The Tao says that the less I do, the more that will be done.  Less drive results in less resistance.  Pushing makes this door stay stuck–it opens inward.  Anti-intuitive for humans who think they are doing instead of being.  Like me.

I’m floating down a lovely river, enjoying the green lush scenery.  But I know that in a month I will be hearing the crashing of the waterfall in front of me, two months I will be falling falling over into a new life.  A Pacific northwest shore heart rock crashing on the California beach.  Polished sand.

If I focus on being a waterfall, first and foremost to overflow within myself, I am completely distracted from looking to others to nourish me.  Let’s try that today.

Dear One, bubble up inside me, gurgle and giggle in delight with You as Me as Me as You.

One breath at a time. One piece of paper at a time.  One deal of spider solitaire at a time.  And another.  One meal.  Doing the dishes.  Watching the light move across the windows, on the floor of my little apartment.  Bit by bit by bit.

That is my day today.

This little human merely being.  It is good and very good.

I am, pardon the phrase, a “people person”.  I was born the oldest of nine kids, very aware of the feelings around me (unspoken as they were).  I was a helper at 3 years old when I fetched a diaper for my mom and my new baby brother.  It got me attention and I was off on a rollercoaster of pleasing others as a way to feel valuable.

So now, older and not much wiser, but certainly more aware of myself, I still get stuck.  I do truly like to help others, it does feel good to bring a smile to someone’s face, make a group laugh.  Certainly I feel heard, seen and valuable.  But I have to watch that I don’t get out of balance.

Then I’m left wondering how to please myself in the quiet empty apartment with no deadlines, job or family around me.

The trees seem to have no problem with this.  They aren’t plagued with this pesky human mind that does its job comparing with every breath.  I will be a tree today.  Write when it calls to me.  Move when I see the path.  Connect with others as they come to me.

I follow the will of Heaven.  I watch for the Path of Loving Kindness–for myself.  Then it will naturally overflow to others.

Why is easy so difficult?!  Why is going with the flow, the how, the Tao of nature such a struggle for this human merely being?!

The trees and the forest and the morning chirping birds out there make it look so easy–just being what they are when they are.  But I am awake nights with what should, could, might happen and batting at the stories within stories that the over-protective mind can make up.

Gentle and curious the Buddhists say to be.  “Fight the evil” scream the Christians.  Just watch how it all happens says the Tao.

And I lie in bed fighting to just watch my long slow deep breathing, seeking sleep.

Morning breaks and my doing pushes aside much of the whirling useless thinking.  Off in flight to be a bird seeking spiritual food.

Do nothing.  Be no thing.  Just be.

What a challenge with the mind calculating, comparing, planning, anticipating, remembering, analyzing every every second.  How did I do?  Did they like me?  Now what?  Where to go, what to do today? Lists and lists and forgotten lists.

And then I open my window and hear the morning birds, watch the trees stand in the yawning light.  I wrap myself with the shawl of goodness and You.  Your whispers in my ear are the sweet song of here and now.

The morning is slow to wake.  The body longing to dive under the covers.  The heart and mind reaches, unfolds and stretches to the day.

My little light seems tiny and obscured, but will shine tonite briefly sharing the goodness I feel with my art.  I sit watching the trees, taking lessons from their still bright brilliance.  Each of them content and true in the forest of many.  There is no pushing and shoving, just the flow of earth, sun and rain.

So word by word, smile by smile, I will stand and let Her words spill out through me.  Grateful for this honor to share my miniscule craftship, open to an unclear horizon, walking the Way step by word by step.

This meditation is about sitting in a simple hotel in Tillamock Oregon–home of good cheese and that rich fragrance of happy cows.  Mist covers the hills, steals the ocean, cools the air with salt water.  Birds sing their dance, traffic rhythm is music of the shore, stillness sits.

As I ready myself for a leisurely long days drive, gratitude adorns this little room.  Tiny stars of pleasant memories, beach treasures of ideas coming with me, hugs pressed into my heart.

Waves come and go and come and go and chase and retreat and foam and slide and polish everything they touch.  I claim the Presence to pull and push and carry me as She wills.  Ah, that She would have Her Way with me.

Albert Camus said “Real generosity to the future consists with giving all to what is present.”

I want to be generous to the future.  Allowing it full awareness and surrender to the gift it will reveal when it is present.  Instead of resentful to the future or wary and suspicious.

So to give all to the here and now.

Today I honor tears.  I am a weeper, and use these tools often.  Sometimes they come up understandably, sometimes not. Sometimes a major public event will open my heart with a waterfall of salt water, allowing deep mystifying sadness to be released.

The devastation of Oso’s mudslide clearly is sad.  We all have our internal Oso.  When the life we knew suddenly disappears under piles of now garbage, tears and debris.  Wreckage that once were our life’s work to build.  Gone in a few minutes.  Sometimes with eroding hillsides of expectations, sometimes with a simple word “no.”

In any case, those of us still breathing are called to keep on breathing, walking, deciding what to wear, how to move in the molasses mud of illogical life, deep grief and puzzling feelings.

I hold my Goddess close today, I talk to the forest, I cry.  And as I am called, I keep writing these words along the Way.

Here and now is the place to start.  To watch the light open up the day.  Dawn birds chatter and wake the forest, then quiet to do their daily business.   A leader reveals the light, the Tao, the How, the Way that the flow is going.  The chi of life does indeed flow.  With or without us.

But sometimes the flow is slow.  The light is dim.  The birdsong is very soft.  My practice then is deep listening.  Quiet watching.  Simple moves.  Tentative actions.  The silence is revealing and filled with stories.  It takes much time for them to sing their tragic songs, play out the drama and drop the curtain.

Practicing the Presence softens the nothing.  Comforts the numbness.  Soothes the soul.

For more deep quiet slow silent open hearted listening.