Category: Teachings

Awakening is a beginning, not a triumphant conclusion. There might be the impression that once awakening has occurred, nothing remains to happen — to develop, unfold, blossom. This could not be further from the truth.

What does it mean to wake up? What actually happens? Something causes a kind of “relocation” of awareness from where it’s habitually been to an entirely new perception of reality. It’s as if the eyes being looked through are not the ones used before. As though you’re in an altogether new landscape. No longer in the thrall of thought and emotion, with life (not the mind) appearing to be the cause of suffering, your prior identification with the familiar conditioned self feels insubstantial. What now feels real is . . . the now itself. “You” do not seem to have a substantial existence apart from momentary life.

If there is a journey of sorts, it only begins at awakening.

Yes, there might have been fleeting glimpses of this “alternate reality,” in the time prior to the comprehensive change, in which the truer awareness could be felt to come . . . and (alas, ultimately) to go. With real awakening, there is a palpable experience of stability, this alternate sort of perception having become the norm.

* * * * *

It’s natural to suppose that if a person stops suffering, if identification with thought and the conditioned self relaxes into stillness, nothing would remain to happen. The end of suffering is, after all, what motivates many on the spiritual “path.”

Why is that word in quotation marks? There is the enduring impression that a person needs to change, to get somewhere, in order to stop suffering. As if there were a great distance to traverse between here and there. Yet when awakening occurs, it becomes obvious that this was here all along. That it was only the layered-on illusions of reality that kept it from being seen and fully inhabited. “You” did not change, did not “evolve” from unawake to awake. All that’s happened, really, is that what seemed real up until then — your familiar self, subject to the tyranny of mind and emotion — has now come apart. While the spiritual mind might have supposed it knew all of this before, its truth has now become embodied.

Awakening is an undoing, a letting-go — not a getting somewhere, due to arduous effort. 

John O’Donohue once said, “If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long.” If you have the impression of being on a lengthy, arduous path, you’re taking the long way around. Unnecessarily. But it sure does feel like there’s no other way. Until it becomes obvious that a vast amount of effort is unnecessary. It’s more a radical releasing that’s wanting to happen. A gentle opening of the eyes to what’s always been right here, just beside the real-seeming illusion.

If there is a journey of sorts, it only begins at awakening. Imagine that.

* * * * *

One way of accounting for the why of the ceaseless unfolding that results from waking up is this: a human being simply might not be able to bear, to process and incorporate, all that’s to come, were it all to occur at once. A person has, after all, been long accustomed (likely for decades) to that other way, the one in which the mind held sway, in which its impressions of reality have been mistaken for life itself. 

The simple truth is that before waking up, a person has not fully lived. Coming alive in that radical, thorough way is a shock to the system. It’s a whole new world, and while you’re delighted (and relieved!) to be there, it does take some getting used to.

Yet nature seems to be kind to us in that it allows plenty of space for the blossoming to occur, for revelation to be integrated bit by bit. A person does, after all, continue on in the familiar human life, with people and work and fun, the world being its same self in significant ways. Whatever comes about after waking up gets incorporated in the context of ordinary daily experience. An awful lot of learning, of adaptation, must occur.

So long as someone newly awakened doesn’t cling to an impression (possibly carried over from prior belief) that “this is it, this is how it will be now,” much more awaits.

* * * * *

It is not possible (nor would it be wise or helpful) for any one person to declare that “this is what happens after awakening,” as if what occurs is the same for all who awaken. The observation can be made, for instance, that coming-to-life in the fullness of our human endowment appears to take place in mind, heart, and body. Wakefulness can take expression in the form of wisdom, love, and a juicier physicality. 

A human being is blessed, originally, with the capacity for clear-eyed seeing, boundless tenderness, and animal delight. Yet it seems not everyone who awakens will experience these developments in equal intensity.

For a given person, the emphasis may be initially on one capacity over the other, and the timing of subsequent developments appears to have its own wisdom. None of which we’re in charge of, or could hope to predict. We’re just going along for the ride, marveling at it all.

Even to presume to divide a human being into those three capacities (mind, heart, body) is of course reductive. Yet most anyone who’s living a human life will attest to recognizing the rough equivalents of these “parts” of themselves, prior to awakening and after.

What occurs post-awakening may have something to do with a person’s nature and experience, observable prior to the turning point. For instance, someone who’s lacked particular bodily awareness, pre-awakening, may notice that afterward, the sense of physicality may not be felt to blossom until well after revelation in the heart and/or mind has occurred. This can be the case, for instance, with one who has a history of trauma.

The expressions of wakefulness are endlessly varied.

* * * * *

I have been reluctant, for the most part, to say much about how it’s been with me, not wanting to create the impression that “this is the way it is,” as if my own experience could be applicable to another. With that as a caveat, I can offer a little about my sense of what’s happened in my life . . . so far. Which is to say, I’m well aware there is surely more to come. Seventeen years into the adventure, I’ve learned to be surprised by nothing, to assume nothing in the way of stability.

