welcome, welcome to day 31 of a season of peace on the 29th day of the flowering field of february which means it’s a very special day, one that only happens every four years as we leap into this quantum flowering field in the miracle days of the tibetan new year…

so, today, i celebrate all our relatives… yes, you, like his holiness, showing up as sunshine… yes, you showing up being love… yes, you, being harmonizing healer… thousandfold thanks for being astonishing radiant lights… seeing the best in others, spreading lovingkindness virally…

let’s close with the Dalai Lama’s personal daily prayer… “Every day as you wake up, think that I am fortunate to be alive. I have a precious human life, and I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand myself out to others; to achieve enlightenment for all beings.”

blessing the space between us

as we journey into mystery

the pilgrimage to our one heart

~

how I love meeting you daily in the quantum field, the flowering field where love is all there is and where we celebrate a season of peace for…

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.

~ David Whyte ~

~

thank you for walking home with me … this moon as in month also brings an especially touching poignancy to the space between us as this journey into mystery, this pilgrimage into the tiny space of our one heart, the void, the sacred space of emptiness is such a deep dive into the stillpoint of creation…

surrendering to the beloved and trusting in the tenemos of great mother to support and nourish us, we summon the courage to leap into the unknown and relax into the organic, rhythmic flow of the mysterious dance of life…

holding hands in the dark, feeling the waves of our one beating heart, we witness the birth of the new, the promise of every inbreath followed by the re-joy-sing of every outbreath… for in our coming together in the sacred space of our cosmic heart, we change everything, we are transformation dancing to the tune of el canto hondo, the deep soul song… stillness flowing, singing, re-joy-sing… be love, be loved…

welcome, welcome to day 29 of a season of peace on this twenty-seventh day of the flowering field of february; it’s one more beautiful day of gathering the quintessence, the energy of love and light with the sun still shining on the energy of  tenderness, the crucible of our interconnectedness calling us to journey into the dream cave of grace and rest in love…

~

Journeys bring power and love back into you. If you can’t go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self. They are like shafts of light, always changing, and you change when you explore them.

~ Rumi ~

~

four years ago today, i traveled to an outer graceland for a beautiful gathering with soul family, a re-treat of tuning into the frequency of opening the heart… my first spoken words of the day in the “love is all there is” temenos were the same words – everything is grace –  spoken nine months previously when a dogstar trying to open my third eye ruptured  my second eye as well which led to a dream of being in a temple just like the one i lived in this weekend four years ago… this dream of so many moons ago, of opening the door into the heart, of home being graceland, is birthed right now and just as alive in this moment, this beautiful moment as we breathe in through our one heart and deep down into our core, inner navel of the universe, and, deeper down into our mother earth and breathe out love, sweet love into the multiverse’s harmony re-joy-sing in our coming more and more alive as we open our ever expanding cosmic heart wider and wider and deeper and deeper…

in this moment, simply rest in being and imagine that you are just the way you are, and you are totally loved… you are loved, you are accepted, you are acknowledged simply as you are…

bring to mind other beings with whom you are close and see them with that same single eye that looks through the veils and sees another being of love…

breathing deeply and slowly through the heart, let it soften and form the sweetest, most gentle flow with each breath opening your heart just a little bit more… if there’s sadness, let the sadness come out, if there’s joy, let the joy bubble over, if there’s a quiet, deep space of love, let it rest in its deep silence...

resting in love… resting in love… softer, just a bit softer… open your heart just a bit more… a little bit more… ah, the grace of being together in love right now with each breath, so sweet…

we can live life, moment to moment, with our heart this open being the mother of the universe, and everybody you look upon is your child…

may all of us harvest the potential of this sacred day seeing every moment is grace…

welcome, welcome to day 28 of 64 days of a season of peace on this twenty-sixth day of the flowering field of february; it’s one more beautiful day of gathering the quintessence, the energy of love and light with the sun shining on the energy of  tenderness, the crucible of our interconnectedness giving us the courage to say yes to creator, creation, creativity, the creative process…  with all the turbulence in the outer world, i’m still so called by source to come into the dream cave, the grand canyon of stillness – happy 101st anniversary grand canyon national park…

