Category: Teachings

What is it to be in the now? It’s to gently allow awareness to take in whatever is immediate, inside yourself and in the present-moment scene. It’s to register what is being actually experienced — apart from what might be thought about. 

To be in the now is to sense, to feel. It’s to taste the sensation of aliveness, of being here. It’s to notice the difference between what-is, right here, and what has been or could be, or what seems to be true “out there” somewhere.

The moment is what you are.

If ever there were a time when taking refuge in the now could be a true blessing, the situation we’re all collectively in surely would be it.

* * * * *

When you are fully absorbed in a physical act, whether it’s digging a hole or jogging, washing a dish or painting a landscape, or looking into the eyes of a loved one, in that moment the activity itself is your entire sense of reality. You may notice that in such a moment, the things of the mind are briefly set aside. It’s life itself — not a memory or an idea of life, but the thing itself. 

The moment is what you are. Then it passes, and it’s something else. If you drift into your head, what you “are” then is the movement of thought, the sensation of what it’s like in the body to be absorbed in a story, with all that may entail.

Do take care to notice the critical distinction between two thought-related phenomena: on the one hand, observing the qualities of egoic thinking (effort, angst or desire, resistance, circularity, remoteness from the immediate scene); and on the other, being lost in the content of thought (as though occupying an alternate reality). Learning to tell these apart — which includes, most critically, not missing the taxing effect of mental activity — is a key element of growing self-attunement, leading naturally to increasing peace.

Noticing the difference between the two is one of life’s finest teachers, as the ordinary day unfolds, one now at a time.

* * * * *

Any time you’re wholly absorbed in the present reality, it’s not actually that “you” are “in” the now; it’s truer to say that you are the now. And that (contrary to what the ego-mind insists) is all you are — ever. 

Talk about shocking revelations! And radically unnerving ones, to the self-important ego-mind. All that’s directly experience-able of “you,” ever, is right now: what’s felt within (human feelings, physical sensation, the movement of thought), plus what’s observed via the senses of the immediate setting and activity. When awareness is simply taking it all in, without mental processing, you are separate from none of it. Whatever else seems to be “you” is stored in the mind, retrievable only as memory, idea, identity.

That glibly tossed-around notion of being “one-with-all” — what else could it mean but this? Not something “knowable” with the mind (despite what many a well-intentioned seeker claims to understand the meaning of), but something only experience-able, and only in the here-and-how, when the mind is still and awareness is utterly enlivened.

If you are singing a song you love, putting your heart and soul into it, in that moment you are the music. If someone you’re with is pouring out their heart to you, and you’re truly listening (not thinking what to say), whatever problems you have, whatever might otherwise be occupying your mind, is — for the moment — “out there” someplace. Have you noticed this? If you are a runner, or a mountain climber, or one who loves to fish or to garden, you will notice that when you’re purely engaged in the physical act, you are not separate from the thing you’re doing. You are the moment’s activity. This is not about identity (which requires the mind), not about defining yourself as one-who-listens-well, or one who sings or fishes. It’s about there being no separation between “you” and the thing you’re absorbed in.

* * * * *

The only place authentic refuge is to be found is the now. We tend to seek escape or consolation in beliefs, in a picture or story of another time — all of which requires the engagement of the mind. But when attention is on the now, what’s engaged is not the mind but awareness. To be aware is to be peacefully here, to viscerally register aliveness, however it may be expressing itself just now — which is, of course, in ceaseless flux.

To experience the difference between thought and awareness is itself liberating. Awareness is what senses aliveness. This is what wakefulness is about: not ceaseless ecstasy or distance from regular life, not a system of otherworldly ideas, but plain hereness. It’s got to do with pure attunement to reality, sans mental handling or the attempt to alter or escape.

Oh, but how the ever-vigilant mind wants to insist that many other things not perceptible in the now are also real: the pandemic; personal history; the political situation; distant loved ones you’re missing, perhaps concerned about. But see how the mind must be engaged in order to “visit” anything not immediate, not experience-able in the now. There’s a life-altering difference between what the mind has access to and what present-moment consciousness opens to.

Yes, you surely can — in this moment — sink into the feeling of deep love for someone not physically with you. But discover what it’s like to feel for this dear one, without drifting into whatever familiar story tends to “go with” the person. How liberating to explore the distinction between these two things, which habit has taught us to believe are all-of-a-piece.

