Category: Teachings

He is the truest friend of my life, and likely of the before of this life. 

How hesitant I was, for the longest stretch of time, to acknowledge (even to myself) the reality of what I sensed again and again. For I had always been inclined to roll my eyes at someone’s account of a perceived “visitor” from the beyond, a being from another realm than this one of three dimensions, where time and physicality are operative.

My expression for it was “woo-woo.” How then could I accuse myself of the same nonsense?

* * * * *

Again and again I averted my skeptical eyes. Pretended not to feel what happened, at intervals. Struggled to dismiss, deny. Until that was no longer possible.

There was the palpable “maleness” of the visitor. The undeniably tender ways he had of trying to get through to me. An unmistakable whimsy attending it all. There was his orientation to me: for he was so profoundly knowing of my interior. Wishing me well, always. Undeniably wise. Endlessly patient, it seemed.

After a while, the energy it took to talk myself out of it ceased to be worth the effort, when everything in me wanted simply to engage. To take it in. To listen — if not exactly to things spoken, in a language sort of way, nevertheless unmistakable in their intent. Clearly something was being offered in the way of reflection. Guidance. Encouragement.

When did I at last turn frankly toward him, even unto speaking, addressing him aloud? This was many years ago, by now (more than 20). I recall the moment vividly, where exactly I was, when suddenly — quietly — I felt I was not alone.

“Well, hello,” I said, as if we’d been chatty forever. “You’re here, aren’t you?” I felt a smile.

Always, it seems, he is prone to smile. Always wishing me well, tenderly amused at me.

* * * * *

No one in my entire life — no friend or lover, no family member — has known me as well as he does. He knows me better than I know myself. Again and again this has been made clear to me. Nor have I felt so altogether cherished, in an unconditional way.

How patiently he has attended me through episodes of blind repetition of old patterns, and through so many turning points. Times I was on the verge of an uncharacteristic gutsiness, contemplating taking a stand, a risk, a leap beyond what my habitually tentative self would do. I didn’t always sense his presence — until the moment had ripened into a clear resolve. It was then that I felt him. Rejoicing, laughing, as if clapping me on the back, saying Good for you! This happened the night I felt fear leave me.

Nor would he have remotely judged me, had I erred on the side of the familiar comfortable timidity. Which I (a thousand times) did do.

How very patient he has been. How much he has helped me to see.

* * * * *

Like the time — most memorable of all — I had come to the conclusion that dementia had taken hold of me. Having looked in the eye the misunderstood “truth” of my recent vivid mental dissolution, I had set about taking what I saw as the necessary practical steps to set my affairs in order: to sort out an initial doctor visit, anticipating subsequent referrals to specialists, and to generate lists of possible sources of practical help, having to do with financial assistance and the looming need for bodily help in my living circumstances.

But my primary concern, during the intervals when my mind was able to focus, was to keep my diminished state from my daughter, who was happily planning for her semester abroad. It was to be the final chapter of her undergraduate degree, on the other side of the planet. She was to get on an airplane six months from the time the alarm bells began their worrisome racket in my head. 

This adventure was asking of her an unprecedented (and atypical) courage. She was right at the limit of her comfort zone: she wanted the adventure that much. I was thrilled for her.

But how on God’s earth was I to conceal from her sensitively-attuned eyes what was occurring inside her mother? For I knew if she detected it, she would not go, loathe to put such a distance between us at that time of my deteriorating life. She had no idea what state I was in. How concerned I was — how anxious I was feeling about the prospect of her detecting one unfamiliar strangeness after another, with our seeing one another so often in those days.

With my having not felt anything remotely like anxiety for so many years by then, how bizarre it was to now feel at its mercy. While I had pretty much made my peace with what I truly understood to be dementia starting up, getting practical in my orientation to it, the episodes of anxiety were something else altogether.

How desperate I was. Not knowing where else to turn, I reached toward the loving, all-knowing presence.

* * * * *

My first mistake (well, the error following the big one I’d already made, mis-reading what was going on inside me and my mind) was to attempt to frame the sort of help I imagined I needed. I said, in the quiet inside my chest, Can you help me deal with this anxiety? Knowing he was already exquisitely aware of what I was going through.

I felt that soft smile envelope me. The tender presence said (without “saying”), Only love.

