People lift weights to gain strength.  Joggers run to be agile.  Humans bump to tone their skin and learn to bounce.

Conflict is essential as a human; it is inevitable since we’re made of clay and ash.  We just naturally have that solid obtuse spiritual casing that is meant to knock into everything in our path.  We can’t even walk the path without stepping on it. 

But what a conscious practice it seems to demand–allowing germs and weather, feelings and missed appointments, change and tragedy, opportunities and spontaneous combustion move us along the Way.

And it’s different for all of us.  My wound is not in the same place as you.  So when I’m slapped with life, sometimes it aches and sometimes I laugh and bump back.  No one can dictate how I walk and trudge, but I certainly listen to those that have been to the gym before me.  In fact, I don’t like the gym, but cherish those walks under the trees.

Here, looking up to the sky covered with the treetops, I recognize my height and depth and endless connection to All That Is.  No wrestling needed in the state of grace.

There are lots of markers.  Time seems to do that.  Thirty one years ago I got married (and it did last a good long time).  Thirty years ago a mountain nearby blew off it’s top and spewed ash all over the country.  And five years ago we started a business that still thrives.

What a funny thing, time.  What a bizarre brain that holds memories that really have no use but to create stories out of stories.  If only.. I could have…I might have….We didn’t…We chose….Stories within stories.  But they are all stories.  I do have mementos of days past, children who noisily honored my days with adventures.  But it is quiet now, but a meow and the distant TV.

Off to make a good story of being an agent of tall tales, bringing in the fairies, gnomes, sylvans and spirits of the trees that bless my tiny human feet graced with walking the Divine earth.

The spirit and the brain.  Sounds like a title of a movie where a medium is taken hostage by an alien.  Well, that’s not too far from the truth of how as spiritual beings we have to deal with our minds.  Training the mind is the task it seems to me.

The mind is a lovely organ made of clay.  It is instinctively a comparison organ, perhaps like our sense of taste.  Is this good?  Do I like this?  Am I going to continue with this?  Yes or no?  And we learn from collective experience–theoretically.  Many died taste-testing, mixing explosives, fighting for peace, running across a buffalo rampage, interrupting domestic violence.  Lots of cultural rules were established on what didn’t work.

Many ideas do work.  One of them is training the brain to sit still and not talk.  Or rather, to sit and watch itself ramble without taking itself at all seriously.  I spent the other day watching trees sway in light wind.  I traced ridges from soft waves designed at the bottom of the lake.  I sat and listened to sleepy afternoon birds and the scurry of small forest creatures.

I intend this day to be as deeply and metaphysically instructing–I watch in the stillness and breathe in the wisdom of no action.

They talk about this a lot–life on life’s terms.  What the HECK does that mean?!?  I mean, it is all stories.  Or as the Tao reading says, “Life is one dream to another.”  Even when we die it is a dream–at least now.  Even those who have come back from death it seems their story is their story–each different according to their life story.

My dreams these days seem like what I do at work: sort this from that, decided here and there, calm one down, urge one to move, sit in perplexing thought about how to get my brain around another new challenge.

Off to a dream of living inside a huge alder tree trunk, with tiny crevices of roots for my windows and the sound of morning birds as my wake up call.

The Taoist reading this morning said that we are to “transcend our enslavement with perception.”  What I see that means is to get some distance from the story.  Everything about our lives is a story.  And it does depend on your relative stance and beliefs.  Is it terrorism or a wake-up call?  Is it a sad death or a release from the mortal coil?  Is it a great job or a drudge?  Is it an opportunity or a frightening change?

So what we need are ways to get some distance from the story so it doesn’t hold us captive and ambush us with frantic reactions.  Here’s some of my ideas: 1. Laugh at it.  2. shake my head in disbelief and wonder. 3. chant “I’m safe” over and over again. 4. Pretend I’m on the moon looking down.  5. Pretend I’m going to die tomorrow. 5. See it from the point of view of a tree. 6. Ask myself “why did I design this crazy idea for my life?!” 7. Tell a good friend and see how they see it. 8. Write it down completely, feel it out, and close the document and let it go.  9.  Get too tired to care.  10.  Surrender. 

