Life Before Death

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Friend, hope for the guest while you are still alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think ... and think ... while you are alive.
What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten -
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire ...

- Kabir - from The Time Before Death
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Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body

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That may be an address too many of us share.  Taking the miracle of embodiment for granted is a horrific loss.  It would be a profound healing of our lives to get back in touch with it.

All it takes is practice in coming to our senses, all of them.

And ... a spirit of adventure.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn in Coming to Our Senses

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and I loved you for your body
there's a voice that sounds like God to me
declaring, declaring
declaring that your body's really you
- Leonard Cohen
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You reading this, be ready

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Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?  Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day.  This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life--

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

- William Stafford
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The spell of the sensuous...

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...is no further than the sound of the rain taken in, or the feel of the air on the skin, or the warmth of the sun on our backs, or the look in your dog's eye when you come near.  Can we feel it?  Can we know it?  Can we be embraced by it? 

And when might that be?  When?  When?  When?  When?  When?

- Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to our Senses

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- Spell of the Sensuous is the title of a book by David Abram which  "...ponders the violent disconnection of the body from the natural world and what this means about how we live and die in it" - Los Angeles Times
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How to listen to music

with your whole body
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Enjoy this soaring musical journey as Evelyn Glennie, a "deaf" percussionist, gives us a remarkable lesson in embodied listening.
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... allow your body to open up, allow your body to be this resonating chamber... experience the whole journey of that sound.
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more about Evelyn
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Find Your Voice

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The moment a person finds their voice... is the moment their life takes on grace.
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That quote is from Steve Errey, the Confidence Guy, in a post called Find Your Voice or Die a Slow Death.  It's a short post but it speaks volumes - here's a condensation of the post, a comment response by Steve and of course my own two cents' worth (hey, it's my blog):

Grace is simplicity, effortlessness and congruity.

Think about it.  What are you speaking with before you find your voice?  What are you saying?  And who are you being before you find grace?

Everything before you ‘find your voice‘ means that you’ll be struggling with things in and around your life, for the simple reason that you’re missing something fundamental.

Your life might be full of clutter and noise.  You might feel like you’re searching for something.  You might drift through much of your career, with no real plan or agenda.  You might feel, in those quiet moments, that something’s missing.

You’ll be dying a slow, safe death.

And all because you haven’t found your voice; that voice that gives you elegance, ease and a sense of wholeness.  That voice that gives you the confidence to do things your way, follow what matters and relax into yourself.

Find your voice, find grace, find confidence.

Asked what 'finding your voice' means, Steve replies:

Your voice is simply finding what matters to you, the things that have meaning and relevance to YOU, and then honoring those things in your life. Look at a moment in your life when you felt really alive, when you were buzzing, firing on all cylinders and feeling on top of the world. Then dig into that moment and ask yourself what was so important to you in that moment. What was it that made it stand out? What is it about that moment that resonated with you? That will give you clues about your personal values, and that will help you find your voice.

Finding and using your voice isn’t about finding answers, it’s singing simply because you have a song.

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That last sentence refers to a quote from Maya Angelou:
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer: it sings because it has a song.
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As someone who has only recently found my own voice (and who is still learning to sing), I can say without reservation that everything Steve says above is absolutely true.  Once you even begin to realize what is important to you - what gives your life meaning and purpose - then you find your voice.  This is exactly why I blog, and the more I blog, the more I clarify my purpose and the more I recognize my song.

You don't need to wait for some huge epiphany or for some future time when you feel ready - right now start a journal, or a diary, or a blog, and write as if no one is going to read it.  Just speak your truth and don't worry about what anyone else thinks.  Keeping your gift locked inside yourself is, as Steve says, like dying a slow death.  Finding your voice makes you come alive, gives you confidence, and shows you like almost nothing else who you are and why you're here.

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the gift keeps on moving
never know where it's going to land
you must stand back and let it
keep on changing hands
- Bruce Cockburn
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Remembering the Past, Envisioning the Future

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Today is November 11th - Remembrance Day in Canada, Veterans' Day in the United States.  There is a lot of old combat footage on TV, mostly black & white images of World War II.  Every time, I'm struck by how young the faces are and how, even though these boys are smiling and joking for the camera, their eyes are full of fear.  It's sobering to think about how many of those young men never got any older than they were the day those pictures were taken.

Somewhere between 62 and 78 million people were killed in World War II.  Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military deaths: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. Most of those who survived the war have since died; only a few remain of those smiling boys going off on the adventure of their lives.

The Vietnam war is said to have resulted in approximately 60,000 American casualties and four million Vietnamese deaths - one million of the Vietnamese killed in that war were combatants, the other three million were civilians.

So today is a day for remembering everyone who died in those and other wars - the good guys, the bad guys, the innocent and the guilty - as well as those who were forced to take the lives of others who were just as frightened and confused as they were. Let's remember also the young men and women who are still putting themselves in harm's way, fighting for causes they may or may not believe in.

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But today is also a day for envisioning a new future for humanity.  It's a day for remembering that each one of us has the power to influence what that future will be, and to believe with all our heart that collectively our power is unstoppable.

Is it possible that we can heal our planet and prevent cataclysms?  Could we visualize world peace into existence through a massive pulse of belief transmitted by one million people around the world at the same time?

The best guess today from quantum physics is, "Yes, probably."