My next mistake was to suppose I understood the intended meaning of what he said — based on the previous error of assuming that what I needed help with was anxiety caused by gathering dementia. A string of errors was now following me around, none of which I had yet questioned the “truth” of.

What I understood “only love” to mean was this: when an episode of anxiety took hold of the concerned heart and mind of the mother of the would-be world traveler, all I need do was to gently re-direct my attention to the love I feel for my daughter. Or to the love for anything at all, really. Focus on love itself, and the anxiety would dissolve, at least for the moment. This I did, and it helped.

* * * * *

Weeks had to go by, with plenty of living-and-observing meanwhile, before the intended meaning of those two words would explode in me with great force. This is not dementia, dear heart, that has taken you in its fist. It is love: only love.

And so it was. When the dawning of clarity finally came, did he ever smile then.

He was right again. When will I stop supposing I know what’s going on, ever?

But he is so patient. Love incarnate, I am tempted to say. But he is (so far) invisible. He occupies no space.

The learning never ceases, no matter how awake a person is.

[from a forthcoming book by Jan Frazier]

There is a bounty of common assumptions about what it is to awaken, and about what it’s like to live in the awakened “state.” The vast majority of those impressions are mistaken and therefore misleading. Holding such ideas in the head without questioning their validity (often without even being conscious of them) can interfere with the awakening that is trying, in its own way, to occur. Perhaps it would be useful to explore some of these here.

I myself once held many wrong ideas, both before and since awakening. Nor does it appear likely that opening and discovery will ever cease. This applies to each of us, if we remain available to deepening insight. 

* * * * *

Being awake is not primarily about having certain kinds of experiences. Wakefulness isn’t a condition of unending ecstasy. Yes, phenomena such as bliss and out-of-body experiences may be “symptoms” for some who have awakened. These can be secondary effects of the radical change in the sense of what’s real, relating to what “you” are, to what life actually is, independent of any ideas about it.

When the sense of reality dramatically alters, it can be a shock to the system. There may be a loss of bearings. Awakening asks a human being (accustomed to a radically different mode of existing) to make significant adjustments. Each of us is different in this regard. Things must be allowed to take their natural course. Patience is a blessing.

Many suppose that after awakening there is no more pain, that there’s only ceaseless ecstasy.

It’s also critical to understand this: these kinds of “altered state” moments can (and often do) occur in a person who is not awake. The experiences are not typically indications that a person has fully awakened, in a sustained sense. Are they glimpses, hints? Who’s to say? They may be; they may be otherwise. The point is to not make too much of them, to not indulge in earnest (and fruitless) efforts to cultivate them, to get them to recur, or to last.

Of course they feel good! So much better than the angst familiar to a human being. But to go chasing certain kinds of experience is a waste of life. If you notice yourself taking such things seriously, gently remind yourself this is the mind at work. Being awake is less a particular type of experience than it’s simply a mode of being — an orientation to self, to life.

* * * * *

A common assumption is that when awakening occurs, all of the wisdom of enlightenment arrives on that very day. It’s commonly supposed that inner development stops occurring. Waking up is simply the opening of a door that could not open before. On the other side of that blessedly open door is the possibility of endless revelation and deepening insight — if, that is, the person does not declare “I have arrived.” 

Even an awake person can get stuck, or can be subject to their enduring humanness. Legendary are the accounts of apparently awake “beings” turning out to be subject to oh-so-human foibles. We do not stop being human when awakening occurs. (Nor, by the way, does the troublesome behavior of a revered teacher, one who’s been a blessing in others’ lives, necessarily render those blessings invalid.)

How all of this can wreak havoc with the mind of the earnest spiritual seeker. 

* * * * *

The experience of persisting wakefulness is not the same in everyone who awakens. Coming to know reality, to be consistently conscious (that is, to not get lost in thought), takes a wide range of expressions. The variety appears to have at least something to do with who the person has been prior to awakening, which includes the shaping forces of prior experience and conditioning. 

Seekers can have the natural tendency to generalize from a familiarity with one person’s story. Perhaps you’ve spent time with a given teacher, or have been immersed in particular books describing how-it-is. Maybe you have a direct acquaintance with a person who appears to be awake. However the ideas of the wakeful condition have come about, a person yearning to be free may naturally assume that “this is how it would be for me,” or “this must be how it is for anybody.” These assumptions may not even be consciously held. Just the same, they can interfere with a person’s direct experience of pure consciousness, causing a moment of clarity and well-being to fail to be recognized for the thing it is: because it doesn’t look or feel like their imagining of what the “state” is like.