My wish in sharing this personal account is simply to offer a sense of how waking up begins a way of being, only setting in motion developments that could not have occurred before. I mean to gently dismantle the widespread impression that there’s nothing left to happen after awakening . . . only the fabled “dwelling in bliss,” possibly at a remove from Regular Life.

Some have said that enlightenment is what becomes possible after awakening. The two are not synonymous. The light surely does grow brighter, as things go on.

* * * * *

In my life prior to waking up, it was mostly emotion that ran the show — desire, fear, the ceaseless search for fulfillment. While I reveled in intellectual things, my mind was also the generator of much trouble. 

Imagine my surprise, then, when after the quiet descended, and the now became all that felt substantial, the primary evidence of development seemed to occur less in the heart than in the mind, in the form of blossoming clarity. It was as though the mind, having at last been relieved of its habitual mischief-making, were now able to marvel, have insights, make connections. None of these revelations came via ordinary thought. They arrived in utter stillness, absent effort or clinging. One light after another came on, having to do with people and life in general, and also illumining my own life experience, ongoing and prior. Nothing looked as it had before. Everything was new, even if it had to do with a long-ago past, a lifelong pattern.

With the dissolving of mind-based emotion, my heart had grown entirely soft and welcoming. Whereas before my interior had been animated by resistance and a driving desire, now gratitude and allowing were the order of the day. It seemed the capacity of the heart to open beyond its previously-felt bounds carried with it a profound quiet, love taking on an indiscriminate, almost impersonal quality.

I had long reveled in the physical life, delighting in the natural world, in animals, in various forms of passionate intensity. Yet all of it had been tainted with the fear of death and loss. And always there’d been the identification with things like my appearance and physical well-being. With the dissolution of the fear of life’s ending, a new world had opened in the experience of the body, of the surrounding physical reality.

* * * * *

As the years have gone by, following the extended period of the clear mind opening wide, the body and the heart have seemed to have their focused times of unfolding, of coming more fully alive. Exceeding, you might say, their previous capacities, all carrying much in the way of revelation.

Once the experience of being in a body has become disentangled from fear, and the identification with the body has dissolved, it becomes possible to discover anew what it is to be embodied — for the physical self to revel in its utter animalness. I have never experienced my animal nature as vividly as in recent years. The deepening is conspicuous, even though there’s been a lifelong enthrallment with living creatures, the wild and beloved pets alike. The senses are more acutely attuned than before, more richly capable of savoring. Nowadays I revel in all kinds of physical activity — brisk walks, stacking cord wood, kayaking. In my late sixties, I can say I haven’t felt this full of vitality since I was much younger. 

I’m certainly aware of the ongoing diminishment that inevitably comes with aging, always taking care not to push myself beyond what’s truly comfortable. Even as I enjoy the body’s vigor, I hold my aging self in tender regard. I take good care of it, attuned to its limitations, aware that as time goes on, it will continue to diminish in its capacity. The body is, after all, built to eventually come apart, and finally to stop.

As for the heart, it seems to have assumed center stage over the last few years. As if discovering the exquisite boundlessness of love in its various expressions, most notably cherishing and gratitude. Grief too has been in the picture, markedly due the death of one deeply loved. Yielding fully to that sorrow has exploded the heart with a quality of sweetness I cannot begin to describe. Grief being (of course) one of love’s most potent expressions, gratitude is its natural companion.

Did you suppose there was no pain post-awakening? That absent detachment and fear and clinging to belief, the heart would never know the pain of loss? Oh, but the capacity of the fully open human heart to “feel the pain” of the hurting world, or of an individual person (or animal), is well beyond what it was previously. And who would want it to be otherwise? When the perceived boundaries between self and other have melted into insignificance, how could a person not feel for others?

Yet among the liberating discoveries, post-awakening, is the latitude available to conscious awareness, the realization that consciousness can be “directed” or withheld. So (for instance) if the world holds enormous difficulty — viral, climate, political, personal, or otherwise — one need not “live” there ceaselessly. 

Prior to awakening there is mind-caused suffering. But always there is the plain alive-feeling pain that may come with a loss like death, mortal life being a condition of ceaseless change. But unlike with self-inflicted suffering, this pain is a spontaneous response to life itself. There is no attempt to resist, only to allow. Even as it hurts, there is peace. Aliveness.

* * * * *

Surely it’s become apparent that much of the conscious inner exploration that occurs prior to awakening has its kindred expression after. Which is one of the reasons I’ve felt moved to share these things: to show that the before and the after may have more in common than a person might suppose.

A telling distinction can be seen in the way the prior explorations tend to be “held,” vis-a-vis how it more likely is after. Before, there may be the tendency to be self-critical and vigilant, with the attempt to enact change, perhaps to avoid or deny. Whereas after awakening, it’s more a plain noticing, an allowing of what’s happening — all on its own, in its own time and way, without the familiar attempt to manage (or even to understand) what’s happening. Each new development is infused with a peaceful well-being. Knowing it all to be momentary.