listen, listen, listen to our heartsong hums through me all day today as does the assurance from source that we will never be forgotten or forsaken giving me the courage to leap off the cliff and into the wings of love…

and, onto a most magical pilgrimage into the grand canyon of being where many turns around the sun ago, i celebrated my fiftieth birthday, the chiron return, in that physical space and, like today, in this sacred space of feeling down in the belly of the earth, dissolving into all that is, resting and re-treating in the restorative silence of the stillpoint simply listening to our soul song…

while sauntering (walking on holy land) as blessingway, every step is one of thanks and meandering deeper on a path unknown, every step is a merging into great beyond as the longing to return to the deep blue sea transmutes every step into a coming home to the heart, a questing complete with pilgrim reborn, every step a celebration of life…

yes, today is a day of devotion, of leaping into the void of creation lying in the lap of the divine bathed in the bliss of  love culminating in a moment of illumination when what no longer serves is burned away as the great silence whispers to us of our soul purpose, why we are here awakening us to the song of the true self, to our soul song…

everything is alive… everything is awakening… everything is moving…. everything is dancing… be still, silent, listen, listen, listen to our heartsong of re-joy-sing in the moment luxuriating in this sacred space of resting in the now….

om shanti shanti shantihi

let each breath you take bring you deeper into that center, into the quiet place, the timeless place, the spaceless space…

welcome, welcome to day 27 of a season of peace on this twenty-fifth day of the flowering field of february; it’s one more beautiful day of gathering the quintessence, the energy of love and light with the sun shining on the energy of  tenderness, the crucible of our interconnectedness, and i’m feeling the tenderness and feeling tender, perfect for dwelling in the silence of the heart… join with me now in a journeying to the stillpoint meditation of Ram Dass…

~

There is this moment. The sounds, the sensations, feelings. Just this moment.

CS Lewis said you don’t see the center because it’s all center. So experience the center, starting from your heart, and in concentric circles, including the entire city, all coming out from your heart. All coming into your heart.

Feel the energy of the city at the circumference of the circle, and feel the quietness of the middle of your heart at the center.

Riding close to the center, feel all of the qualities of your personality. Your history and your timeline of coming to this moment, all of it as the little circle around the center. And that all has movement and activity and identity. And yet right in the center of that is the quiet point.

The bus, the sounds in the room, the feelings in the body, they’re all part of the circles that go around the center. But in the center there’s no coming, no going.

If you still feel caught in thought or agitation, just sigh your way into the center. Just, ahhhhhh. And let each sigh take you closer to that quiet center.

Now move one of your hands in any way you want, but notice the relationship of the moving hand to the quiet center. Feel the stillness of the center at the same as the movement of the hand. And see that the movement of the hand is led by the intention of the mind, but all of that is in the circle around the center, and the center just is. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Sighing your way into the center, to the still, quiet space within.

The universe looked at from the center, from the quietness, is seen as flow, as movement, as energy, as patterns, as comings and goings, as emotions and thoughts, from the eye of the center, the eye of the circle, where thine eye be single.

Now pick one moment in your memory of today. Project yourself into some other moment. It might be at the subway, or the office, or at home. Any one, it doesn’t matter which one. And ask yourself, go look there, and see whether or not that person at that moment recognized the center.

Imagine all the moments of today, one after another — the getting, bathroom, eating, traveling, meetings, all of the moment-to-moment experiences. And then imagine the thread wove through that entire string of experiences, just the flow of conscious presence in the center of the universe, where everything is still.

Thoughts think themselves. Sensations occur. Movement occurs. Relationships happen. And in the middle of it, always, just this.

Let each breath you take bring you deeper into that center. Just into the quiet place, the timeless place, the spaceless space.

And then if you want to, make the leap, appreciate that the center point in the middle of the heart that we talk about as the center of the circle is everywhere. So in the middle of that siren you hear, that is the silent center.

