Everyday Awakening

What we want, what we think we need, is so different than what life brings us. There is a great, fertile open invitation in this gap, this place between what I am asking for and what I seem to be receiving.

My daughter once called it ‘the aching chasm.’

We can learn to ask for something else, we can learn to pray from a bolder place inside us, a place of deep trust in life, that doesn’t need anything to be different than it is.

It might take us a long time to get to this place, to rest in this unconditional gratitude. It’s not a familiar place for the mind.

It’s where the grace pours down, its where the smallest things are appreciated.

Where a drop of kindness feels like a whole ocean.

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One day, when the Buddha was alive on earth, a very accomplished team of acrobats came to see him. The team consisted solely of a grandfather and his granddaughter. They were famous all over the country, and performed daring acrobatic feats to large crowds. The two of them had been debating one crucial point for years, and finally decided to go to the Buddha, and ask him for help.

It was the grandfather who put their question to the Buddha: “The feats we perform together are dangerous, and our safety is crucial,” he told the Buddha.

“However, my granddaughter and I have different ideas about how to maximize our safety.  My feeling is that each one of us should have our first attention on the other one. No matter what happens when we are working together, I have committed to taking care of my grand daughter first, even beyond concerns or fears for my own safety. This really seems to me to be the way that love works, and the best way to care for our safety.

My granddaughter disagrees. Her point of view is this: We need to take care of ourselves first, no matter what is happening. Our first attention should be on our own safety.

We cannot reconcile our two points of view, so we have come to you, to ask for the blessings of your wisdom and clarity.”

The Buddha smiled at both of them. Then he turned to the grandfather and said, “How lucky you are to have a granddaughter with such intelligence. I invite you to really listen to her, for she is clear about this. You have been conditioned to another way of thinking which will not serve you here. Listen to the voice of this young one. Question your ingrained ideas about what love is.

How can you possibly help her if you yourself are in danger? Where will you stand? What kind of help can you offer her, if your foundation is shaking and trembling? 

We would all do well to follow the wisdom of your granddaughter. Taking care of ourselves first is not selfishness, it is basic sanity.”

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In the world of quantum physics, the most they can say about the existence of any object, is that it has a ‘tendency to exist.’ That’s the same view, funnily enough, that shines in the nondual wisdom.

We can’t really say that this whole solid world exists. It certainly appears to have a very solid and separate existence. But things are not what they appear to be. We don’t exist the way we think we do. Our thoughts and feelings don’t exist the way we think they do. Everything just has a ‘tendency to exist.’

This is the impermanence, the endless flow of life, nothing to hold onto.  No solid reality anywhere to point to, to say, “This is the way it is.”

“Studies show now that’s there’s one thing we human beings are just doing all the time. We’re projecting our meaning and interpretation onto everything and everyone. In fact, even so much of what we see is only because we have the neuropathways and receptors to even see that.

There might be whole universes existing around us within the same field that don’t exist. We just don’t have the receptors to make it an image in our sensory system”.  (Dr. Henry Grayson talks to Tami Simon)

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We never really meet anyone, until we discover this intimacy with ourselves. Without needing anything from anyone else, I can rest in this wide open sense of presence, this aliveness, that I usually take for granted.

Imagine the freedom that comes when I realize it’s always available. We can love ourselves, without waiting for any kind of appreciation or approval. In the midst of all my imperfections, my ongoing flaws, my raw and naked humanity, I can feel this love for whatever is here.

This is possible for all of us. Then we can let go of all the ways we bind each other-- in duties, obligations, demands and resentments.

Nobody owes anything to anybody, in the radical freedom of love. Everything is freely given.

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Mutual Evolution is not a place where information is given to you, or any image or idea of how you should be. It’s a field of presence in which all of this falls away, and you are simply left with yourself.

And everyone else, as they are.

What happens, when we really let go of needing to change ourselves and others? We can’t imagine this until it actually happens.