And of course there will be times when you will want to reflect on matters of concern to you that are not apparent in the now. The point is to realize, by experiencing the intermittent refuge of the now, that just because a situation is ongoing does not mean attention must dwell there in an uninterrupted way.

To take periodic refuge in the now is nourishing and deeply restorative. It enables you to cope more sanely with times of stress and uncertainty. The mind-accessed parts of the larger situation need not define your entire sense of reality.

* * * * *

The refuge of the now is not about the present moment being somehow “perfect” (or in denial of the larger picture of a situation). It simply feels good to be with what’s real — even if that happens to entail physical discomfort, or a breaking heart. Being in the now is not always a feel-good experience. But it does “feel good” to relax entirely into whatever is real inside, to allow whatever is there, without fighting it. To do so feels alive. It feels spacious, at ease.

The sensation of refuge comes of the disengagement from the mind, and with immersion in the reality of here-and-now. It comes of experiencing life itself as it is happening. The restfulness that arises is due to the relaxing of all effort (much of which we aren’t even aware of exerting . . . until it melts away). The you as experienced in the moment is entirely receptive, aware, noticing. You’re simply seeing and feeling what’s here, inside and out, allowing all. That’s it. Breathtakingly simple.

The mind is required when entering the future or the past, entertaining the apparent reality of something in time or elsewhere. The mind does not experience; what it does is process, often with an attempt to understand or control. Awareness experiences, and only what is here-and-now. We don’t experience time: we think about something in time.

Remember that (contrary to the mind’s persistent pull) it is not necessary to understand — most anything at all.

Nor is it “necessary” to fully be with what’s happening . . . unless peace feels better to you than angst.

* * * * *

How does one “get there,” to the now? It begins with becoming conscious. You are not (alas) in control of when or whether that occurs. Conscious awareness may dawn because some discomfort (likely mental/emotional) has drawn your attention. If you become curious, you will surely see that the mind has been active. However the spacious noticing enters the now, simply notice its blessed arrival. Explore what plain awareness feels like, as you set aside whatever has, just before, captivated the thinker. 

When conscious attention comes onto the scene, it then becomes possible to observe that thought is (or has been) occurring. Simply seeing that fact indicates that awareness functions outside the thought stream. The seeing is happening from the unresisting spaciousness of the now. Allow yourself to register that. Then tune into any sensation (pleasant or otherwise) inside your body. 

Notice what your senses are able to detect in the immediate scene. If you are doing something, allow attention to go to the movement of the activity. Discover that there is actually latitude in where attention goes — when you are conscious. See how it can gently be moved from what-you’re-doing to the interior of the body. You’re not thinking here, or trying to change your thoughts or felt sensations; you’re simply noticing what’s (already) happening.

Nature takes its course. If you notice yourself being drawn back into your head, it may help to redirect the focus to something sensory, either inside your body or in the immediate scene.

Above all, this: If the urge to “make it last” occurs to you, invite awareness to notice that this desire occurs in the mind, which has convinced itself that future moments are real, controllable, predictable. Or that one sort of now is preferable to another. Awareness does not have such an aspiration. 

Which is one of the reasons present-moment immersion is conspicuously peaceful. All effort has been relaxed.

You may notice — or perhaps can see this, looking back — that trying to make anything “last” or recur (or stop happening) has one reliable outcome: it keeps you living in your head, reinforcing the compelling illusion of control. None of which is living.

Moment-to-moment awareness, sans mental handling, is what living is. It’s what we hunger for all our struggling lives. Nowadays, maybe, even more than ever.

Here’s wishing you profound refuge, any moment it blessedly arrives. Be kind to your dear self.

The spiritual orientation to life is often set in motion by the desire to address painful inner forces like anxiety, frustration, and disappointment. The natural wish is to soothe oneself, to settle the distress. Refuge is sought in some “state,” some inner place at a blessed remove from the turmoil. To that end, practices may be undertaken as a calming way of re-aligning, so that when stress of some kind is noticed to have taken over the body, meditation or deep breathing or wise teachings are turned to. 

Earnest spiritual practice is undertaken for a kind of self-correction. 