Everywhere you look in the universe, everything’s happening, and nothing’s happening. It’s all changing, and it’s all still.

When they say quietness is master of the deed, it is the relationship of that quiet center to the forms around it. It is when you stand at the center of the universe in the silent spaceless space, timeless time, it is with that eye that you are truth. For in the center there is no longing, no hopes, no desires, no fears, nowhere to go, nothing to do. Right in that center.

We listen from that center to hear what part is played. We see from that center, seeing the design and the play and the dance. And every time we get lost in the periphery of the circle, the minute we remember, we are on our way back to the center. The center of the flower. The center of the mandala. The center where past and future fold in on themselves. The center where here and there fold in on themselves.

There’s a sound, the sound of Om, that represents all of the sounds folded in on themselves. It is that sound of silence. It is spoken, yet unspoken. Om. Om.

~

welcome, welcome to day 26 of a season of peace on this twenty-fourth day of the flowering field of february and today with the support of Ram Dass, let’s meditate on pure mind …

~

“I have the intention to become free and I’m using everything in my life to do it. At first you just have practices like meditation or prayer. And then you go to work, or you do your stuff, or whatever. And after a while all of it becomes your practice, every bit of it. You tell me something that can’t be practiced. Tell me something that you can’t convert into becoming one with spirit.

So you keep working on yourself to cultivate the Witness, which becomes, in your way, a gift to everybody around you. Because they come in thinking they’re somebody, just like you do most of the time. And you’re creating an environment where they can if they want to, but they don’t have to.

So intention to awaken, finding the part of your mind that is not caught. Even though immediately after you’ve noticed it gets caught and then you come back again. The predicament is the clinging of mind. The predicament is that awareness clings to thought. I’ll just read you the first paragraph of “Extracting the Quintessence of Accomplishment.” And it comes from Dudjom Rinpoche who was an extraordinarily beautiful Tibetan Lama who passed on a few years ago I guess.

“The nature of our mind. The nature of our mind is the nature of absolute reality.” Try to think of it now as the sky as opposed to the clouds. “Divested of all conditional and artificial characteristics fabricated by the intellect. This nature, this mind, is established with certainty in awareness. Awareness arises, naked, as the self-originated primordial wisdom. It just is. This awareness cannot be expressed in words, nor shown by examples. It is neither corrupted in samsara nor improved in nirvana. It is neither born nor ceases to be. It is neither liberated nor confused. It is neither existent nor nonexistent. It is neither delimited nor falling to either side. In brief, from the beginning, awareness has never existed as a substantial entity with elaborated characteristics. Its nature is primarily pure, void, vast, and all pervasive.”

Now take the stages. You’re caught in experience. Then you cultivate the Witness, which is that little part of your mind that sees the rest of it. After a while the witness gets stronger and stronger and stronger until most of the time you are “Ah, so.” And even though the dramas of desires, fears, aging, life, crisis, are all coming and going, coming and going, they’re all undulating within you, there’s a part of you that is strong, that is clear, that is saying, “Ah, so.” And then, in this particular technique, you become aware of that in you which is saying, “Ah, so.”

And you go through, into pure mind. Which is neither the witness, nor not the witness. It is neither the experience, nor not the experience. It’s not looking, but it knows everything because it is everything. I am describing to you a very disciplined technique of using the mind to beat the mind. Stand back from experience into the witness, not denying the experience, this isn’t dissociation, this isn’t a defense mechanism. Stand back so that you’re feeling the pain of it all and at the same moment, seeing it. And when you’re resting in the awareness, the seeing of it broadly, then you start to note the seer. The witness.