Awake people themselves can generalize, assuming “my experience must be like everybody else’s.” I have been subject to this oh-so-human projection, not even aware I was doing it . . . until life, in its ceaseless mercy to open me to the wider truth of things, put in my face the truth: I was assuming another awake person to be just like me, through and through.

Learning does not end when the door opens. Awakening is the beginning of discovery, most of which could not have occurred when the mind was running the show. There is much to learn!

* * * * *

Why do people wake up, when they do? Some who awaken have never been seekers; some have no idea what’s going on inside themselves, and can be deeply unnerved by the abrupt change. Some who come to radical clarity (among those who’ve longed for freedom) don’t recognize this as the longed-for thing. I count myself among them: it was months before I understood. Why does this happen? Largely I chalk it up to our tendency — so very familiar, so human, so of the mind — to imagine, ahead of time, that we can have the remotest idea of what it would be like to wake up.

It turns out we had no idea at all. It’s just as well to recognize that, if you’re seeking, if you’re longing to understand: the mind simply cannot grasp what is altogether beyond its reach. Best to rest from supposing you know anything.

A person’s noticing of the turning point — the moment the radical alteration is apparently set in motion — can be registered in the heart, the soul, or the body. Or even (are you ready?) in the mind. Eckhart Tolle’s description of the inner event that changed things for him indicates it was catalyzed by a startling observation of his curious mind. (If you have not read this description, it appears in The Power of Now). His is not the only account of an apparently intellect-based catalyst.

There are legions of stories about those for whom extreme suffering (with the exhausted surrender that can follow) appears to have precipitated the tipping point.

In my own case, I have mostly stopped trying to sort out what led to things changing the way they did. At the time I wrote my first book, I thought I knew when and how awakening began. The years have taught me that the truth is likely more complex than what I supposed at the time. Learning never ceases. Nor does opening.

Whatever “part” of a given person appears to have been ground zero for the start of things (mind, heart, body, soul), some who awaken later detect a fuller coming-alive in their other human capacities — components of themselves that had never been free to come fully alive, when the sense-of-self was running things. It helps if they’ve stopped being surprised by the ongoingness of change, post-awakening. There is no such thing as stability.

Whether you’re awake or wish you were, it’s best to not assume the condition always looks the same, or that it would be a certain way for you. If you notice yourself making this sort of assumption, recognize it as just another useless thought. Neither take it seriously nor try to make it disappear. So long as you see it for what it is, it won’t cause trouble.

* * * * *

Then there’s the impression that an awake person lives at a remove from regular life. That once wakefulness takes over, all the familiar human delights — and sorrows! — melt into unearthly bliss. There is the associated idea that things that mattered before simply cease to compel.

As with all else to do with awakening, there’s a range of what happens to a person’s orientation to familiar life “content” (relationships, activities, priorities). Yes, much will likely fall away, since the majority of what typically compels a person has to do with its giving life (or self) some perceived value. Obligation and habit drive so much of daily life, along with fear and attachment. When all of that has ceased to function in the familiar way (or is ceasing, for its unwinding may be gradual), yes, much will surely come undone.

But does this mean you no longer cherish those you truly love? When love ceases to be knotted up with need and fear, cherishing becomes free to blossom most deliciously. Does waking up cause you to lose your appreciation for coffee, the pleasure of the texture of a certain blanket? If anything, sensory pleasures are more exquisite than ever. Gone is the familiar tendency to hurry past such things to get to something “more important.” Will you still know how you want to vote, in a given election? Does awakening mean you lose all interest in the world “out there”? You may; you may not.

Yes, awake people can be passionate — about many things. We get to keep being people. To have fun! To do work we enjoy. Only now, blessedly relieved of identification and attachment, we’re able to fully participate in life in a way that doesn’t generate suffering. Because we have stopped taking ourselves, or life itself, so seriously. We’ve ceased to undertake something as a means to an end. Gone is the enduring (crippling!) need to give our lives, our selves, “meaning.”

Life for an awake person does not inevitably carry on at an aloof distance from the ordinary. Some have a growing preference for solitude; that is true of me. The point is that each of us continues, in some sense, to be who we are. Features of our familiar selves continue to be in evidence.

