“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” John F. Kennedy

God has always lived as human. You, exactly as you are, are the Divine Expression of God. You don’t have to change one thing. Relax into your inheritance and settle into this moment’s expression of God. It is possible to live in a world where we stand in awe of each other, where we don’t assimilate in the melting pot of conformity, or face exhaustion censoring the true expression clamoring to ring clearly through us.  This becomes reality, as clear as our face in a mirror, when we appreciate this startling truth – God is everywhere. God is everyone.  Nothing but God is.

Three years ago I began volunteering at the state’s medium security prison.  Speaking about my work there I said, “I teach meditation to the men.” From the first day it was obvious though, that while I did bring something of importance, they were in fact teaching me. Last week I attended a volunteer appreciation dinner. The evening was delightful. The food was entirely paid for and prepared by the inmates. The meal was delicious but my heart was fed by the twelve men, men whom many wouldn’t see as this Divine Presence, who articulately and heart-fully shared their appreciation for the volunteers who had impressed God upon their lives.

I listened in awe as one by one each man took the microphone and expressed his gratitude in an openly, shamelessly. The beauty inside each man and the beauty inside the walls of the prison touched me deeply. The words were beautiful. It didn’t matter whether the volunteer being honored was Muslim, an Evangelical, Buddhist, a Russian or Hispanic Christian, Jewish, Native American, Catholic or simply practitioners of yoga or meditation. It was clear that each preference, and the men who chose to devote their hearts to that path, were perfectly matched. My heart opened in a new respect for this incredible unfolding of God. What had previously appeared as paths of insurmountable differences were simply unique expressions of God, perfect in the wide-ranging variety. Through the diversity everyone’s needs were met; no one’s heart was left untended.

Sitting there it dawned on me that I had a bird’s eye view to a miracle. Here, in one room, were all the world’s religions.  People were smiling. The joy and bottomless appreciation was palpable. The barriers that commonly separate had fallen down and shattered into the nothingness they are. That bright and sacred evening, two hundred prison inmates and religious volunteers from every persuasion showed the world how to live.

The door clanged shut behind me as the evening concluded, the men waving across the impassable distance, and I proceeded towards the guard shack.  A woman walking next to me mentioned an inmate from her group, a man I didn’t know. He’d heard about two children who had witnessed their father beat their mother to death and felt duty-bound to raise funds for counseling for the kids. He knew, all too well, how the trauma could have long-lasting effects, up to and including a life behind bars if they didn’t get help. Raise funds he did. Due to his compassion, a powerful letter writing campaign, and many partnerships, a check for twelve thousand dollars was sent to ‘The Dougie Center’ in Portland, Oregon for the children’s therapeutic care.

This inmate recently stood in front of the parole board, not for release but to determine whether or not he was worthy of being rehabilitated. If deemed competent he would receive education and opportunities leading to eventual parole. If not, he would remain one of the lost souls with no hope of societal redemption. The woman, a hint of anger in her voice, told me the parole board had recently decided that he would not be rehabilitated.

Standing there in the guard house, feeling the pain of being believed so unworthy, my heart collapsed. The words struck something profound, a deep-rooted human fear of being unlovable, and I began to shake, reverberating at the core. As quickly as the shaking began, it ended. In five seconds, something vital had shifted in me. Instinctively I knew that something had cleared within the collective consciousness and for the inmate, the man I had never met. This man had value. His story healed me.  Each of us holds this amazing potential to heal all others as we are willing to stand in one another’s shoes. Stand in awe. God is present.

No one of us is useless. No one of us is so lost as to be unworthy of being found. Our own potential grows as we embrace each person. We acknowledge our native genius as we cherish the participation and well-being of others. Gayle Gregory, Workplace Evolution.

“How could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you, you were less than whole? How could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle? How deeply you’re connected to my soul.”  Lyrics by Libby Roderick

What if you didn’t need anything? What if everything you believe to be missing is already right here? What if you are already a most remarkable, creative, beautiful and powerful force? What if the purpose of your search was to make you pliable enough to accept this truth? What if you surrendered your sense of lack and your hopes for something better and settled deeply into your experience of life, trusting it to hold only abundance, health, wholeness and harmony? What would that mean to you? How would that feel deep within your bones?

The mystics who embody the Whole Truth, mostly the lesser known amongst the names lining my bookshelves, have been clear in their uniform message. “Stop! You are what you’ve been looking for.” Their answer is simple and requires a simple response. Stop. Guess this mind and body had years of habit to undo, what I have come to call research, because I read it innumerable times and yet it still didn’t stick. Stopping wasn’t in my vocabulary. I still had many miles to go wrapped within the notion of needing to be transformed.

After this morning’s meditation a dear friend said, “I am so aware right now that I am in pre-school.” I laughed out loud, “Not only pre-school but pre-school on a remedial planet.” We exchanged telling glances and smiled broadly. It is beyond understanding when the desire to transform our lives, to get somewhere, to become something stops, and we understand how fortunate we are to be here, how blessed we are by each other.

