Nature seems to exist without doubting itself.  I mean, have you ever seen a tree wondering if it’s growing the right direction?  Bushes don’t hesitate, they twist and turn and seek the sun without fail.  Grass is an eternal teacher of persistence–cracking concrete in it’s path.  Birds don’t seem to wonder if they will wake in the morning, or lie in their next dreading to get up and take a shower, get on the bus and get to work.  They rise to jump into their cheery song dancing at a new day.

Let me live this day in easy peace, comfortable confidence and flowing faith that I am brilliantly true to the Way with each step.  There is no such thing as mistakes.  Even detours are human labels on adventures.  Like every Wise Fool that carried a cross or sat by a tree, I carry all I need, let my magic wand of energy pull me along, faithful friend of nature near my side and raise my eyes up to follow the heavens.

When I step over the ledge, I am flying.

What are my inner urgings?  The Tao talks about listening between the breaths, to the subtle constant flow of nature, the pulse between the noise and moments.  It is an unending practice of quieting the mind.  God love the mind, it is such a fine-tuned organ to warn us, compare, distinguish, note, (try to) remember, and judge.  But it is too busy for love and peace most times.

What an interesting challenge to train the mind to be still.  Then find that inner urging, and rein in the mind to drive where the heart seeks a journey.  Now that is true collaboration of intellect and love–wisdom I suppose.  Balancing what I dream and the analyzing of what can be with life on life’s terms.  That’s where miracles and magic seem to happen.

Now to feed my heart so it can dream.  It has always been afraid to push the envelope of what could be bliss.  Living too close to the next indicated action bring the horizon to the edge of my toes.  I have to raise my head and look up to where the She sings, the Divine flirts, and the tickling sound of Deva’s gurgling streams.

Sweet Lady, bring me Your dreams.

What is it about pouting and stamping my feet and saying “NO!  I DON’T WANT TO DO THAT!” that feels so good?  Is it that little girl that finally saw through authority–or believed she did–and just insisted she knew more about herself?  Or that natural  growing up part of every human that demands individuality and freedom in a childish way?

Dunno.  Just every once in a while I just want to do something slightly “wrong” or anti-cultural.  Not taking a shower, not brushing my teeth.  Small rebellions that don’t do anyone–me, actually–any good. 

Maybe it’s the addict that just wants to be different, that want’s to not be part of the mainstream living.  Or certainly part of that late-blooming hippie that reveled in dirty jeans, no bra and flagrant “up yours” visual difference (that everyone was doing back then!).

Christ, Mary, Buddha, Mohammed, Isis–all were rebels.  Ah that I could be so different as the same as them.

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.