* * * * *

Now comes the most confounding characteristic of an awakened existence. Many suppose that after waking up, there is no more pain, that there’s only a kind of ceaseless disembodied ecstasy.

It’s natural to suppose this: for all our lives, we have wanted to be done with suffering. (Indeed, this is the primary motivator for many entering the spiritual life.) But if a person keeps opening into the richness of a human existence no longer defined by thought, what becomes apparent is this: mind-based suffering is different from the ordinary pain of a mortal existence. 

We have long equated our thoughts-about-life with life itself — as if they were one and the same. One of the truest blessings of awakening is that life and thoughts about life are finally recognized as distinct phenomena. We come to see the difference between mind-inflicted pain and the sort that simply is innate to our humanity.

Yes, we will still feel physical pain. Yes, we may “lose our minds,” still being subject to the mental and physical deterioration that aging may bring about. Bodies are bodies. They age; they decline; they die.

Above all else, this: the deliciously alive human heart, no longer cramped by fear or belief, will surely break when grief comes. What human life does not bring loss — and with it, grief? What purer form can love assume than the vast sorrow of a broken heart, granted all the space it asks? For when love and need (like love and fear) are no longer all-of-a-piece, as they were before, then when loss comes, there is no recoiling from the profound pain. Gone is the familiar hurrying grief to an end, or denying it, because it hurts so much to just feel it.

And so the very experience that can bring the most exquisite human pain may turn out to yield (so surprising!) life’s purest gratitude and savoring. My own recent experience with the death of a loved one has led to this: to the most radical opening of the heart a person can bear. This is what comes of complete surrender to grief. There has been, in my post-awakening experience (now eighteen years), no more blessed teacher. Such a revelation! Gratitude that stretches the bounds of what can be contained in a mere body.

And (here’s the best): when the loved one is still here, there is no taking them for granted. No keeping the heart constrained, against the pain of possible loss. No, cherishing is blessedly allowed to take completely over. For something in your oh-so-mortal self knows that nothing lasts forever. So what else is there to do but celebrate — to live! — while living is possible.

What could be more sumptuous than at last to be able to stretch to the full richness, heart and mind and body, of our human endowment? For this is what happens (if we don’t get in the way) with the unfolding of awakening. When the mischief-generating mind has at last wound down to stillness, what remains? Life itself: delight, cherishing, fully embodied (and fleeting) existence, each moment.

And around the edges, something like wisdom and awe, curiosity and marveling. These are the occupations of the clear and unburdened mind, relieved of its lifelong focus on the maintenance of the illusory self.

* * * * *

Let yourself rest at last from asking How do I get there? It’s enough to simply get out of your own way. Stop trying so hard, thinking you know what you’re doing. Trust yourself to recognize the truth, deep in, when it comes. Discover what it is to be receptive rather than in constant pursuit of the goal. Grow quiet and listen. Hold still. You “know” more than you think you do, dear heart. 

What lies deeper than the residue of your conditioning? What has never been ruined? Something in you that’s not identified as a self is able to recognize itself.

Maybe it’s true what they say: that you already deeply know the truth. That you just don’t know it.

[From forthcoming book by Jan Frazier]

Once in a great while we are given two births in a single life. There’s the one the body has, at its start, with its eventual giving rise to the sense of self, and all that entails. The hands regularly run themselves over that self, getting the lay of the land, as a person learns what it is to be a somebody. The body, with its animal nature, carries on with its innate drive to keep alive. This enables the species to make more of itself, which must be a good thing.

The parallel upkeep of the burgeoning collection of values and beliefs, longings and so on, comes to carry as strong a wish for continuance as the body has had from the start, with the persistence of breath in and breath out, the hunger demanding to be relieved, the thirst to be slaked. Only thing is, while water, food, and oxygen are elemental needs (along with the mammalian longing to be tenderly held), the self that’s become convinced it can be subject to mortal danger is simply buying into the story it’s been telling itself, from the early days (and nobody “out there” ever seems to indicate otherwise, regarding the matter of what’s deeply real). The self insists, I am real. I matter. I cannot stand to be threatened. To have the foundation pulled from beneath me is to cease to be.

All of that is what inevitably comes with the first birth (the one common to us all), since we’re influenced by those around us, and steadily shaped by life experience.