I am not insane. I do see our world and its physical appearance. I have no immunity to the pain and suffering in our world. I live amidst cancer and unanswerable aches, at the heart of sleeplessness and the possibility of loss. The hopelessness of poverty, the doggedness of fear’s message, the searing wounds as relationships rip apart are not lost on me. Throngs of people are leaving this planet now and there is a sense of destiny closing in.  I not only see it, I feel it – intensely, utterly. No place to run and hide exists for me any longer, for if offered, I could not accept.

Recognizing these words as the words of a consummate beginner, a burgeoning appreciation of this moment and everything within it, relaxes the idea of a separate me and simultaneously expands Knowledge of Oneness. With what I now call God – Divine Word embedded as human form, as the multiplicity of plants and animals, as the ample, robust earth and the fullness of our magnificent sky … Oneness, God as All That Is – the idea of separation, the idea that there is anything wrong with my experience of life is inaccurate. There is nothing other than Oneness. There is not two-ness. There is nothing other than God.  There is only this moment and whatever it holds. And, it is filled with Creative Juice pouring through every one of us.

“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him — that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.” Swami Vivekananda

Your comments are welcomed and responded to!

Investigating those things we’ve tucked away

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. – Lao Tzu

When I was growing up I was fascinated with a rather large cedar chest that sat at the foot of my parent’s bed. Whenever Mom had it open I was drawn into their room like a moth to a flame. I remember sitting on the floor as mother lovingly put things away ¾ special tablecloths, delicate sweaters, hand-made decorations, fragile souvenirs … memory makers and keepers. The smell was mesmerizing but it was the love that I noticed.  She gently tucked everything she valued beneath the lid of her big wooden chest, everything material that is. Cedar chests were called a special name by girls of her generation. They were called Hope Chests. Before young women got married they filled their chests with linens, a special dress, sometimes a baby’s christening outfit … those things they hoped and dreamed for, those things that symbolized their growth into adulthood.

During the past two weeks I have been looking into my own hope chest, but unlike my mother, I do not have a literal wooden chest in which I store the significance of my life and the dreams for my future. Besides, my generation would have needed a chest much larger ¾ cavernous and capable of expansion. I couldn’t have been satisfied with a wooden chest that fit at the foot of my bed. Everything I dreamed of wouldn’t have fit inside. Perhaps I would have been better off if it had.    

Over the past many years I have been emptying my chest of all its needs and desires, trying to find out who I am without them. While in Mexico on our year-long sailboat trip I had experienced emptiness and the immense connection to all that accompanies such a Divine encounter. With that understanding I knew there was something more to life than things, that what was important was simple and clean, loving and pure. Nothing else mattered beside Love. In the end, Love would be all that survived.  So I began purging myself of everything I believed I needed to survive. God was my help mate showing me things I hadn’t considered and assisting me to strip away everything that wasn’t His Love. All that happened ­¾ Ken’s illness, money concerns, family issues, the success of others … everything ­¾ had to be cleared out of the chest. What amazing grace.

Last week another Divine intervention took place. In the flash of eye I saw my emptied hope chest and in the corner was a rather large speck of dust. We are converting our property and hopefully our neighbor’s property into an intentional community. One of the partners in the endeavor is an amazing woman with a brilliant husband and two small children. She is a remarkable healer and spiritual teacher in her own right. We were considering the four of them living with us while all the details of creating an LLC ¾ getting permits, plans and construction ¾ are completed. That could take a while depending on how cooperative the county planning folks decide to be. In order to do that a downstairs carriage house remodel was required. There’s an apartment upstairs and the two floors together would give a family of four enough space. As I was trying to renovate my husband’s attitude about lessening his storage space, it came to me that his acceptance had to be intentional as well or the community we wanted to create could not thrive.

That in and of itself was a worthy speck of dust but the insight that happened later that night dwarfed it like a giant. As we were watching a mindless television program I saw a speck that I still cradled in my chest of hope. Something inside me wanted to watch mindless programming and hang onto a bit of human normalcy … to be like other people and not dissolve fully into Love. I wanted to hold onto life like most humans live it so that I could fit in (just a bit) and not be completely off the charts. With another spiritual teacher and her family here, I knew life would be different, more focused on the Divine. I had caught sight of a well-hidden safety deposit box inside my hope chest.  

Is it gone? Have I processed my desire to keep the contents in the small corner of my chest ¾ my self obsession? The desire still moves within and I sit in awareness allowing it full access to my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual bodies. At times it feels like a war inside, guns blazing and cannons exploding. Then it settles and softens before the war rages again. It is interesting to watch and to experience. Writing about it today and sending it out to you tomorrow feels cathartic.

We all have things we hope to hang onto, things that keep us from experiencing our wholeness and from a face-to-face meeting with God. When all is said and done, nothing will remain but Love. We are each intended to realize this Love fully and share it with our brothers and sisters while we are still in a body and here on Earth. We are this Love. It is a choice that we each must answer for ourselves.