Some have noticed that however long they’ve cultivated these helpful practices, the distressing emotional patterns persist, however much “progress” seems to have occurred. Perhaps they persist because such practices tend (however unwittingly) to reinforce the seeming reality of the self that suffers. The spiritual mind becomes accustomed to “managing” uncomfortable patterns — giving the mind yet another useless way to engage, thereby nurturing the ongoing illusion of its usefulness.

* * * * *

For many of us there have been various approaches, over the decades of suffering, to seeking relief in troubling times. Taking a drink can be one way. Eating for the sake of eating. Turning on the TV, tuning in to social media. How poignant, then, to discover that an earnestly adopted spiritual approach to momentary pain may not differ all that much from these time-honored modes of escape. While surely less overtly harming, spiritual practice may nevertheless be a habit-forming coping mechanism, keeping a person at an enduring distance from reality — including the inner one, where real feelings dwell, begging to be felt. All the while (most poignantly) holding awakening at bay.

The most illuminating thing a person can do is to be ceaselessly curious about what’s real.

Surely (yes) the gentler orientation to self-soothing does not inflict the obvious damage wreaked by chemical dependency. Yet might there not be a way to engage spirituality that attunes us to reality — one that may lead at last to freedom? Is it inevitable that the pattern will continue until the heart ceases beating? The familiar spiritual approach might ease the discomfort of the moment. But it’s unlikely it will finally dismantle the larger pattern, bringing at last a blessed enduring peace.

Maybe instead of focusing on alleviating discomfort, with always the goal of feeling better, in a given moment of discomfort, a person can simply allow awareness to become its curious, spacious self. To plainly see what is real just now. To acknowledge — and allow — the feeling that is here, that wants so much to be avoided. For its primary feature is its palpable reality, not its undesirability. In addition to enabling surrender, spacious awareness is able to observe how the mind dislikes the discomfort, preferring another feeling. It sees the tyranny of the mind, how very much it controls the whole process.

* * * * *

The most illuminating thing a person can do is to be ceaselessly curious about what’s real, in this moment’s felt experience. Is the mind-driven self what’s real, the self that seeks calm, to be relieved of inner disturbance? 

What is real?

To the extent the familiar impulse to soothe is indulged, you’re reinforcing the crippling impression that this — the self that seems to need fixing — is what you deeply are. Which is why it persists: because it keeps seeming real. It seems (you seem) to be a problem that needs fixing. 

What’s the point of allowing yourself to feel, without resistance, the uncomfortable emotions presently overtaking you? Because in this moment’s felt experience, they are real. Allowing them dissolves the inner divisions that drive us into the manipulating and preferring mind, holding wakefulness at a distance. Just now, that sensation in the body — the flushed face, the racing heart and tense muscles, the knot in the stomach — is as real as the tree before you. The fact that it’s all been set in motion by something in your head (however much the cause appears to be something “out there”) does not render unreal the inner response. And so to avoid feeling it all only keeps going the familiar pattern.

Even as the content of the thought is surely at a distance from external reality, the fact that the machinery of thought has been operating is real, palpable. This is an illuminating distinction to make, for it enables attunement to the sensation (felt, hence real) of grinding thought, even as there is the awareness that its content is invented.

* * * * *

A human being is a feeling creature. Whatever their source, momentary feelings are experienced in the body, and so are to be allowed. Whether driven by unconscious reactivity or in direct response to life itself (sans interpretation), they are part of what it is to be a human being. 

When wide-open awareness is the primary mode of existence, whatever comes is allowed. With the mind blessedly quiet, the familiar preference for comfort having unwound, all experience is held with equanimity.

The exploration of what is real is not undertaken via the mind. Of course the spiritual-seeker mind insists it “knows” what’s real. This is entirely useless. The collection of spiritual concepts becomes yet another way to keep the mind active, another nurturer of ongoing illusion. 

Awareness simply sees, without preference. It does not experience stress, anxiety, anger, resistance. It perceives phenomena, not “good” or “bad.” Nor does it prefer inner stillness, bliss, the absence of distress. So long as the focus continues to be on alleviating uncomfortable emotions, the familiar patterns will hold. The inner division between the tormented self and the approximately peaceful one will continue feeling substantial.