* * * * *

If a person is lucky (very fortunate indeed) there comes a second birth, in which the real-seeming self ceases to feel substantial, subject to threat. Who knows why it happens? All the person can say is that the end of suffering is worth the cost of the absence of the old familiar. Even if it feels a bit like you’re now a member of a different species.

The self insists, I am real. I matter. I cannot stand to be threatened.

Only, in fact, your homo sapiens self is still entirely operative. Moving about, needing sleep, nourishment, quenching. Yes, you will eventually quit, just like all your fellow homo sapiens. Only, you don’t dread it the way you once might have. Not because you assume there to be a disembodied ongoingness, post-death. No, it’s just that you’re having such a good time being alive.

How can it be that the self came to seem . . . not so serious anymore? No longer worthy of the lifelong fixation on satisfying needs and wants, holding pain at bay, everything a means to one end or another. What made it stop mattering that you’re thought well of, understood, needed? So strange, after all the time of its all mattering so much that to be deprived of respect or security or fulfillment could feel like being radically short on food or breathable air. Why the lightness of heart, without apparent cause, when you used to need things to be a certain way in order to smile, to relax, let down your guard? How has it come to this? Instead of being vulnerable to every little thing — people, change, the world out there, illness and aging — you are okay with each thing as it is; it doesn’t matter what. You no longer fight anything. You take it in, as it comes, allow it to register. Then you move on.

Why on God’s earth is it so different now? What has happened? The one thing you’re pretty sure of is that you didn’t cause it. There’s one other thing you know for certain: you have never loved this purely in your life. Pure: meaning, untainted by fear. Nothing in the heart is holding back anymore.

Oh, you know something awful could come to pass. You see hard things happening all around you, all the time. You know the one you love could cease to be, or the thing you revel in could come apart. Well, everything and everybody does, eventually. Brevity is one of the few things that can be counted upon, your own included.

All you know is, while you’re here, while the loved person or activity or condition is shimmeringly alive, nothing in you is tentative. Nothing cowers behind self-protection. The heart is like an enthusiastic little kid, who knows only the now, the juicy luscious now.

When it comes time for the heart to break, it breaks. All the way open. The sorrow has no idea if it will ever end. It doesn’t need to know.

Would you rather have been spared this pain? Rather the second birth had never occurred? (Are you kidding?)

I have looked back to the before, countless times, trying to see how one thing led to another. I cannot tell. I’ve pretty much given up the effort, knowing that some things are just not to be gotten hold of. Curiosity unsatisfied is okay just being its curious self. Kind of fun, wondering. Just ask a little kid.

[From forthcoming book by Jan Frazier]

Recent conditions on my road have made it clear that my Vermont town and my particular life experience is (like the entire human race) subject to the impact of climate change — just as we’re collectively, globally, subject to the ongoing pandemic. So while I continue to make efforts to minimize the impact of my day-to-day living on the deteriorating environment, in recent days it’s become clear that a good deal of adaptation will be needed on the dead-end dirt road I regularly rely upon to go anywhere and to return home again (via the gas-dependent vehicle that requires roads).

Spending lots of time in the woods, I’m aware of the human impact on the lives of insects and birds and mammals, along with the creatures of the pond I enjoy kayaking in. How the monarch butterfly population has been radically reduced, so much that it’s become noteworthy each time I see just one of the orange beauties (every couple of weeks, by marked contrast with the many who flew in my midst not many summers ago). After years of being rare hereabouts, moose had become more populous for some years. Now their numbers are diminished by the influx of ticks caused by climate change, the ticks bearing down on the moose herd faster than evolutionary adaptation can hope to keep pace with. On and on it goes, the creatures’ numbers diminishing before our eyes. 

The heart wants ceaselessly to break.

* * * * *

A human being knows that life is brief — both an individual existence and the lifespan of a given species. Our fellow animals appear not to know such things. Each occupies present-moment reality: that is all. The exquisite luna moth is unaware (and so is not equipped to lament) its fleeting lifespan, a single week. I once happened upon mating lunas. If they were experiencing pleasure, it was not diminished by awareness of their brevity. It appears to be the same for our beloved dogs and cats, for the blue whale, the bat afflicted with white-nose syndrome. Nor does the bald eagle — its numbers greatly increased — celebrate the growing health of its kind. It simply soars, defends its nest, scours the river for fish.  

Our physical well-being is enhanced by a healthy environment. Our deep interior is dependent on no circumstance for well-being.