* * * * *

Before awakening I wanted life to go on and on, not only because I feared decline and death, but because I was desperate for more time to finally “get it right.” Since things changed, I can say I’d be happy to die any time, the now being plenty of life. At the same time, I’d be delighted for the adventure to continue. 

Some years after I stopped hungering for more time, I noticed myself — nevertheless — feeling moved to pay more attention to priorities, realizing I didn’t have forever to do a thing that wanted doing. Like going on a travel adventure with my son, who was newly sober. Like joining a choir I’d longed to sing with. Life’s brevity and uncertainty seemed to have made a fresh impression on me. After all, who knew what change might be on the near horizon? Maybe I wouldn’t always be able to go on such a trip with my son. Make hay while the sun shines became the guiding force shaping my days. Many things were set aside, along the way, with nary a regret. 

Around the same time, I noticed a blossoming tendency to take good care of my body. This came as something of a surprise, given that I’d long since stopped identifying with it. Yet when death ceased to be the enemy, it was perhaps inevitable that I would come to hold the embodied vessel in tender regard. The body is, after all, one of the vivid ways the now is experienced.

For I did — I do — love this life. 

* * * * *

The decades we’ve each merely existed (not truly lived) have reduced us to pale versions of our rich potential — all of it, most poignantly, in the name of “survival.” When awakening occurs, it at last becomes possible to fully assume the blessings of our innate endowment. We discover what it is to be utterly alive, to deeply engage with the dear world we occupy. This is a process, a gentle but persistent enlarging of what we’d ever imagined possible for ourselves, for one another.

It is something to behold.

What is it to pray? At its essence, what is prayer? Sometimes in explorations with seekers, the subject will come up. Do you pray? I’ve occasionally been asked, or Do you think I should pray?

Any attempt to define prayer is doomed, whether it’s me struggling at it or the formulation of some religious or spiritual tradition. It’s like the idea of God, or of love. Reductive no matter how you approach it. Language is only ever an approximation, subject to making small a thing that cannot be contained, or defined. Yet there is the attempt, even so, words being a way of reaching toward one another, across the silence and emptiness that appears to separate us.

* * * * *

Prayer tends to be for something, expressed to someone. It’s reaching toward a perceived source of wisdom beyond yourself. Maybe the name given to that is God, some word embodying an all-knowing, all-loving entity. Religions and spiritual traditions have their particular names and practices. Like all words, any formulaic expressions or ritual intended to embody the reaching toward truth, these are inevitably reductive. It’s the same with an individual’s own spontaneous cry for help or clarity, which tends to be generated by the mind, the suffering heart.

What happens at awakening is that an ordinary human being comes to sense the no-separation from all-that-is.

People typically pray either from practice (habit) or in response to a longing. We’re moved to pray when we want something: some resolution, to be relieved of a burden, rescue of some sort. Making a deal with God in a moment of crisis. We pray for another. Or for a lofty inner experience. Sometimes a prayer of thanks may come, seeking nothing. How restful, how softening, the expression of gratitude can be.

* * * * *

So much of the spiritual life is a matter of getting out of one’s own way. It involves the humility of realizing you cannot know with any sort of confidence the “meaning” of anything, or what your “problem” really is, nor what will most deeply benefit you at a given time. There is the recognition of barriers within yourself, blocks to clarity that your mind is impotent to dismantle, since it’s the mind that erected them in the first place (all in the name of perceived self-protection). 

And so it is with prayer, which frequently assumes a person to be equipped to know what is needed. It’s the mind, of course, supposing this, the mind giving formulation to the heart’s desire. To ask for a particular something can erect its own kind of barrier. It says “I know what I (or someone else) needs, what will be of benefit in this situation.” If I’ve learned anything, it’s that I cannot know what will serve me, or be of help to another. It isn’t up to me to know this. Whatever I might formulate would be skewed or short-sighted. Nor would I presume to suggest prayer to another. If a person is naturally moved in that direction, I would not dissuade them.

And then there’s that oft-cited matter of “being careful what you wish for.” How something fervently hoped for may well occur but not — as seen in retrospect only — deliver the longed-for goods. Life itself has taught us again and again that we cannot know what will truly benefit us. 

* * * * *

To pray is to enter into a humble receptivity. It’s to realize the familiar self’s inability to deeply know. Most fundamentally, to pray is to open to wisdom that’s available to come to the heart, in a time of readiness. This is not the emotion-saturated heart cramped by desire or need, but the open one that’s receptive to truth, painful or otherwise.

To turn toward such openness carries a faith of sorts: there’s a sense that more awaits you than you’ve been aware of to this point. The possibility of insight, perhaps. Of release from something imprisoning or limiting. Maybe there’s an underlying hunch that you will be up to what comes. Which may not always be so comfortable.

It’s no wonder prayer is traditionally associated with being on one’s knees, head bowed, eyes closed. There’s a welcoming of rest from familiar effort or striving, a willing letting-go. The posture of prayer is akin to the idea of metaphorically being brought to one’s knees, cut down by some life development. Life holds many invitations to be reminded of our inability to know, let alone to control. Or to know how to pray, or for what. When the eyes are closed, there’s no seeing what’s ahead.