* * * * *

When you notice inner distress taking hold, what can be helpfully done, rather than trying to soothe or escape the discomfort? Begin by noticing how you dislike the feeling that’s alive in you just now, that there’s a preference for feeling that other way.

Relaxing the desire to feel better, gently open the space to allow yourself to feel, without resistance, the pain of the momentary constriction. Notice any beliefs or ideas underlying the sensation, perhaps having to do with something “out there.” Surrender to it all, at the deepest level — however uncomfortable, however “unspiritual” the feelings may appear. Grant it all its necessary space, without attempting to mute or alter any of it.

For only in yielding to momentary reality is the spaciousness of well-being discovered. Any inner guardedness that creates division or “compartments” inside you, any fear-based walling-off of unwelcome inner realities, keeps you forever at odds with yourself. This keeps going the perceived need to undertake some method of calming yourself.

As you relax into the uncomfortable sensation that’s taken over your body, if you look, you may be able to see that it is not momentary life itself that’s “causing” it. No, it’s the intervening, interpreting mind that — making something of life — has given rise to the distress. Again ask: What is real here? Is there a difference between this moment of life and what my mind says about it?

Perhaps you’ve told yourself that by soothing the momentary distress, you will then be able to access the “part” of yourself that is not perturbed. This approach — especially when undertaken without questioning whether the discomfort is a response to reality itself — only nurtures the enduring illusion that the “you” at the mercy of circumstance has substance. As if it were in a kind of contest with the spacious awareness gently containing all of it.

* * * * *

A human being is a feeling creature. This is an ongoing feature of moment-to-moment reality, whether or not a person is awake. What changes at awakening (or even in fleeting moments of wakefulness) is the source of feeling. Before, when a person has been at the mercy of the mind (with its ceaseless preference for lack-of-pain), the generator of most embodied feeling has been mental activity.

By marked contrast, once awakened to the underlying reality of awareness, a person’s oh-so-human inner experience is in direct response not to thought but to life itself. Nothing intervenes to interpret, deny, protect. Sorrow for the death of a loved one is entirely allowed, deeply felt. No protective walls are erected. It’s the same with the surge of delight in the presence of a stunning bird, rolling ocean waves, a passage of music. As with the cherishing of one who is dear. When intervening thought is no longer running the show, the perceived distance between life and “you” is simply gone. Aliveness has taken entirely over. Gone is the apparent separation between you and all-that-is.

Of course you feel! Only now, whether it’s “pleasant” or “unpleasant,” it’s deeply peaceful. Because it is granted all its necessary space. While you are surely a feeling creature, you are also spaciousness itself. This is what it is to be embodied divinity.

We do not decide what feeling comes, however much we might wish or suppose otherwise. We did not “cause” the moment to arrive as it has. The inner experience happens spontaneously, in the same way outer reality arrives on its own. There is nothing to do but be with the now, inside and out, dropping any impression of control.

So much of earnest spiritual work is in the nature of trying to control. As if we were masters of the moment! Reality is here and now. To deny or attempt to manage it is madness. To receive it without struggle is where peace dwells.

Just as with thought. We do not choose to think (at least, not the ego-driven sort of thinking).

The issue is whether or not we become conscious of what the now consists of. Nor are we in control of that, in any given moment. Conscious awareness either blessedly visits us or it does not. But when we do become self-aware, how a door does open! For then there is space and light, enabling us to allow, to acknowledge, what’s happening just now. The sensation in the body, the noticing whether there’s resistance or yielding. The reality in the immediate scene we inhabit.

Wakefulness is about coming at last to rest in what is actually here, inside and out. It’s about being at no distance from reality. When this occurs without resistance, without inner division, there is peace.

Yes, much of this is counter-intuitive. But only if the mind is consulted.

What is it to live authentically, to be at no distance from the life you’re in? It’s to know what matters to you, to have a background awareness of where you’ve come from, the experiences that have shaped you (for good or ill). How does a person see and feel these particulars while not forging them into an identity? Is it possible to acknowledge your humanity without shouldering the burden of what’s been painful (or hauling around the equal weight of attainment)?

What is it to be in relationship — to care, really listen, engage — but not to define yourself by the connection with someone important to you?