Consider the orientation of the creatures, the way it seems to be for them. They navigate and hunt, feed themselves and their young, even as they seek shelter from the recent deluge that has ravaged my dirt road. Their daily lives are in need of constant re-configuring, since the changes wrought by climate change come much faster than evolution can keep up with.

Our fellow animals adapt as necessary, as best they can in the taxing conditions. However, unlike humans, they do not appear to lament what is lost, nor do they begrudge the extra effort involved in adapting to changed living circumstances.

They don’t wonder (or fear) how much worse things are going to get.

* * * * *

Might the creatures be our wise teachers, in this difficult time, and in the worsening times to come? While our physical well-being is enhanced by a healthy environment, our deep interior is dependent on no circumstance for radical well-being. For although we big-brained mammals are doubtless responsible for having so severely damaged our world that there’s no undoing the harm, we are also happily endowed with the nature of the innocent animals whose world we share. 

It is possible for a person to do as our fellow creatures do (even as we make efforts not to worsen things). It’s within our means to make the necessary and possible adaptations to our living circumstances, while not being swamped by anger or fear, or crippled by guilt and paralyzing grief in the face of gathering losses and the challenge to ongoing survival. Nor do we need to blindly distance ourselves from the reality of the severe conditions coming about or our culpability in causing them.

Following the example of the moose and the dwindling honeybees, the songbirds and the salmon, we can instead apply our innate resources — including our excellent minds — to find ways to adapt, perhaps to slow the devastation. In this effort, we can use the very minds that long ago designed a gas-powered device for speedy travel, ignorant of its cost to the lovely world that sustains all life.

The less “intelligent” animals presumably don’t know what we know: that we are to blame. This blessed innocence leaves them unburdened, their considerable resources fully available to direct to new ways and places of continuing to live, where that is possible.

The challenge for us (since we do know) is this: how to hold the knowledge of our complicity without becoming poisoned by it, without distancing ourselves from reality, lapsing into denial, or turning rigid. All of it as we proceed with the task kindred to all creatures who dwell here: to seek realistic ways of carrying on, given the worsening conditions.

* * * * *

Many a spiritual seeker learns to lament the mind’s ability to “live in the future,” its tendency to spin a real-seeming story about how bad things could get, given the power of such visualization to inflict unnecessary suffering. We learn to observe the way the mind’s persistent mischief interferes with the ability to be-here-now, to feel the immediacy of aliveness.

Yet our highly-evolved brains can anticipate in a way that can be of practical benefit. We see how a given condition will likely deteriorate, yielding X-Y-Z outcomes altering the landscape, thus enabling us to address complex problems. The mind is thereby able to visualize the future in a way that can truly benefit us (and our fellow earth inhabitants), in this time of needing to make rapid adaptations.

It’s wise not to “throw out the baby with the bath water,” to mistakenly suppose that the mind is exclusively devoted to the maintenance of the pain-inflicting ego: for the highly-evolved human brain is able (when not misapplied) to be of enormous benefit in the outer arena of physical existence. While exploring the misuse of the mind, in the inner life, it is crucial to make the distinction between these two possible applications of mental activity.

When a person ceases to confuse a mental picture of person-ness with reality itself, there can be the discovery of the vast benefit of the very mind that has caused so much mischief. Leaning to make this distinction is one of the real blessings of wakefulness.

* * * * *

My dirt road is getting deeply rutted. Therefore my fellow local humans, whose job it is to care for the roads, will perhaps be coming up the road with big trucks, filling in the ruts with new gravel. Endowed as they are with the ability to anticipate coming episodes of heavy, protracted rain, predicted by climate scientists, the road crew will likely move to paving the road that has only ever been made of gravel. Which will mean the town’s taxes will surely go up, and so (therefore) will my rent.

I see all of this unfolding. But bitterness does not enter the picture. Nor does fear, or resistance, or protracted lament — even as I’m aware that we humans (me included, with my lifetime of gas-guzzling cars) have caused it.

Meanwhile, I live in the moment. That bird song I hear just now: I pause to take it in fully, not letting its infrequency interfere with the beauty of this song. Nor do I waste the precious moment lamenting once-upon-a-time, or anticipating the day I may no longer hear its song. This bird really is here, just now. It may not always be. What else to do but drink in its lovely music, the mind utterly still? 

Every moment — whatever it may hold — is brief. It’s all we have, all we are. Ever.

