Swimming is easy but you do have to get in the water.

After reading "Changing gears" (my last writing), a friend asked what it meant when I used the quote, "If you only have five minutes to meditate, make sure it is a universe of it's own."  She did not know what "universe" meant in the context of meditating and I sensed she felt it was out of reach. Not wanting her to give up,  I replied, "It is like swimming, you can't jump off the side of the pool, not knowing how to swim, then say, "Oh shoot, I give up, I can't swim. I'll never get the feel of it."  She laughed and said, "Write it."

Indeed, you can't learn to swim by looking at the water, no matter how hot the day, nor can you learn to meditate by not meditating. To swim a person needs to experience the feel of their body in the water, the feel of how buoyancy works, then learn and practice the strokes repeatedly until one is in another "universe" called swimming, quite different from standing on an edge of the pool and looking on.

Swimming is not hard, in fact, it is easy and ordinary after you learn -- so is meditating.
However, one does have to jump in to get the feeling, practice the strokes, take the time to stop, breath, quiet oneself, and try not to think of the daily jobs waiting. En route spirit grows,  silent resonance begins, feeling is evoked, then arrival -- meditating, a sacred place. 

photo source: fotolia.com

Changing gears...

I was thinking earlier how meditation is like changing gears in a car because one can actually feel the difference in the levels of energy after each shift. I noticed how distinct the differences felt.

This morning I did not feel like meditating.  My only urge was to get on with my day.
Jobs to be done, waited.  So as a pump primer, I picked up a meaningful reading. A little feeling other than dull and neutral evolved. I slowed my breathing -- softer, deeper. An awareness of presence began to form, mine, then Other. Finally, I was ready to meditate, no longer wanting "to get going", I just wanted to Be in the hum of being.

This energy movement from dull neutral to spirit-feeling was like shifting gears on a standard (car).  I started cold, then with a little reading shifted my energy into first gear and second, (stiff, noisy) working up to third, then forth where the engine is beginning to hum. Once in fifth gear the energy purrs between the paws-pause (I couldn't resist). A place of no thought.

Leaving the bedroom after, it struck me how distinctly different each shift of my energy felt, like moving through different layers of aliveness, like sitting in another reality. if one has only five minutes to meditate then "make sure it's a universe of its own."*   

*Piero Ferricci, psychotherapist, philosopher

Bounty-ful memories

News of the sinking of the HMS Bounty triggered memories long forgotten of my personal connection with the grand ship.  I and my future spouse were there when it first took form in a Lunenburg shipyard 50 odd years' ago.  The ship was a replica of a vessel with a history worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster -- which, of course, happened.

Going to Lunenburg to see the ship take shape was an adventure. We had very little television, no iphone, or ipad in the early sixties.  Here, an 18th century historical drama was being brought to life in the form of wood, caulking and tar. Most Nova Scotians knew the story. On these visits, one week the keel was laid, on another visit the ship's ribs curved up like a well picked turkey rack.  Months later standing under the bow, the ship looked massive. Finally in 1960 the day of launching arrived and so did we. As it moved down the slipway we knew we had watched the HMS Bounty come to life, again.  

This morning, the ship is at the bottom of the ocean as are the initials the two of us carved on the keel that day in our own private celebration, when no one was looking.  Today, fifty years later, Bounty's sinking and the loss of life is, indeed, sad and personal.

(Published November 2012 in the Reader's Corner of the Halifax Herald.)


(Merchant Marine Published November 2011 in the Reader's Corner of the Halifax Herald: click here to read article.) 

dragon fly

Taken by Lisa from the kayak

"See the light in the tiniest insect, and even in the invisible particle that forms that creature's leg. It's the same light that beats your heart and holds the universe in place -- so allow yourself to not just be in the awe of the insect but to be the insect."  Wayne Dyer 

Dragon Fly...

Having toast and coffee on the sun deck, I noticed this phosphorescent blue-green thread quivering suspended in air, two feet in  front of the rail. Watching four wings emerge,  it is a dragon fly.  I wonder, is it really?

As I watched the blur of gossamer wings, I am captivated by the insect's green iridescent, hovering beauty. Labels and naming freeze life into matter, into objects, into things. Maybe it isn't a dragon fly, an object, a label, a description, a life reduced to a definition.  Maybe it's something else. The longer I observe this hovering motion of color the faster we both seem to be dissolving, escaping solid matter -- no boundaries, no sides, no containment. 