These questions can come up when a person is exploring what it is to live consciously, to tune in to this felt moment of life. What happens to all that other “material” having to do with who you seem to be — your history and values and real-world commitments? Does it all need to fall away somehow?

What is it to live without life causing you to take yourself seriously? 

Is a person “supposed” to not care what goes on in the world? Is a conscious life one that must “rise above” the ordinary things of human existence? Are practical realities in conflict somehow with coming viscerally to know what you are, on the most elemental level?

Perhaps it’s possible to have political views, to care about your work, to love particular people, without any of it creating an artificial sense of self.

Imagine fully engaging in life without anger or fear animating what you do. 

* * * * *

So much rich exploration comes alive, as conscious awareness enters more into the picture. The discovery of how a person might have values and preferences, experience pleasure, be with people, and yet none of it generates racket in the head or turmoil in the gut. Little of ordinary experience is seen to obscure the clean, still space that is the source of life, of tenderness, energy, and creativity. The miracle of such an opening!

There’s the joy of discovering what it is to act without attachment to the outcome. To live without assuming any stability. To be in relationship absent the means-to-an-end orientation. It’s not to solve loneliness, to be adored. Nor is it out of mere habit. It’s simply that you love the person.

And what if you get sick, or are in decline, or significant life circumstances fall apart? Does that need to become who you are, to make it more challenging to really feel yourself being here, in this moment?

What is it to live without life causing you to take yourself seriously (or insisting that others do so)?

* * * * *

We still get to be people. To care, to laugh and celebrate, to address difficulties. To stand up in the face of injustice. But standing up needn’t be infused with anger. Intolerance and indignation never generated anything but more of themselves. It’s the same with fear. Anger and fear are a waste of precious life.

Again and again there is the invitation — the challenge — to ask self, How shall I be, in this life today? What am I, most deeply? What does it mean, what does it look like, to do my work, to have the life experience I’ve had, without any of it shutting down the heart? How does it feel to care about what goes on in the world, without dismissal and judgment darkening the efforts to make some kind of difference?

Of course it’s possible: to live a fully engaged human life, to be here, do things, and yet to feel entirely empty and light. To not allow what I do, or who I am in the world, to define me. To feel, always, the difference between awareness and whatever occurs “in” it. A human being is in no way doomed to carry around a sense of self like a bag of bricks. It’s much easier to move through life (to dance, even!) without that terrible weight.

Relieved of such burdens, a person gets a lot more done, and with much less dogged effort and frustration. And when it comes time to rest, it’s welcomed and is felt to be deeply restorative.

Life is sweet, just being itself.

* * * * *

Why would a person do anything at all, if not to create a sense of self? If that enduring compulsion for self-definition is felt to soften, what stirs a person to a given action?

A light turns on when we tune in to the motivation beneath an activity, illumining the terrain of why we do what we do. Is it habit, the expectation or wishes of others? Is it to fulfill some idea or belief about life’s alleged “purpose”? Does it have to do with a perceived means to an end?

If it’s an activity you’re considering forgoing, either something new being contemplated or a thing you’re used to doing, feel your way into the prospect of letting it go. Notice whether there’s relief. Or maybe there’s a subtle sense of loss. Perhaps it seems as if forgoing the thing would create some kind of “problem.” Linger there: it’s rich terrain. Don’t be afraid to feel what comes up. Much habit is driven by a discomfort with change and uncertainty. These inner forces are seldom consciously recognized — but oh, can acknowledging their presence be a door-opener!

What drives a given activity often is the desire for appearing to be a certain kind of person (reliable, loyal, principled), perhaps in the eyes of others, or maybe in one’s own. Notice if righteous indignation or anger is in the mix of what motivates.

But what if it’s love that moves a person to action or engagement of some kind, plain caring that’s uncomplicated by identity or belief, by fear or loathing? What if it’s the prospect of pure delight, maybe even of fun? Perhaps it’s simply that the thing clearly needs doing, of benefit to another.

When love takes outward expression — without attachment to outcome, absent a defining sense of self — whatever is engaged in carries a quality of pronounced aliveness, holding little or no torment. There is felt to be a good deal of available energy. When a person is relieved of the habitual, awful weight of the self, creativity and devotion are in abundant supply.