Listen. Feel. Enjoy. The now is here, ever changing. Don’t let the knowledge of brevity and loss and responsibility interfere with your ability to savor the song, while it’s here: while you’re here. Pay attention, blessed attention. Live!

What besides pausing to take in the immediacy of something lovely — the view of the sunset, the ocean curling away from the shore, the scent of hay on the breeze — can better equip us to make necessary changes in our own ways of occupying this beloved planet? What better than the bodied cherishing of what is still here all around us?

Spiritual teachers can be legendary for their ability to open a person’s eyes to the truth (and some, for their unfortunate ability to harm or mislead). Does an earnest seeker need a teacher? Is awakening possible without the blessing of a clear-eyed, selfless embodiment of wisdom and unconditional love?

Observing another person’s manifest benefit from having spent time in the presence of a great teacher, a seeker may naturally conclude I want this for myself. Perhaps even come to believe that unless the “right” teacher comes along, awakening cannot occur.

There is no doubting the impact when someone happens upon another human being who is clearly not in torment, does not live in the head, and is really and truly “here,” when undeniable wisdom comes from their lips or their pen, or simply from their silent presence. Surely one devoted to coming to know their true self will be moved in the direction of that teacher — whether or not the person is defined, acknowledged, as such. (Not everyone who is radically free assumes the teacherly role; nor is it the case that everyone identified as a teacher is entirely free of ego.)

* * * * *

It’s beneficial to be aware of underlying assumptions you may carry about all of this. Do you believe a seeker must have a teacher? Do you assume teachers come only in human form, and that they must be acknowledged to be “the real deal”? Are you attuned to the possibility of blessed insights coming from unexpected sources — that life-altering moments can be set in motion courtesy of unimagined sources (the trees, a horrific loss, the company of a little child, of a dog or a salamander or an elephant)?

We are already awake, if only we could grow still and be truly here.

Life is full of surprises, if only we will keep our eyes and hearts open. If only we will be willing to let everything be up for grabs, to question even the most long-cherished assumptions. We are wrong more than we are right. (I include myself in this.) Discovery is never-ending.

* * * * *

The underlying assumption with the most potent ability to keep a person stuck is this one: I do not already carry, within myself, the longed-for condition. However deeply buried, however impossible for the mind to believe, it is so. Freedom is not “transmitted” from without (by however gifted a teacher or practice). It is uncovered, bit by excruciating bit, until at long and delicious last, there is nothing but space and light. And peace.

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What is it about animals that can make them teachers to a person longing to be free of torment? Whether a beloved pet or farm animal or creature in the wild, one of our fellow creatures (for we are mammals, after all) has the potential to bring us to utter stillness, to quiet our busy minds and locate us — however briefly — in the now. A dog is a master at being with what-is: in this moment (nowhere else), just as it is. A cat does not compare this now with other nows — something that once was, something that may one day be. A cow is disinclined (it appears) to take refuge in the good old days.

It does not appear that a bird or a deer being steadily rained upon is prone to resist the soaking under way. Nor (one can suppose) is it thinking, “God, will this never end?” or contrasting the present condition with the previous sunny stretch of days. A horse isn’t fixated on wondering or worrying about how long a thing (good or bad) will persist.

An animal simply adapts. It attends its body, its home, its food sources. It cares for its young. An animal’s focus is on surviving, on attaining a measure of safety and comfort. It does not resort to useless resistance. It deftly shifts gears, as circumstances require, in an instant. Fear arrives on the scene only in the presence of mortal danger, not in the presence of mind-made scenarios.

Yes, animals have minds. They use them to their advantage, learning from past experiences (remembering what places to avoid, where food can be found, where relative safety and shelter are located). Where creatures’ minds differ from our own is that they do not misuse their intelligence to spin tales of awful possibilities, to regret the painful past, to compare present reality with some other. Nor do they fancy themselves in control of all-that-is, of some possible future (nor, therefore, do they dread the unknown). They are unburdened by the need for an identity, by attachment to outcome. Animals simply deal with the new what-is, when it arrives on the scene, without resistance. They are altogether limber in their orientation to ever-changing outer reality.

Who could ask for a better teacher? For something within our oh-so-human selves, endowed as we are with “superior” minds, is just as it is within our fellow animals. We are already awake, if only we could grow still and be truly here, the way it is with a dog, a cat, a horse, an eagle. Being in the presence of an animal, whether wild or a house companion, can enable something in us to “register” an in-common feature, a deep knowing. To feel what it is to simply be here, without processing the now. To sense that this is possible for me as well.

