at home in the Now.

We need a break from the rush of life to find the inner flow of our existence.

This is more important that we realize.

And it feels great. Enjoy this today. Enjoy this today. Yes.