It’s not hard work that has worn us out, not nearly as much as all the inner burdens. No wonder we become exhausted so readily! It’s heartbreaking to realize this: and yet when the relief begins to enter the picture, there is exhilaration (maybe even celebration).

* * * * *

As the mind-generated sense of self comes gently apart, a person may notice how things that once carried meaning of some kind no longer have that familiar quality. What a radical undoing this is. It may be unnerving. For most of us have been taught, in ways explicit and (more potently) unarticulated, that “a life without meaning” is a sad thing.

The habit of the mind automatically assigning meaning to each thing (good/bad, progress, problem) is felt to soften, as a person is more readily able to simply accept whatever occurs, without resistance or the need to interpret it. When a thing is able, at long and blessed last, to simply be itself, peace can be felt in the body.

So it is when an action is undertaken simply because it “wants” doing, or because there’s a need to be addressed. There’s a gentle softening of the driving urge to do a thing because it carries some perceived meaning, to justify the effort because it carries symbolic significance, enhancing the sense of self (in your own eyes or in others’). Also easing is the attachment-to-outcome dynamic: you do a thing in full awareness that it may not have the wished-for result. There’s less resistance if things turn out otherwise.

The matter of what-motivates-action becomes increasingly available to the light of consciousness . . . and life gradually simplifies.

* * * * *

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that the nature of relationships would be subject to change. The constraining need that’s defined so much human connection becomes more conscious than before. The perceived self-lack animating a given relationship may gently ease as the light of awareness penetrates the bottomless longing to be understood, to be admired, agreed with — to be needed. Acceptance of the other person can be felt to blossom.

These discoveries and changes in a relationship can also bring discomfort, potentially being experienced as undermining of the connection.

Sorrow naturally may enter the picture, in such situations. It asks a certain courage to be with the changes these realizations set in motion, to grant the feelings all the space they ask. It’s also helpful to realize the other person won’t inevitably see things the same way; we’re not in charge of infusing insight or clarity into another, the timing of such openings being particular to each of us. The felt “discrepancy” provides yet another invitation to accept what-is.

From the point of view of the self, there’s a compelling reason most of this has been held below the level of conscious knowing, until now. Yet what ultimately can be seen is this: it’s been imprisoning to live at the mercy of such forces, putting constraints on the nature of love. 

* * * * *

Would the holy ones have us altogether disengage from those dear to us, from “regular life”? Perhaps they’d say to grant our innate love and wisdom their vast spaciousness. To allow these inner forces — more potent than any external guidance (including this essay) — to inform how to proceed in the orientation to outer life.

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water, counsels the Zen koan. There is the “wood and water” each of us needs to sustain life, yes, so the familiar practical maintenance continues. But wood and water are needed far and wide. 

It’s also said that work is love made visible. When anger and fear cease to be the primary motivators, innate human goodness is able to take outward expression. Things often change for the better, both practically and interpersonally, with generosity and good will enlivening all we do.

What does grief ask of a human being? When the heart is aching to break, what’s to be done?

A breaking heart brings a surge of pain. Whether physical or heartfelt, pain is never welcome. Our animal selves evolved to register discomfort as a threat to well-being, possibly to life itself. It’s natural we’d have the impulse to try to “fix” grief, or to escape it.

But to turn toward it? To welcome grief, when it comes uninvited?

* * * * *

Here in Vermont (well north of the equator) the warmth of summer is being felt now to take on a bit of chill in these days of early September. The sunlit days are noticeably shorter than before. The coming of autumn — much cooler, sunlight shrinking — means something particular in this pandemic time.

Spirituality is not about protecting yourself from the pain of life. If that’s what it is for you, look again.

The relative safety of outdoor encounters has enabled leisurely times with loved ones. Those times, for me, have been luscious. My adult children and I have remarked on the fortunate timing of the coronavirus: if it had to visit, at least its arrival coincided with the warming months. In the season of the pandemic, when everything’s been turned upside-down, some features of daily life have been felt oddly to open up. There have been, for my children and me, experiences and conversations that will stay with me a long time. All of it unfolding in the green and fragrant beauty of benign summer air. My gratitude for this summer’s bounty is enormous.

And so now, with the recognition of summer’s winding-down, with the diminishing of leisurely encounters, grief comes. We’re soon to say goodbye to the meandering woods walks, the kayak paddling, the refreshing dips in local ponds. The timeless lazy summer days.