Lindsey Kelloway: What are people like, on the inside?
Powder: Inside most people there’s a feeling of being separate, separated from everything.
Lindsey: And?
Powder: And they’re not. They’re part of absolutely everyone, and everything.

From Powder: 1995

 

 

I welcome your comments!

There by the grace of God am I. No I didn’t misquote, I rewrote. The original quote, is from a mid-sixteenth-century statement by Christian reformer and martyr, John Bradford, “There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford”, in reference to a group of prisoners being led to be execution. John saw that with a simple twist of fate, he could have been one of the prisoners or the guard tasked with leading the men to their death. It was an insight whose truth and words lived on beyond John’s times, one that not only was astute at the time, but foretold of his martyrdom under Queen Mary.

On my way to the prison today I noticed a small child from our neighborhood. My husband and I walk the three miles around our block most mornings and we had initially met him and his mother while he was waiting for the school bus on his first day of kindergarten. He made quite an impression. His enthusiasm for school bubbled over and the smile on his face and in his voice reached out and touched my heart. I remember asking Kenny as we walked away, where that enthusiasm for life, for all of this glorious life, went as we aged. It was a question that inevitably led to a discussion as we walked together about the fear we pick up as we bump headlong into life.

When I saw the little boy on his bike today it was the first time I had seen him on a two-wheeler without the training wheels. I also noticed something else. He was wearing a bike helmet. Now that by itself wasn’t a surprise. It is illegal to ride in our state without one. Somewhere between the first day of kindergarten and today, a mere 1 ½ years, he had lost a bit of his spark. It was obvious in a subtle sort of way. I sensed that he was beginning to fit into the boxes, the ones designed to keep us safe—not straying too far from home, making certain to get off the road as cars approached, learning the rules of the road, and wearing the appropriate gear to keep him safe. At first glance – all the right things.

As my car took me further from the moment I found myself transported back to my childhood of helmetless bike rides. I was often barefoot to boot. How did I survive? I rode my bike everywhere in town from an early age. Even though we were more than a few blocks from school I rode it back and forth most days, through the cemetery and past the strange man’s house along the way. Most of us would say that I grew up in a time of less crime, of less to fear. If you look at the statistics you will find that just isn’t so. I didn’t live in a world where there was less to fear; I lived in a time of less fear.

Being a good parent though, we wouldn’t dare consider letting our children walk or ride their bikes any distance to school. Something could happen. The number of parents we see on our morning walk, hurriedly rushing past us, sometimes almost running us off the road, on their way to drop off their children at school is testament to the fact that many parents prefer the safety of delivering their tots to the school’s front door rather than allowing them the experience of riding a school bus.

As parents and as members of society it might be wise to wonder about what gets lost in translation, what freedoms are stifled, what creative thirst for life is quenched in our pursuit of safety. When we don’t feel the aliveness of the wind in our hair or experience the scrapes and scratches and broken arms of growing up what will replace that exhilarating sense of engagement? What is the loss to imagination—oh what creative stories I told myself about that odd little man. It was perhaps the beginning of a career in writing. What is the loss in adaptability? A broken arm forced me to join the majority for a time and learn to write right-handed.  Besides my 15 seconds of fame, I learned lessons about persistence and overcoming doubt that without the falls may not have materialized.

Children today are no different than us. They still need to fully experience life in order to learn and grow.  Our society is being set up more firmly each day to protect and defend us, slowly or perhaps not so slowly, diminishing our ability to evolve and dimming our lights. Sounds like a great rationale for a victim scenario doesn’t it but, wait a minute, who is this society? Society is each one of us collectively. We choose what to believe and how to live our lives. We choose whether or not to lead lives fully out loud and wildly alive or to acquiesce to the fear surrounding us. Our doubt about what our best course of action is, what to do or say, stops us.  

I had tea a few days ago with a dear friend. We laughed and talked and caught up with each others lives. I don’t remember how we came to the core question but there it was, “How do I know what is true? How can I tell if what I hear is my mind making things up or if I am actually listening to a higher voice?” My answer, gleaned from years of study, was that the divine voice is inspired. It is never based in fear. It is always based in love—in possibility, learning, curiosity and openness. It is a platform for growth and discovery, the discovery of our Oneness with all that is, the foundation for all-encompassing compassion.  The more empty we become of ego, the clearly we will hear.

As our compassion grows we begin to see that we could be anyone had our paths or birth taken a different path, said another way, had God’s hand written a different story for us. This awareness is a big step, and yet it is a baby step in comparison to what is possible.  When we unclog our minds and hearts of the accumulated fear we realize that we actually are each and every person on the planet, the good and the bad, those like us, as well as the one’s in opposition. What would change if we were intimately familiar with that possibility? What if instead of my observing the little children on our streets we realized that we were them, that by our decisions, by what we placed our belief in, we determined the level of happiness, joy and connectivity each child encountered, ourselves included. What if instead of choosing to trust fear we began to trust ourselves and each other. What could change? Who could we become? Wouldn’t it be worth a few scuffed knees or broken hearts to sustain and nurture that young boy’s natural enthusiasm and zest for life?