It Doesn’t Have to be That Way

What is, is what is. You can’t change it. It already is what is. Change, however, is always happening, so change, it will. We never know what will appear in the next breath, or if we’ll be given a next breath. It’s impossible to know. It hasn’t happened yet. There are too many variables, so …

The Reflection of Wholeness

Humans seem to want messages of love and light and quickly scroll past anything that speaks to the state in which we currently find ourselves. Reality is the totality. It is not just the yummy stuff, new modalities of healing, ways to soothe the savage beast, sitting on the meditation cushion while the world burns. …

How Would You Know — It Hasn’t Happened Yet

Boy, if that happened to me, I’d … I remember saying that. If I was diagnosed with cancer, I wouldn’t go through all that. I’d rather die. I said that after my husband died, after watching him fight the good fight for five years. According to medical science he was a survivor. He’d made it …

The Promise

When Kenny was ill, we had a joke. He used to say, “Where would I go? There’s only here. There’s only now.” I’d look at him, and his precocious grin, and smile back.

Friendlies

Friendlies Watching Sophia today on our walk I wondered about inhibition and what stops humans from joining the fun like my little dog. She sees other dogs, other humans for that matter, and runs right up to them, wags her tail — hey, I’m friendly, are you? And the games begin. She is particularly fond …

The Rope and the Snake

I responded to a dear friend who asked a question about the messy human experience and how I experience it. After I wrote my response it seemed it might be worthwhile sharing with a few edits. When the dream is known to be a dream — think of the rope and snake analogy* (see below) …

Trained Seal Mind

Be. Here. Now. Experience. Awareness. Consciousness. Knowing. Presence. Love. Isness. This. Same, same … no difference. No thing and all there is. Nothing but experiencing — no one to experience — no thing to experience — simple knowing awareness doing it’s thing — slang expression — not a true thingy. Haha. Not tens of thousands …

Does Love Always Win?

It’s a common phrase amongst spiritual folk – Love always wins. Does it? It doesn’t seem like love always wins. It doesn’t even feel like love always wins. So … is it true? Does love win in the long run? If yes, how long a run? In my lifetime? In the lifetime of my children …

Voldemort or Harry?

It seems like a no-brainer question. Voldemort or Harry? Katniss or Snow? Luke or Palpatine? Robin or the sheriff? Who roots for the bad guy? I used to think choosing the good guy was obvious. I’m not sure anymore. A lot of Americans are choosing, to my understanding at least, the villain in the piece. …

Time Machine

To be present means more than I used to understand. I used to say, ‘I’m here, I live in the now’, but I had scarcely scratched the surface of what that meant. I had taken the first step, a step that graciously left time and space, me and others wholly intact. And boy, did I …

Rome is Burning

I’ve been feeling into this for a few days now. Well, actually this one’s been around a long time in different forms. I quit asking for answers to it in meditation because I heard the same answer time and time again. Can’t say I liked it. Many of you know I have written about this …

It’s Both

Life is a wondrous adventure, a daring escapade, the preciousness of a seemingly separate being, struggling for connectedness amid the vacillating yet compelling uncertainty of letting go in full surrender to our interdependency, our inherent and abundant symbioses. The separate self screams its denial, its holy terror, clutched in outrage, spewing out its abject rejection …

Independence Day

Let’s celebrate independence, independence from what others think, independence from waiting for life to match a predetermined ideal, for a now that is proof that we’ve made it, that love has won. Yes, by all means, let’s celebrate. For lifetimes we have let others define us, have let social norms determine our level of freedom, …

Right Back Here Again

We pack up their lunch, make sure they have their gym clothes and books, and bundle them into the car or out to the bus stop, take a deep breath and begin our day. School’s kind of a free period for parenting, or at least for a lot of parents. Do kids think about yesterday’s …