What is it to be awake, if not that?

No wonder a person may experience profound peace in the presence of an animal. Very much the way utter restfulness can be felt in the presence of an awakened human teacher.

* * * * *

Each of us began life as an infant. There has been a period of before: before the mischief of the mind, the deluge of outer conditioning, started up in earnest, taking hold of our sense of being and manipulating it. Each of us has been a small child, and along with that early innocence (assuming conditions of relative safety and well-being), there has been a condition of purely and simply being here, moment to moment. Before time (with all its urgency of anticipate, hurry, plan, do-this-so-that, postpone) took us in its ferocious claws, hauling us out of blessed immediacy, of the capacity for pure beingness.

A little child — you may have observed this, even if you have no recall of your own youthful moments — is altogether focused on what’s real right now. The physicality of the immediate sensory scene, of inner sensations. The processing mind altogether still, useless. Do you think a young one feels separate from the sand in its exploring fingers? From the bite of cookie en route to its moist tongue? The fluffy clouds high above its tilted-back head? Ask a young child to entertain the comparative “reality” (the importance!) of something in the unimaginable later, the long ago or far away. Nonsense!

To we who carry torment with us, everywhere we go, what could be a finer teacher than this? When you are happily in the presence of such a great being, for goodness’ sake slow down in your oh-so-grownup urgency to keep at whatever you’ve been doing. Pay attention. Notice how something within yourself is (can be) the very same way. Notice too how very good it feels to be so.

* * * * *

Perhaps the most potent of all teachers is simple present-moment awareness. It is always with us, wherever we go. It does not ask for a certain company (robed teacher sitting cross-legged, mud-caked kid or four-legged sniffing creature). Even if you do have a beloved human teacher, where else but the now will you be led, if the person is of any real use to you? 

To be conscious in this moment, just as it has arrived (for we did not make it so!): to be attuned to the fullness of immediate reality, around you and within yourself, without barriers or mental handling, is the teacher of all teachers. When the walled-off places within yourself are gently penetrated with light, allowing you to feel — to acknowledge — all that is within (and perhaps habitually avoided), then wondrous revelation can occur, along with blessed surrender. The very places we have struggled to avoid have enormous potential to become the most altering teachers of our lives — if only we will allow ourselves to go there, to bow to them.

Wakefulness does not recoil from reality, no matter its pain. It is not defended. It is in the present moment, in utter surrender, that the self is able to come to radical peace.

Being aware of what-is, in the present moment, whether it’s pleasant or makes you squirm, is a teacher without compare. All that’s necessary is to wake up, even if only just now, to what is really happening. Then let your eyes and heart be open. See what happens, if you keep being willing. It takes courage to be real. But the price of otherwise is dear indeed.

* * * * *

The key is to remain open to whatever comes along, in your explorations — a teacher assuming whatever form — including in a place or from a direction you’d not been looking or anticipating. Best not to hold yourself in a fierce “uni-directional” orientation to anything: what has been helpful thus far, assumptions you might carry, what has been helpful to another. Let everything be up for grabs. You’re just going along for the ride.

It’s help too to remember that a given practice, orientation, or teacher tends to have a particular time, in your spiritual life, when its influence is beneficial. Then — because you never stop moving, opening, changing — there may come a point when you sense it may be time to gently move on. Something else may come along that seems to want to “pick up” where the previous support left off, as it were. Because if anything you are doing, in the way of an inner orientation or outer support, is actually benefiting you, then who-you-are will be changed, as a result: perhaps more open, less resistant, lost in thought; perhaps less needy, less wary of not-knowing and the absence of control, more trusting of what is within, of that deep knowing that recognizes the truth.

We are (after all) only trying to discover what is already within us, and has been from the beginning.

You may be surprised — perhaps even startled — to notice that a long-time practice or source of inspiration seems to be subtly less compelling than before. For goodness’ sake be brave, at such a moment. Be honest about what you’re noticing deep within. Trust it. Some deep knowing is ready to move on. The cost of doggedly “sticking to it” (whatever it is) can be dear: you get stuck. When more and more is wanting to happen, if only you will be true to yourself and trust the radical unknown to take you in its tender arms and at long, sweet last, open you all the way.