If you are inspired by that probability, if you believe wholeheartedly in a positive vision for the future, if you believe that the energy of one million people intending a new global reality together can tip the balance, please visit the New Reality Transmission  site and click the button that says Learn More.

On November 11, 2010, one million people across the globe will mentally project a unified vision of a new paradigm for our species... a new reality.  The very real physics that connects human consciousness with molecular structure will be harnessed en masse during the largest scale simultaneous manifestation transmission in recorded history.

In a world where the messages of Fear and Greed fight with each other daily, it is worth a try to move in the other, more inspired direction.

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you may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world will live as one
- John Lennon
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The World Beyond the Window

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Effing the Ineffable:
How do we express what cannot be said?
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Thomas Aquinas ended his life in a state of ecstasy, declaring that all that he had written was of no significance beside the beatific vision that he had been granted, and in the face of which words fail.  But Aquinas was exceptional. The history of philosophy abounds in thinkers who, having concluded that the truth is ineffable, have gone on to write page upon page about it.

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I have long been in awe of people who can express the inexpressible, who can describe their inner and outer experience with such depth and precision that their words penetrate to my very soul, to that place inside us all that is the source of our being, of who we are.

I think we all long to be able to put into words - and thus share - that "world beyond the window" - at the same time we know it's hopeless, that to describe it is to somehow diminish it, to reduce that mystery that "cannot be described but only revealed" to familiar labels and concepts.

Anybody who goes through life with open mind and open heart will encounter these moments of revelation, moments that are saturated with meaning, but whose meaning cannot be put into words. These moments are precious to us. When they occur it is as though, on the winding ill-lit stairway of our life, we suddenly come across a window, through which we catch sight of another and brighter world — a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter.

Roger Scruton also longs to open that window.  In this article at Big Questions Online, he wonders what these moments of revelation have to do with our ultimate questions - do these ineffable moments point to that which science cannot explain?  Do they point to the cause of the world?

We love each other as angels love, reaching for the unknowable “I.” We hope as angels hope: with our thoughts fixed on the moment when the things of this world fall away and we are enfolded in “the peace which passes understanding.” Putting the point that way I have already said too much. For my words make it look as though the world beyond the window is actually here, like a picture on the stairs. But it is not here; it is there, beyond the window that can never be opened.

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Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher living in England. His many books include Beauty and The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope.
Learn more about him at www.roger-scruton.com.
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all these years of thinking
ended up like this
in front of all this beauty
understanding nothing
- Bruce Cockburn
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You Are Already Here

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Non-Striving
The Fifth Attitudinal Factor of Mindfulness
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Non-striving is related to dropping in on the present moment and the timeless quality of the present moment...

Non-striving isn't trivial - it's realizing that you are already here.  There is noplace to go because the only agenda is to be awake.  It isn't some ideal that after four years of sitting on top of Mount Everest or in a cave in the Himalayas or studying with a million Tibetan teachers or doing 10,000 prostrations or whatever it is, that you'll be any better than you are now.  It's impossible - you'll just be older.  What happens now is what matters.

If you don't pay attention now, said Kabir (the great Hindu Sufi poet of the 16th Century), if you don't pay attention now, you will only wind up with an apartment in the City of Death later.  T. S. Eliot said in his last poem, Four Quartets: Ridiculous the waste, sad time stretching before and after.

Non-striving - even the tiniest little bit of letting ourselves off the hook and just realizing we're already here.  The future that we want - this is it.  This is the future of all the previous thoughts you have ever had about the future.  You're in it - you're already in it. What's the purpose of all this living if it's only to get someplace else and then when you're there you're not happy anyway - you want to be someplace else...

This is it.  This is your life.  You only have moments.  This moment is as good as any other - in fact it's perfect.

The Doing comes out of the Being - to some degree that's an art form.  Are any of us good at it?  No.  But at least intending to live that way has a chance of greater balance - greater emotional balance, greater cognitive balance, greater clarity of mind and heart - and is a lot less toxic for other people who live with you or around you.

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nothing left to do when you know that you've been taken
nothing left to do when you're begging for a crumb
nothing left to do when you've got to go on waiting
waiting for the miracle to come
- Leonard Cohen
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Guardians of Being

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The Essence and Being of Animals
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Pet lovers will enjoy these images by Patrick McDonnell, from Guardians of Being by Eckhart Tolle - there are a few more HERE.
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When you pet a dog or listen to a cat purring, thinking may subside for a moment and a space of stillness arises within you, a Doorway into Being.

What is it that so many people find enchanting in animals? Their essence - their Being - is not covered up by the mind, as it is in most humans.
And whenever you feel that essence in another, you also feel it in yourself.



Millions of people who would otherwise be completely lost in their minds and in endless past and future concerns are taken back by their dog or cat into the present moment, again and again, and reminded of the joy of Being.



If you'll excuse me, I need to find a cat (or two) to pat right now...
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Blought for Today

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Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life reveals just the opposite: that letting go is the real path to freedom.
- Sogyal Rinpoche
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Put a Dent in the Universe

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Your body is the vehicle for your life's expression, and it's your responsibility to express that life in ways that are most meaningful.
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Another inspiring video from Steve Errey (The Confidence Guy)
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Confidence is the life-blood that lets you get out there and participate fully in the world no matter how big your fears or doubts are.

What kind of dent do you want to make in the universe?
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