* * * * *

There is always available to the receptive heart a larger knowing than we’ve yet been able to take in. To allow to take us into its kindness and instruct us, point the way somehow. It may be surprising, or even fierce; it frequently is. Witness the fabled dark night of the soul, the potential transformative power in a time of crushing loss and despair. What will actually benefit us (bring about a letting-go, enable a deeper resting in the truth, going someplace we’ve kept walled off within ourselves) may in fact deliver terrible pain and a sense of awful loss and disorientation. A removal of the very foundation we’ve long stood upon. Who would pray for such a thing? Willingly invite it? Yet it’s possible to see, looking back, how some life crisis, or crisis of faith, did in fact bring about a significant release, some opening. Though we’d never have imagined it at the time (let alone asked for it). Which is not to say every significant altering inner experience will be devastating. The point is that it isn’t up to the mind to know, to imagine it can formulate, what we need at any given time — what will most benefit our ongoing opening to the truth.

There’s no end to what is there — even long past awakening, so long as a person doesn’t assume stability or ultimate knowing. We receive what there’s readiness for, and nothing beyond that. Always there will be more, on another occasion, so long as we remain open to it, so long as we don’t expect (or desire) “stability.” 

Something knows better than we do what we’re ready for, and at what point.

The concept of a higher power (used in twelve-step groups) is a way of expressing that something beyond the mind’s ordinary knowing, without resorting to familiar ideas of God and the like. It invites humility, receptivity. Carrying a quiet faith in the prospect that a person can have access to something beyond what has so far been taken for the truth, it doesn’t suggest the source resides “elsewhere” in the universe, as an entity. It simply invites opening to a wisdom beyond what the mind has access to. It says maybe there’s more to existence — to the imperfect self — than a person has yet come to realize.

* * * * *

Many years ago something happened that altered the sense of prayer I’d had all my life until then. The moment occurred in the months of unfolding discovery after fear relaxed its grip on my conscious awareness. I felt moved to pray, to reach toward God, to turn toward some sense of the divine. Was it to say thank you? Was it to ask for insight about a particular matter? I no longer remember the context. Because the shock of what happened next took up all the space in awareness and is what has endured.

I was stunned by the vivid sense that whatever source of wisdom I was accustomed to reach toward — “out there” somewhere — was . . . not there. Simply not there. How could this be? But then I saw. It took a moment’s reflection, and then it became apparent what was happening. 

* * * * *

Our error — the illusion that accounts for our lifelong torment and striving and blindness — is the impression, the belief, that we are apart from divinity. That God (or whatever name we give the source of unconditional love and truth) is remote from our very selves. Is other. There is that idea celebrated in so much religious and spiritual literature of longed-for proximity to God, the aching for union, with the enduring assumption of our being distant from divinity. Witness Michelangelo’s poignant image on the Sistine Ceiling, Adam’s finger straining to touch God’s. As if we were separate in the first place.

A way of saying what happens at awakening is that an ordinary human being comes to sense the no-separation from all-that-is. Another possible name for God, the divine.

How poignant it is, that all our lives we ache to be understood, acknowledged, appreciated. To find the great love. As if we — what we most truly are — could be lonely. As if we were “incomplete.” 

There never was any distance to reach across to find God, to access wisdom. To come to “know,” to pray to. It’s a matter of letting oneself discover, bit by bit by humbling bit, the boundlessness of the heart’s capacity to sense . . . to allow . . . the fullness of the truth within. To realize in a bodied way that we are both human and divine. That we are not, after all, apart from what we long for.

A moment of life occurs. You’re doing something, or observing or listening, your senses engaged. A split second later, at a subtle distance from the experience itself, you assign it meaning. These two appear to be a single thing, but they are not. One happens in present-moment reality, the other in your head. One is life itself; the other is a thought. It is the thought that lingers as the “real” event.

A human being is equipped with a capable mind. It’s played a major role in our evolution as a species able to vanquish (or adapt to) perceived threat. We’re endowed with the natural, automatic tendency to interpret each life moment, to assign meaning, to assess its potential threat or benefit. To put the now into some sort of context.

Not ideas about the thing but the thing itself.

Wallace Stevens

This tendency has everything to do with why a condition of innate peace is so rarely the experience of a human being. We are animals: it serves us to be vigilant — to make every effort to exert control over our circumstances, to protect ourselves and our resources.

The trouble is, we overdo it with mental engagement. It’s how we manage to create a sense of who-we-are, working overtime to sustain and protect it. And then (this is most poignant) we try somehow to get that mind-invented self to wake up. Which it can never hope to do.

Meanwhile, buried below the vast repository of thought (and the knot of painful emotion it generates) is the calm pool where peace lives, patiently waiting for the mind to grow still enough for conscious awareness — not thinking — to register. To notice itself, its quality of spacious ease.