Then it moves toward the rail. I ask in a quiet voice, hardly breathing, "How about it little dragon fly do you want to play?"  I wait, it moves through the rail, hovers in front of my legs. "Are you connecting? Are you hearing my caring? Are you feeling me out, too?" 

Breaking contact,  I move back to the deck table.  Glancing over my shoulder, the iridescent blue-green seemingly follows. I shift slightly back, again. Now it almost touches my T-shirt, pauses a few seconds and fly's back toward the lake. 

The power of seeking is in leaving the question.  Mine is, was this little insect making love, too? 

Back from Italy...

Back from Italy...

All our stories begin at the Rialto.  Merchant of Venice

The Rialto Bridge (built 490 AD) was the beginning of my Venice/Italy story. Landing at the Marco Polo airport at nine in the morning, I arrived by water bus at the Rialto Bridge and took this picture of  gondolas as I was searching for my hotel. 

Venice is a city without wheels: the roads are water. Gondolas, water-buses, water-taxis and barges, I discovered, are the cars and trucks of Venice. I was under the impression that gondolas merely belonged to a romantic past I had seen in movies or had read about.  At night outside my window I watched them gracefully, silently glide past, outlined by a small light in bow and stern.

Several nights music wafted through my window from the little bridge outside my hotel: a male voice one night, a female voice another, singing opera.  One night I came out the hotel door to meet a group laughing and singing with gusto as they made their way toward San Marco Square.  I followed them adding my English to their Italian.  

More exerts at another time, possibly... 

The Night I Learned to Speak Lamp

In the evening darkness, the Victorian lamp shade with its musky rose colored floral and three inch frills illuminated the sofa chair. I had seen it countless times yet this felt like a virgin viewing. A caring begins to play with a wild, amusing thought, "Is this lamp flirting with me?" 

No, of course not. Logic, that great godlessness, tells me the lamp is a solid, lifeless object.  Yet the longer I observe it, weirdly, I awake to a vitality, a zing in the air. No need for human eye, ear, or mouth. The more I attend to it, the more it seems to attend to me. 

Modern physics states there is no matter, only vibrating energy. The ancient seers have confirmed this for centuries. Science and spirituality are cross fertilizing. Photos show how water responds to a range of human emotions.* Apparently, we are all made of star stuff  --"99.9% dancing energy -- lamps included." 

What is lamp language? What is this energy that is speaking and caring for me? The communication tonight is my attention, my awareness, and a dropping down deeper than thought, beyond conceptual form. I need to see and feel the lamp differently. 

Awareness makes love. "Look at a bird until it becomes a song." Nepo encourages. Maybe real seeing is feeling. Maybe real listening is silence. Maybe I need to take responsibility for an intelligence other than human. 

Our bodies, voices, senses are not our identity any more than the lamp form is its.  Tolle suggest we are consciousness disguised as a person. Maybe the object by the chair is a consciousness disguised as a lamp.  

Listen, to a heart song.  Objects are not inanimate. In essence, we are all made of love, from love, and for love. This object called a lamp may not speak but now I know it can.

*Masaru Emoto has presented these findings at the UN.

A Place called Love....

Why am I lovable? Surely not because I am old and wrinkled. My personality is mixed, liked by some but not others. My body was recently described as rejuvenated road kill. In spite of these flaws,  I am loved and lovable. This love is not personal yet it drips with sweetness over and into every part of my day. When I arrive here, at this place called love, I look softly, hear bird song, and speak more carefully or not at all.

Several decades ago, I discovered love has an actual physical location in my body, behind the rib cage. From experience I know my destination and the route I need to take. If I travel to my ear, nothing happens, nor does it if I travel to my elbow. There I just experience pointed bone.

How do I arrive at this love location when I feel none and can find no self to love?
Mechanically in my busyness, I have to remember to take the trip. The path has been built with practice and feeling. As I head for my rib cage my ordinary awareness shifts. I am on my way. A feeling as rich as deep velvet begins to form, colors of these fall trees brighten and a bird is singing out the window.

However, I have to watch for blocks to this inner route. Negative thoughts impeded my travel . Needy-needs can stop me, authentic ones clear the way.  When there seems no love to find,  I pretended love.  Thinking back on a memory, I practice it.  Then act as if I am in love and more often than not, I am.

Is it Christ, Buddha, the Great Love the Kalahari bushman refer to? Maybe, I do not know. Yet, in my imperfection, I discover I am love.

photo source: fotolia.com