My Grands have just started school last week which has me asking again, what lessons/homework will I choose to explore this season. What mind-set, spirit-set, what kind of house, inner and outer do I want to build or add to by Christmas.
My six and eight year-olds will become more mature in these next months, if the last year is any example. They will understand more, learn more about the subtleties of life and more about themselves. This learning has no end, just a continuous expanding out of Being and Presence. And age has nothing to do with this school-room. Like the old monk said, what he wants to bring to his great re-birthing into the invisible is his abundance -- inner, I suspect.
What will I set my mind to this coming season? What House of happiness, House of meditation, House of understanding and joy do I need to add. Houses are built, one nail at a time, one board at a time and one door at a time -- be they inner or outer. What will be my new thought-forms, new habits, new feelings and where will I come alive rather than merely exist. What is my vision for this season? What energy bodies need to be develop/grow that will hold better my joy-days and my sand- days?"
Again, I look over at this piano and I might as well call it my "joy-stick." I am not gifted musically but that doesn't seem to bother my joy, my fun or my love of it. Four years ago this piano only held "stay away from it" feelings. Then a very different body of energy seemed to get built one day at a time, one chord at a time, one note at a time.
And alas, there are definitely some other parts of me that need attention! Inside and out. An edge or two needs a little sand paper, an inner wound requires some healing-work. I need to be more caring in some situations and less sensitive in others -- come in from the cold with my meditation, turn its thermostat up and release its energy of warmth. I also want more intelligent hands to run over those 88 ivories and more discipline to get up at five to write another book. Like my Grands, I want to keep expanding.
Plus, the bonus of building new light-filled energy bodies is that the act itself is erasing-shrinking a gamete of other feelings: unhappiness, disconnectedness and dis-ease. They just don't have the room they had before! Negativity cannot stand the light of essence whatever one may call it.
What hinders or even defeats me? "I don't want to, I don't like it, it's hopeless..." is often the enemy to building new aliveness. Remember Pogo, "I discovered the enemy. It's me!" However, I need to forget how I feel, now, what I believe, now. These literally have to be built, over-time, till new awareness, new feeling, new beliefs take over. Then my "I can't, I am fearful..." is simply that, I have not arrived yet, but I am on my way. One's learning cannot expect to wear tux when it is still in diapers.
Yet, why sign up for these new lessons, bother with one nail at a time, one feeling at a time? Because, I want to go different than I have done. I want to see different, feel different and think different. The other night I was standing for a time before some trees in the park next door, looking through them to the lake, then, looking at them. It was almost dusk. I felt their stillness and my own. Then a swirl of wind ruffled my hair and blouse. The trees leaned together, the leaves' swishing, went through me like a wave of love -- as if I was standing suspended with a Beloved, connected, intimate; standing in another worldliness and yet not. (What words for the wordless?) Later, walking back from the park, I remember an ancient writer observing, "The scales fell from my eyes." And for this ancient, momentarily, at least, they did. Is it worth the effort? Not a question.
Thus, when I get on that plane to Tucson at the end of December, look out into that vast divinity called sky with its possibility of sunrise and sunset will I have learned as much as my Grands? Probably not. Yet, maybe I will fly a little differently and have built a few more joy-sticks.