* * * * *

We are collectively in a time of heightened episodes of fear and grief — and here and there, tender floods of gratitude, of love. All of which are felt in the body, or can be, when awareness is directed there. Like sense impressions, spontaneous feeling (different from mind-caused emotion) precedes thought: first something “registers” in the body, then the mind takes hold of it. What if you were to simply linger in the feeling itself, to allow it all the space it needs, without resistance? Without regard for whether it’s “positive” or “negative,” it’s what’s real just now.

Imagine that: think nothing of it. Just let it be, for now, as it is. Even if it hurts. Take a deep breath and let it have its way with you, with your body, your heart. Don’t try to protect yourself, or rush to a thought of what-to-do-about-it. (The purpose of that thought is to rescue you from the feeling. You don’t need rescue from what can’t threaten your animal body.)

In this time of acute physical danger, isolation, and economic stress, the heart is asked to bear — to feel — a great deal. The sorrow of loss, the stress of uncertainty. Discomfort with such feelings can cause anger to flare, or acute anxiety. There may likewise be moments of deepening appreciation for ordinary things not previously given much attention. Cherishing of people, even strangers. Seeing into the eyes of someone you don’t know, you may recognize your common humanity, perhaps a tenderness or fear kindred to your own. You may be moved to reach out to someone to say a long overdue I love you or I’m sorry. Because it’s now become blessedly vivid that maybe you don’t have forever to do such things. (You never did.)

Sensing your aliveness in this moment is about experience — life itself — and discovering how that differs from thinking. This is the gift of relaxing into a feeling when it takes hold of you, whatever its quality. What matters is that it’s real, just now. It’s how you can tell you’re alive.

* * * * *

“What will we do with this gift of grief?” asks a contemporary writer.* Why is grief a gift? Like all deep feeling, the sorrow of a loss has the capacity to open the heart. When a feeling is fully allowed, without resistance, even as the pain (or joy) may intensify with complete surrender, the heart is likewise felt to become more spacious. 

At such a moment, a person is keenly alive. In the now. The mind grows blessedly quiet. A gift indeed. Grief and gratitude — even joy — can be felt to co-exist in the wide-open heart. There’s no contradiction. Real is real: that is the point of being awake to what-is.

When you notice thought trying to start up in its familiar way, rather than straining to stop it, instead do this: gently notice that it’s a thought, without engaging in its content. Thought isn’t an enemy. It’s just the mind trying to do its familiar job. Don’t argue with the thought; the one doing the arguing is the mind. Conscious awareness doesn’t argue. It simply sees what is, without judgment. 

* * * * *

Even in a world like the one we presently occupy, most any particular now can be recognized (when conscious awareness is alive) as being absent immediate danger. Vigilance is not called for in this moment. Only surrender.

To remind yourself of the larger situation (beyond what’s detectable via the senses), or to recall anything in the past or anticipate something, it’s necessary to engage the mind. Which can be felt to have grown still in a moment of simply being here.

See how thought must be engaged anytime you re-mind yourself of any circumstance beyond the immediate. Being in the now is not about denial of the ongoing real-world circumstances. (It’s always possible to go there, when that’s asked for.) But it’s attention to the immediate scene that carries ease and the sensation of plain aliveness. This is what wakefulness is. 

Where else can the divine be tasted but in the now? Some have tried to give that sweet space a name. Like God. 

* * * * *

Your mind can tell you a hundred times a day that you’re alive. It means nothing. It’s only feeling yourself in this moment that makes aliveness vivid. Words — like the seeming reality of time — are inventions of the mind. It’s the difference between the sensory experience of biting into a sweet, juicy peach, and words straining to describe it. There are a hundred ways to say sweet, juicy (and a thousand ways to say God). But, well, do you see? 

Sink your teeth into this moment. You don’t have forever to live. But you do have right now. In fact, it’s all you’ve got. 

* Quotation by Hannah Ceri Jones

How can you take care of yourself in a difficult moment (including this one), and at the same time come to know — and rest in —  your essential nature?

• Focus on present-moment reality: the immediate scene, what you’re doing right now, bodily sensation.

• Allow yourself to feel what you feel — in the body/heart (not the mind).

• Minimize reminders of the larger situation. Be here, now.

• Focus on just one thing — one moment — at a time.

• Distinguish between what’s in your control and what’s not. Focus on what is.

• Each day enjoy something that nourishes you.

There are two kinds of distancing: the outer sort and the one within. Physical distancing is prudent at this time. Distancing awareness from immediate reality (at any time) is numbing. The former may safeguard your health and others’, while the latter impedes awakeness. What is the spiritual life about but coming into alignment with what’s real, in this moment? Resting in the truth of your nature is not apart from resting in reality, however much a person might wish it to be otherwise. Indeed, many who adopt a spiritual orientation do it to “protect” themselves from what’s difficult in life.

Awakening never was about distancing from life. It’s about coming to truly live. Not in the mind. It’s the mind, not life itself, we’ve ached for relief from.