This is what we find out, in The 8 week Mutual Evolution Online Intensive, starting Feb. 7th:  Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together

“These sessions were an opportunity for me to be in touch with my true heartfelt expression-to speak as things arose, and to really listen to the others. As I am giving myself this opportunity to be very present, these thoughts, these old thoughts, don’t have room to take over in that presence.” (Penelope K. Kennedy, Squamish, BC)

Once we have a sense of how to rest in this open space, we begin to explore how to speak, and how to listen, from our authentic being.

Not trying to get anything right, not making anyone wrong.

This way of being, this conscious presence in relationship, is how we find our freedom. No-one else can give this to us. We have to discover this way of being, which is clear, effortless, open and alive.

The Free Intro Telecall is tonight, Jan. 4 at 5:30pm pacific, and on Saturday Jan. 7, at 10am pacific. Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together- Free Intro Telecall

Check it out. All you have to lose is your pain, your struggle, your isolation, and your judgments.

“If I can engage with people in this very naked and direct way, I can learn so much from anyone.” (Valerie Bouchet, Mass. US)

This is an invitation to the Free Intro Telecall on Jan. 4th at 5:30pm pacific, for ‘Mutual Evolution’ -Waking up Together-- The 8 week online intensive

When we join together, when we are really here for each other, everything is so much easier. We can stop postponing the authentic life that wants to be lived, now. This intensive is simply a place to open, with your whole being, to this precious opportunity. This is the time when you can awaken to a clear, loving, and natural way of being. At home with yourself, at home in the universe.

To register for this call:  Mutual Evolution-Free Intro Telecall

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Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.

Rumi

Last summer I was part of a group of people who engaged in a 6 day retreat, focused on healing and awakening. We were bringing together practices from the shamanic and the nondual traditions. A beautiful young woman named Heather was one of our facilitators. One of her most powerful offerings to all of us was something that she communicated with great energy and clarity: “When you need help, just call out to me, and I’ll be there.”

Because of her experience working in this field, she knew that it is not so easy to actually reach out in this way. To call out for what we need is not something that most human beings have learned to do. A good deal of our training, both explicit and implicit, has taught us just the opposite: to appear strong, independent, self-contained--and to carry on struggling by ourselves.

I felt this too, every time I heard Heather make this offer. I know the pressure of this conditioning from my own adult life, from my early life with my family, and from a lifetime of working with people. So I was wondering how we were actually going to do what Heather was inviting us to do. To actually embody this capacity to reach out and ask for help.

Then Heather came up with a brilliant idea, just before an evening in which we would be participating in some rigorous practices, all night long. “Just try it,” she said, “just call out and ask for help, even if you think you don’t need it. Practice doing this now, so that you’ll know how, when you really do need help.”

I remember something swinging open inside me, when I heard her say these words. She had somehow made it easy for me-I realized that I would be able to do it. I felt joy about this, and a deep sense of relief.

Later on that evening, I found myself in a difficult place. I noticed the tendency to withdraw into myself, to pull back, to isolate. To sit there and wait until I was desperate.  And so I just called out, across the room, “Heather, are you there? I need your help.”

What I noticed, in the moment of calling out, was something extraordinary. That I was totally empowered, even before Heather came. And I also noticed that I was blessing the whole field of our consciousness, by making that clear and lucid request. This was confirmed to me later on, when many people in the room spoke about what happened to them when they heard me call out to Heather.

Of course, once we call out for help, we have to know how to receive the help that comes. Because it’s usually not what we are expecting or hoping for. Real help does not collude with the helpless child within us. Real help does not feel sorry for us. Real help awakens our inner capacities- our clarity, our patience, our humility, our wisdom.

But we can only learn how to receive help after we have learned how to ask for it. The mind thinks that reaching out like this is a terrible risk. That it leaves us helpless, and vulnerable. Kind of like hanging off the edge of a cliff, blowing in the wind.

What I experienced that night was just the opposite. So much of life is like this. We are living our lives upside down. When I called out to Heather I felt supported, before the help even appeared.  How could this be?  How can we make sense of this?

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This year
I let Christmas in.

And it occurs to me that
every year
the spirit of Christmas goes wandering
looking for room at the inn
of my heart

turned aside
by the hurry of business
the demands of desires
the walls of grudge, bitterness

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