Even as time has all along been doing its thing: continuing to move.

* * * * *

Of course the heart breaks, in the face of such a moment. I don’t know what else to do than to feel it. To grant sorrow all the space it asks.

Nor does it take up the “space” occupied by gratitude. Grief and gratitude are comfortable bedfellows. One doesn’t wipe out the other, nor should it. I can — I do — celebrate the blessing of the fun and rewarding encounters with my daughter and my son, even as there is also the sorrow of knowing there will be fewer of those now, and briefer ones.

There’s no impulse to protect my heart, or to “console” it with trade-offs: Yeah, but we’ve had such good times. As if that yeah but should somehow cancel out the sadness. Nor do I hold at a protective distance the delicious memories of these times. No: I sink gladly into the heart’s revisiting of those memorable talks, the laughter, the shared reveling in the natural world.

All the while letting grief have its way, when it comes.

* * * * *

Did you think that being awake meant no more pain? The oh-so-human experience of grief does not magically undo itself. What wakefulness means is that you no longer resist a breaking heart (or wish it would hurry up and resolve). You’re patient with it. Grief is granted its necessary space. You let it in, opening your heart to it. You rest in it, simply because it’s inside you. It’s what’s real, just then.

Among other things, being awake is being attuned to reality, without holding it away. There’s no felt distance between awareness and momentary reality. Part of what’s real is what’s happening inside the body, the heart. And there’s also whatever’s going on around you: the season, the pandemic, the circumstances of others, the condition of the planet, of our fellow human beings.

Spirituality is not (as sometimes supposed) about protecting yourself from the pain of life. If that’s what it is for you, look again. Ask yourself what it would feel like to be fully alive, entirely in your oh-so-human life — and yet not to suffer.

To allow reality to be what it is: why does that not equal suffering? Why does it feel simply alive to allow yourself to be fully in the presence of the real? How can that be?

Oh, do not ask the ego-saturated mind to contemplate such a thing. It is ill-equipped to sort it out. The ego-mind is the same “creature,” after all, that’s hellbent on getting pain to stop — the made-up self that keeps us from knowing what we deeply are. That self can never access the truth, nor can it hope to wake up. That’s not what happens.

What happens is that at long last, the thinker — which is also the spiritual aspirant — ceases to feel like what you are.

One of the essential discoveries of fearless spiritual exploration is learning to distinguish between two sorts of pain: what’s caused by the mind, and what comes naturally from life itself, full as it is with change and loss. Being awake stills the first one, and opens the door wide to the second. Seeing the distinction between the two sources of pain (life and thought) is a radical game-changer.

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To avoid grief is more “life-threatening” than to relax into it. Denied grief distorts into hardness and regret, crippling a person’s ability to ever move on. Avoidance walls off the heart from its terrible fragility — and so from life itself, as it continues. Nor does this perceived “protection” distance a person from pain only. It blunts too the experience of moments of sweetness, of spontaneous joy.

Resisting the heart’s pain doesn’t make it disappear. No, it sends it underground. It morphs into a buried knot, lingering unacknowledged, all the rest of our days, walling us off from unfolding life, moments of which could otherwise be delightful. Alive-feeling.

The bodied sensation of opening to the fullness of grief brings a palpable aliveness — not so different, strangely, from the radical aliveness of ecstasy. Aliveness (like consciousness) is “neutral” in and of itself. The variety of experience that can happen “within” it is endless. Being fully here, fully human, brings sorrow as inevitably as it opens the heart to cherishing.

The cost of unallowed grief is dear. So long as we don’t erect walls in the heart, consciousness can receive each thing that comes. Love and gratitude are the natural companions of grief, life being in constant motion.

If a person is fortunate, the question will come. What am I, at my essence? Is there something deeper than the daily struggle to satisfy and solve?

In rare moments of brave authenticity, an earnest curiosity surges to the surface of consciousness. What makes this life worth living? Brimful with its ups and downs, what’s life really about, beneath the longing for solutions? It’s the question that will likely be there in the moments approaching the final heartbeat. 

Have I lived? Did I miss it?