Being in the now is both all we’ve got and profoundly restorative. The present is the only real thing we’ve ever had, in fact. Sometimes it takes something on the scale of this virus to drive that home.

* * * * *

See what it feels like to do one thing at a time, attentively — without hurrying. See how it locates you in the now, enabling the task to be done well. Notice how thinking-while-doing is actually “doing” two things at once. If the mind is busy (on a desired outcome, or the next thing on the list, or the big-picture situation), you’re not fully located in this moment. Allow the mind to rest, focusing on the physical. Afterward, if productive thinking is asked for, hold still and do that, just that. This way you do justice to each task.

It’s not the getting-it-done of a task but the felt act of actually doing it that locates you in the now. Conversely, doing something with the goal of crossing it off the list, or as a means to an end, locates you in the mind. When you bring single-pointed focus to an action, there’s no distance — no separation — between you and the act: what you’re doing is, in that moment, what you are. You’re not separate from reality. This is the space where peace can flower. Note that it has nothing to do with the nature of what you’re engaged in, pleasurable or otherwise. It’s got to do with attention itself (which cares nothing for the quality of the moment’s “content”).

* * * * *

Perhaps you orient to thought as a bad guy. What if it’s a wonderful tool that’s just habitually misused? The mind is mostly devoted to ego-maintenance. It’s not inevitable that it be so. Discover the blessings of the mind when it’s exploratory, creative — actually beneficial. See, for instance, how thought can enable you to identify truly helpful ways to take care of yourself and others in this challenging time. To distinguish reliable scientific sources from fear-based rumors. The mind can be engaged to explore the line separating the things you have some control over right now from those you simply do not. See how that use of the mind can enable you to rest from the useless stress of dwelling on things out of your control, obsessing over an imagined future.

Ask yourself what you have control over — what’s actually doable — and what you do not. Do what is, and see if you can let go the largely useless focus on the larger circumstances, including what’s unknowable. 

Do you have complete control over the future of your employment or financial situation? Can you know whether you’ll become infected with the virus? Can you know that taking precautionary steps will absolutely protect you? Is it possible to take reasonable steps and at the same time to rest in the knowing that everything is uncertain?

Each time the big picture tries to get your attention, simply notice the pull toward it — the sensation inside the body, the in-motion-ness of the mind. See if you can let the outer situation stay “out there,” returning attention to the here-and-now. The real. The “place” where it’s possible to feel your aliveness — where wakefulness can blossom.

Do you have control over your sources of information, over how much of the day you “tune in” to the latest developments? Learn to likewise tune in to when you’ve reached “enough for now.” The body may express signs of enough. Time to move to something practical, restorative, mentally restful. How liberating to discover that you do have some say in such matters.

Notice the effect on your body, the benefit to your inner state, when you learn to distinguish between what’s controllable and what’s not. How it becomes possible to let go the obsession over the not controllable part. Such relief in it!

You may have a tendency to console yourself with spiritual beliefs, to use the mind to tell yourself All is well, or It’s all a dream. What if there weren’t any belief systems to take refuge in? It’s the mind that generates beliefs in the first place, that sees them as a kind of refuge. What if you allowed yourself simply to rest in the feel of the now, just as it is — to allow the mind to quiet? The mind, after all, does not awaken. It just grows quiet, sans any beliefs at all.

* * * * *

It can be helpful — both practically and spiritually — to gently inquire, when you’re moved to do a certain thing, into the motivation behind the impulse. Notice the feel of what underlies the idea to do a certain thing. Is it fear, the desire to control? Is it love? Wisdom? Is a cherished belief driving it? Be willing to truly see what’s there. Don’t attempt to “manage” what you see and feel. Simply look, in an environment of spacious awareness. It’s like a light coming on, that’s all. Consciousness — what you most deeply are — is able to look without judgment, resistance, or trying to change anything. See what that feels like. 

If you’re inclined to mediate or to do some other practice, look to see whether there’s a belief you “should” do it, that it will help you “progress.” Or maybe you’re drawn there because it can be a refuge from reality. What motivates meditation? Does it actually feel restful and alive when it’s happening? Does it invite you to rest in what-is, in a way that’s nourishing, restorative?

When you’re motivated to read and consider every piece of news or “advice” that comes across your radar, look to see what’s behind that. Is it the panicky force of obsessive fear, the grasping for illusory control, that’s driving you? Notice such things and their effect on your interior. Realize that you do indeed have control — over whether to “go there” all the time.

If you feel anger flare at times, look to see what might underlie it. Very likely it’s fear, or grief from a sense of loss. The mind generates anger as an attempt to seize control — and (more deeply) to protect you from the the pain of what’s beneath it. If you see this happening, gently allow yourself to surrender to the depth of what’s there, to fully feel it. Do not attempt to “undo” anger via some (mind-based) spiritual effort to mute or deny it. Instead sink into the bodied sensation of anxiety, sorrow, whatever has given rise to “protective” anger. Allowing yourself to surrender to uncomfortable feelings may actually bring relief. At the very least it will put you in touch with what’s real, a rest from the exhausting mental attempt (however well-intentioned) to control.