And laugh out loud.

One of the hardest things to do is to sit and let the mind go empty.  Just nothing in there, allowing the rambling freakazoid past, present, compare, criticize, rationalize, excuse, worry, dream, fantasy, doodle mind to empty.  I do think it is impossible.  That’s why there are all the “meditation” visions, guides, music, classes, tools, and techniques.

Funny how its so hard to do nothing.  What were we thinking [sic] to have this mental organ as part of the human experience!  Maybe that was the biggest challenge of the game, to have a earth-bound, fear-grounded brain that “keeps us alive” as a constant companion.

If I treat it like a frantic child, make friends with it, and love it with distractions and soothing, then I get near to that relaxing state that brings such deep refreshing rejuvenation.

Just like singing a soft lullaby, “All is well.  All is well.  In all things, all is well.”  Thus I can lull the new little excited baby-brain in to being still.

Be still.
And know.
That
I am.

The Tao is most present in the emptiness, in the hole, in the open space.  It is the most powerful energy–complete potential and omnipresent.  Nothing is the start of something.  An open mind is the most creative.

But holy cow, Mr. Tao, how to keep an open mind and heart with the waves of input we “enjoy”!  Social media, television, crowds, bosses, staff, commuter traffic, emails–phew!  I feel unsocial much of my time–craving the dear sweet sound of nothing.

Let me be open and allow the solace of silence fill me up.  Even if it is the moments between calls and the sit in the car before I turn it on.  I claim the holiness of the holes in my life. It is in these empty spaces that I am filled with the Divine.

Sometime I have to remember to do nothing.  Stop doing, rushing, planning, figuring out, maneuvering, scheduling, even thinking.  Though that’s probably the hardest sometime–to stop the monkey mind chatter.

Just to sit and be.  Or walk and be.  Just to be a human merely being.  We did sign up for this spiritual adventure being encased in the most obtuse form of love vibration–the earth.  But it is beautiful and I yearn to see that beauty at every turn.

But this sign-up also included being a volunteer for aches, undistinguishable despair, restlessness, weariness, aging, sickness and other challenges of the day.  Heartache is a sore spot and a puzzlement too.

I ache for others far away.  Why?  Because I feel for them.  Is that codependency or empathy?  Am I feeling compassion or being distracted because I can’t help and be there with them?

Who knows.  I am here, I send love, I declare and chant for the wellness of all.  Perhaps today I will be singing that old prayer: May we be filled with loving kindness.  May we all be well.  May I be peaceful and at ease and may I be happy.

Life is just a big kindergarten with constant story time.  Is it the end of the world, or just my neighborhood–or a jet breaking the sound barrier?  Is it another complete market crash, or a computer glitch?  Is it a war, or time for a compromise?  Are we killing the earth, or will it merely shake us all off one day?

Does she love me?  Is he angry at me–or just in a cranky mood?  Do I have to scream at the grocery clerk or did she just make a mistake?  Shall I take this personal, or am I mad at a memory of my mom?

Pick one.  Any one.  Welcome to earth!

So I want to make a really good story today.  One with flowers and giggles, a tale of creativity rather than woe.  Perhaps I’ll see the snippets of fairies in the trees around my office, and the bushes will talk with me about the spring day.  It could be that my Mom visits, or my Dad calls out from the tree tops with laughter.  Stories like these lift my heart.

I’ve been on them before.  That part of the Path that is under water, muddy, slippery and cluttered with rocks and roots that grab your boots.  Slow going, losing balance, grasping at the bushes and holding on to trees

The vertical climbs and twisted trails bring me back to the breath.  I allow my feet to do their job, and the more they are challenged, the stronger they become.  As I become familiar with these difficulties, I am less afraid of them.  My body adjusts to a slower pace, my eyes are sharp and watch for obstacles, I allow myself to stand in the heat of struggle.

I claim the brilliance of the design in this narrow route.  I stand under the shadowy grove of parallel pines that massage my eyes.  I bow to the path, and feel the blessing of each step.  The Way wanders where it will and I let the fragrance of the forest have Her Way with me.