In the rare but precious times of relaxing the grip on immediate concerns, allowing this wondering to become primary, there can be a reckoning. It remains to be seen whether the moment of truth animates subsequent life. Mostly, habit reasserts itself, and then (so soon!) you’re saying Where did all the time go? What was it all about, anyway?

Perhaps the primary reason we keep ourselves busy, all our lives, is to hold at a distance that profound question: Am I really living? We tell ourselves all the things we’re occupied with are important, that we have “no choice,” no space for such deep reflection. 

Anything to keep that comforting distance in place.

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At some point before the clock stops, a kind of earnest search may have begun, perhaps becoming primary among a person’s concerns. There’s a longing to find the interior space where only authenticity lives, a quiet sense of well-being, noteworthy for its absence of striving and discontent. If there’s the memory of having been in that space, even fleetingly, the hunger to find it again, perhaps to linger there, can take on a quality of haunting. A whole new longing has started up. But this desire is of a different order from the sort having to do with finding the right partner or job.

Am I really living?

It’s because you know this place in you exists. The times you’ve felt it are not forgettable.

The spiritual life is a game of hide-and-seek, working to locate what’s hiding in plain sight. But really, it’s not hiding from us. We’re hiding from it. We keep ourselves at a distance from it, but seldom in all the earnest seeking do we realize we’re doing that. So a search is undertaken, sometimes with a doggedness that’s wearying. There’s the impression of not getting anywhere, or not far enough. Or of seeming to get there but then “losing” it.

Yet during the brief interval of being in that quiet space, it was impossible to imagine ever returning to the angst-ridden mode. Because from that peaceful awareness, the other “you” (the one capable of suffering, of seeking) was recognized for the insubstantial thing it is. (The two conditions are worlds apart, experientially.)

Such “relapses” can be bewildering, even painful. It may appear that trying harder is in order: steadier vigilance, more rigorous self-inquiry, acquiring more spiritual ideas. Judgment of one’s “lapses” can bring its own pain. Denial can come into the picture of self-awareness. All of it exhausting — and fruitless.

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A person could wonder why being in the now, just the now, seems to come so easy for a little child. Or, say, a cat or dog. Neither toddler nor four-legged needs to strain to feel alive, to become caught up in the immediacy of the moment.

And it is surely the case that these innocent beings could not have the capacity to appreciate the experience of simply being here. For an adult human being has the awareness that a truly lived moment could be — and typically is — painfully otherwise. No, it takes a load of living, of wanting and not getting, or getting and then losing, to send a person inside, posing meaty questions about the meaning of life.

Even so, it’s useful to realize that the life force animating the small child doesn’t depart the scene, as growing up happens. The capacity for utterly relaxed, receptive, alive-feeling awareness does not leave us as we become adults. It’s just that the anguished matter of becoming a somebody sends the essential aliveness into hiding of a sort. Then we spend the rest of our unfulfilled lives scratching one itch after another, or struggling to heal all the damage, all the while rightly suspecting we’re missing the point.

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When hide-and-seek has stopped, and things have gotten wondrously still inside, it’s not that the seeking finally discovered the hiding place. It’s that the dogged effort simply grew blessedly quiet. The senses came alive, the mind stilling. Something has happened to turn the head just slightly to one side or the other from where it’s been used to looking, supposing it knew what it was looking for. The “looker” sees — quietly receives — a familiar landscape from a suddenly new perspective. 

What’s changed is the eyes, the ones doing the seeing. These are the eyes of awareness, not of effort, of thought. What’s taking in the now is the timeless child, endowed with pure conscious attunement. The strained searching has unwound to silence. The immersion in the moment is profoundly restful, the eyes purely receptive, absent the mind-driven effort of seeking. It’s as if everything seen were entirely new . . . and yet it’s familiar. 

At such a moment a person wants nothing. Has forgotten any imperfections or discontents. There is only this, right here, in plain sight. It’s not to be clung to. The moment-to-come is not real. Only this one is.

Let go the impression a person has to work hard. It’s the mind, anyhow, exerting the effort. Stop thinking you know something. (What a relief.) Be transparent to yourself. Feel what you feel, without handling it. Be a little child, an animal. Just for now, this moment. Let your senses drink in what’s around you, whatever it may be.

All our hearts will stop. It’s never too late to live.