Control what you can. Feel what’s alive in you. Let the rest go.

Discover other ways the mind can be a actual blessing. Not the ego-enslaved sort of thinking but by engaging the remembering capacity of thought. Remind yourself of those who are dear to you, or were long ago. Revisit activities you’ve delighted in (and may be able to enjoy now). Memory can enable a person to evoke beloved persons and events from the past. By using the mind to “go there,” a palpable appreciation of an earlier time in your life may be felt to come alive. Although the recollection is clearly of a long-gone past, the feeling evoked is experienced in the now, palpable in the heart, the body. You may feel renewed delight, perhaps even cherishing and gratitude. A vividly evoked memory might get a laugh out of you.

No, this is not “living in the past.” It’s a way to allow yourself to “experience” anew, in this moment, something from long ago. It’s entirely possible to appreciate past times with dear friends or family, to remember creative or fun adventures from youth, without becoming stuck in the past, in tiresome associated mental patterns.

Recollection (or looking at old pictures) can, to be sure, nudge the mind into its familiar habitual story. See if you can simply be with the sensation of the memory, without revving up the tiresome ego-soaked story associated with it. Just feel. And notice the present-moment aliveness, the bodied experience of the now.

Remembering someone of personal significance may move you to reach out to them to say thank you, or I love you, or “remember the time?” Perhaps a long-overdue “I’m sorry.” This is the sort of blessing the virus outbreak may give rise to. A potential source of nourishment to you both, having more to do with love than with fear. 

As you consider such possibilities, take care what communication “mode” you turn to. Because social media can open fear-inducing floodgates, consider other options. Phone? Email? That old-fashioned thing, an actual physical letter in the mail? Imagine how precious a letter in the hand can be, the pleasure of its recipient seeing your familiar handwriting. Even if you don’t feel moved to actually re-connect, simply allowing yourself to experience the depth of what’s come alive in you can be its own present-moment delight. Maybe even gratitude will flower.

Take care too with the possible tendency for the two of you to dwell overmuch on the current situation, to the detriment of what led you to reach out in the first place. Yes, you will surely “go there” together. But an excess of shared fretting and lamenting will benefit neither of you, revving up yet more crippling fear. Remember: it’s about allowing love and delight into the encounter.

What else might you find nourishing? Is there an activity that reminds you you’re alive, that invigorates? Is it being outdoors, smelling the air, hearing the birds? Going for a walk or other physical activity? Does music bring you joy? Something of a creative nature? Reading a good book? Is there some imaginative way you can offer help to others? Notice how when you give yourself to something like this, the mind tends to quiet its racket: you’re located truly in the now, your senses alive.

Do you have control over whether you devote part of each day to doing something that nourishes yourself? You do indeed.

* * * * *

Learning to rest in momentary reality is not about trying to cultivate a certain inner “state.” It’s about seeing what’s actually there, alive in you just now: what’s real. Among the things we’re not in control of is causing ourselves to feel a certain way. Let alone “staying there” — that cherished idea of trying to “hold on” to something, including a state that feels good, relieving.

See if you notice the muttering of some mind-generated idea of what being awake is like. Perhaps one of the few things that can be reliably said of wakefulness is this: it almost never looks or feels the way the mind imagined it might.

Spiritual awakening — coming to know what you most deeply are, and resting in that — never was about distancing yourself from life, from the body, the moment. It’s about coming to truly live. Not (at long, blessed last) to “live” in the mind. For it’s the mind — the assessing, resisting, manipulating, anticipating mind — that we’ve ached for relief from. Not life itself, but what thought has “done” with life. This is the shocking revelation that some “on the path” stumble onto: that the very circumstance they’d longed to avoid turns out to be the door to liberation.

Awakening is about coming at last to rest in radical uncertainty, in the utter absence of control — the very last place anybody would have expected to find profound peace. Brevity and the unknown are among the enduring realities of living a human life. Authentic “hereness” opens the door to resting in the very things that used to terrify us, as we come to experience the radical okayness of whatever is, just now.

Sometimes blessings turn up in surprising places. Let this moment we’re all in be the surprise doorway into that liberating discovery. 

I wish you rich explorations in this potent time. I wish you well, in every possible way.

Here it is, the teacher of them all. Every blessed one of us at “school” nowadays, morning-noon-and-night.

How might it be possible to orient to the coronavirus and its widespread disruptions, to the uncertainty and threat of it all, in a way that opens the door not to paralyzing fear but to clarity and a sense of calm well-being?

Calm (maybe even joy) in this time we’re all in? How can such a thing be?

The enduring lesson is uncertainty, the radical absence of control and predictability. The virus reminds us of the abruptness with which so much that’s been taken for granted can go topsy-turvy. Which always has been the case — and always will be. Only now, in this time we’re in, its penetrating truth becomes vivid.

We never have been in control of life, nor ever could be. But maybe peace isn’t dependent on stability and safety, or anything at all to do with how life is going.

