Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation.

The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last.

My first training in mindfulness was with Bhante Dharmawara. This training has been indelible and today I continue with the simple practices that he taught me and many other people. There is no need to believe anything– just try and see! Watch the flow of the breath. Walk slowly and mindfully.

(Thanks to Kristin DeGross for the photo.)

This morning during my nature meditation, my attention was drawn toward the mountains. They were white again, unveiled when the clouds lifted after the spring snow. Against the clear, pale coral sky, they looked so pure! Looking at these mountains had the potential to bring my mind to pure silence.

At the same time, the blaring of a car radio was disturbing my peace. A neighbor had started her car with her remote, forgetting that she had had the radio on very loud the night before (our neighborhood is “always” quiet). The blaring music was a disturbance to me, and my mind kept going to the source of its annoyance.

My mind went back and forth between the annoyance and the peace; the annoyance really wanted to win the contest!

Then I realized, “This is a test.” Could I maintain the feeling of purity the mountains gave me despite the irritating sound? To do so took effort on my part. I tried to maintain the singular focus on the peaceful mountains. I was not totally successful in my prescribed time period, but I learned a valuable lesson.

Only I can decide how much I wish my mind to become silent despite the inevitable challenges. Only I can make it happen. And I also know, from the teachings and my own experience, that even the annoyance is perfect and pure. It is my reaction that makes it seem otherwise.

To be flawless, see flawless.

My help is in the mountain
Where I take myself to heal
The earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
And a stream where the water runs gentle
And the trees which one by one give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.

by Nancy Wood

— Gabriela Rocha-Caballero

The one most important point to keep in your mind… and
let it be your guide…
No matter what people think or say about you,
you are just who you are…
your essential nature
perfect in its True expression…

Keep this truth close. Ask yourself,
how is it you Want to live your life?
We live and we die;
this is the truth that we can only face alone.
So consider carefully,
what hinders you from
living the way you want to live your life,
Today?
~ Dalai Lama

(Thank you, Nancy Bennett)

Sometimes I feel like I’m pulling at so many threads in order to weave them more soundly  into the cloth of my life. Sometimes I doubt the number of these threads. Are all of these threads part of the total cloth of my life, or do I need to pull some of them out?

I feel I must be patient with the process. This is a time of rapid change. If I am present in the moment and true to my heart’s guidance, I will continue to experience integration and learn how to integrate what needs to be part of the cloth of my life and soul more rapidly.

Ultimately, I know that everything I do must fold seamlessly into the cloth of who I AM.

As we pursue our creative fulfillment, all elements of our life move toward harmony.

— Julia Cameron

The Bushman doctors I know… know that understanding the mysteries of God’s creation is less important than participating in it. What they say to others is inspired by a desire to motivate them into the heart of God’s love. They want us to dance more and talk less. They want to feel and see us open our hearts rather than fill our minds. The Bushman way is more polyphonic, improvisational, performative, playful, and biological  than the textually ruled world that anthropologists inhabit. They prefer shape-shifting in and out of a polychromal and polyphonic universe over word-shifting onto monochromal academic paper. Their truths mirror the truths of the sky, earth, plants, and animals that surround them. When they dance forth the dots, lines, and shapes, they marry them to a  heart bathed in the tears of longed-for relationships with the ancestors they love, the remembered mother who scratched their head, and the missed father who brought home meat. Deep emotions of the heart  guide the steps of the Bushmen, and their dance celebrates how they are inseparable not only from the living creatures of the present, but from the living presences of the past.

… imagine standing up, moving, and awakening to the biological verities that are within and around all of us.

— Bradford Keeney, Ropes to God: Experiencing the Bushman Spiritual Universe