May we see at last that what we were born to know has nothing to do with circumstance or the desirability of control.

For those accustomed to inquire into the matter of what life is really “about,” there’s a more profound something to be taken from our collective present moment. That question Why was I born? What am I here to see, to know? 

What is real, sense-able in the now? And how does that differ from what the mind can access?

* * * * *

The perception of stability and situational well-being never did have the capacity to answer such questions, to lead us to the inner reality that’s apart from ever-changing life, where brevity and challenge persist. To be sure, life is typically lived as though minor “successes” might deliver something approximately fulfilling, reassuring. Even as there always has been (if you’re honest) the softly whispered knowing that an illusion is driving this assumption — the one feeding unrelenting hope, against persistent evidence to the contrary.

The blessing of radically unnerving circumstances is that it becomes impossible to avert the eyes from the illusion that’s been running the show all along. It’s a blessing — a true teacher — so long as there’s the willingness to keep looking.

The question is this: Is it possible to be with difficult circumstances and at the same time to be at peace? Does challenge inevitably negate the stillness at the heart of all-that-is, keeping us at a stubborn distance from the something that life is about?

It is possible to orient to a crisis in a way that’s both wise and not grasping for illusory control. To feel the door open not to fear but to clarity and inner stillness. Peace can indeed exist in the context of a potent force that cares nothing for our contentment.

* * * * *

Fear is useless, of no benefit. In fact, it becomes an additional contagion, “infecting” many just now. Anxious constant attention is every bit as contagious as the virus, maybe more so. Of course no one consciously decides to be fearful. But there’s likely an unseen belief running the show. It protests that fear is inevitable, in such a situation. The fact that it’s operating unconsciously makes it especially potent, intensifying the fear. There’s the sense we’re at the mercy of not one contagion but two.

An even deeper assumption may be in the picture. Perhaps being afraid may actually protect a person, a kind of defense against what threatens.

Allowing such beliefs to come into the light of conscious awareness can enable a gentle unwinding of their grip. Perhaps leading a person, most tenderly, into what underlies the entire machinery: the assumption of there being an inevitable connection between outer challenge and inner well-being. It’s a belief defining the human condition, that peace in a given situation is simply not possible.

It’s the beating heart of what awakening is about.

* * * * *

Allow yourself to notice your own unseen assumptions about what’s necessary (maybe inevitable) in a situation like this one. See if this one is there: Given that the threat appears to be ongoing and life-altering, it must follow that attention to it be likewise uninterrupted. The belief being that to avert the eyes amounts to reckless disregard, making a person more vulnerable.

But see the dear cost of unrelenting vigilance, the price paid for ceaseless dwelling in the toxic environment of fear. It is not necessary or helpful. Nor is it inevitable that it be so.

Something in us has the capacity to be both prudent and kind, to ourselves and to others. It’s both kind and wise to take reasonable steps to look out for yourself and for others, even as you’re aware that nothing can assure absolute safety.

What does it mean to be kind to yourself? It means to be attuned to when you’ve absorbed enough information, for now. Notice the toll extracted by unceasing vigilance, by taking in every new development, as if it will help restore a sense of control. Knowing when enough has been reached is both sane and gentle to yourself. Pay loving attention to the effect of fear.

A few times each day, find ways to rest. Allow space to open up. What do you find nourishing? Linger over this question. Be reminded of the things that feed your soul, that delight. Is it music? The beauty of art, of a compelling book? Maybe it’s the rejuvenation of being out in the natural world, or engaging in some creative or physical activity. A hot bath perhaps, a delicious meal. Or spending time with a beloved pet. Connect with those dear to you (even if only virtually, or simply in your heart) — not to fret together, revving up your shared anxiety, but to remind yourselves of why you matter to each other. Remember what it feels like to laugh! What a welcome respite such moments can be, when you’re attuned to the feel of savoring, of gratitude. When you notice what plain aliveness feels like. 

Granting yourself such space is surely kind to yourself. It’s also a blessing to anyone around you (perhaps similarly “afflicted” by the contagion of fear) to be reminded such a thing is still possible.

These nourishing moments are of the now. They are experiential. They’re palpable, feel-able. They are not — most conspicuously — of the mind. The mind (you’ve surely noticed) is where the virus dwells, every bit as much as it dwells “out there.”

When these times of spaciousness occur, you may notice how the coronavirus seems to have taken a break. Perhaps you’ll see that something more substantial — more immediate, more alive — is reminding you of itself. Meanwhile, the virus and all its craziness carry on without you just fine, absent your constant dwelling on it.

* * * * *

Take in the lesson of this great teacher that’s come to visit us all. What if the coronavirus turned out to represent the opportunity of a lifetime? May it lead us at last to see that what we were born to know has nothing to do with circumstance or the desirability of control.

In this time of reduced air travel and the quieting down of a little industry, the earth’s atmosphere appears to have been relieved of a fraction of its toxic burden. May our inner world be visited by a kindred blessing.