And there’s a flick that occurs. And no longer are you experiencing the universe, the universe just is. It includes you but it’s nothing special. It’s really the process of dying as a separate entity into pure mind. And the moment you do that, a moment later you’re fully there as a separate entity but you’re also not there as a separate entity. It’s all there all at once. You’re a star and you’re also the heavens.“

~

welcome, welcome to day 25 of a season of peace on this twenty-third day of the flowering field of february and what a trifecta of riches it is with today also being the astonishing light of your being day and losar, the tibetan new year day and one of my favorite moments in the cycle of life when we rest in the in between times moon, the rainbow moon who sings a song of transformation, of transmuting dark, threatening clouds of pain, into rainbow colored arcs of joy… poised here in the portal of the pisces new moon, may we all leap as one, letting go to flow with oceanic imagination in the field of rainbow mystery where only love is real and everything is possible… feel the great turning upon and within us supporting us to let go of fear and anchor in truth, wisdom and love as we swim in these mystical waters of pisces together…

for this special day, let us beam our attention on facing our mortality and the opportunity we each get to intend how we live… when Dr. Oliver Sacks learned he had only months remaining, he chose to live in the deepest, richest, most productive way he could real-eye-sing he is ocean. in his own words before he died:

~

Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.

On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential. I must focus on myself, my work and my friends. I shall no longer look at “NewsHour” every night. I shall no longer pay any attention to politics or arguments about global warming.

This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.

I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

~

welcome, welcome to day 24 of a season of peace on this twenty-second day of flowering field february which vibrates at 22222, quintessential grace and it’s one more beautiful day of gathering the quintessence as ambassadors of love and light with the sun shining on the energy of  freedom in dreamy pisces while the moon wanes into beautiful blackness… even with all the turbulence in the outer world, today i’m so being sung in every cell the soul song of our graceful free and easy wanderer true nature which moves me to the familiar tale of hamsa or humso, the beautiful swan embodying grace while chanting so hum, i am that… light and love…

once upon a time, little swan was resting in a pool in dreamtime… she looked up and saw a swirling black hole, the biggest one ever… in that moment, dragonfly appeared in the sky and swan inquired about the black hole to which dragonfly told her it is the doorway to the great beyond and to enter you must ask permission and earn the right…

little swan wasn’t sure she wanted to enter the black hole so she asked dragonfly what’s necessary to cross the portal and dragonfly told her she must accept whatever comes just as it is presenced without editing one iota of great spirit’s design…

little swan looked down at her ugly duckling body and replied that she’d graciously accept great spirit’s design and would not resist the currents of the black hole… she affirmed she would surrender to divine flow trusting in the present moment… her answer pleased dragonfly who began to spin a spell of magic engulfing little swan in a whirlpool in the center of the pond…

when swan reappeared days later, she was transformed into a beautiful being of grace… dragonfly was shocked and wanted to know what had happened to which swan replied that she learned how to surrender to the power of great mystery, to surrender to the grace of the rhythm of the universe…

may we all let go and undam flow opening into the great beyond’spathless path of illumination and the flowering field of gracious synchronisiddhis…

so hum…

Happy 62nd Birthday, Peace Symbol!

welcome, welcome to day 23 of a season of peace on this twenty-first day of flowering field february and the sixty-second birthday of the peace symbol… and, it’s one more beautiful day of gathering the quintessence as ambassadors of love and light with the sun shining on the energy of  freedom… on a somber note, it is the fifty-fifth anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination…

now, back to the peace sign…

 “Children of today easily identify it. They may not know its original meaning, but they know it stands for good things – be nice to friends, be kind to animals, no fighting. This is a marvelous achievement for Gerald Holtom’s simple design. Peoples around the world have marched with it, worn it, displayed it during combat, held it high on banners, and been arrested in its name. Ask any man, woman or child, ‘What one thing would everyone in the world want more than anything else?’ The answer would surely be world peace.’”

Ken Kolsbun, Peace: The Biography of a Symbol

on this day of walking into the unknown through a field of  impermanence, a day when peace is so called for, it is a beautiful synchrony that it’s the re-birthday of peace…

Gerald Holtom, an artist and conscientious objector, created the Peace Symbol on February 21,1958. According to Christopher Driver, author of The Disarmers: A Study in Protest, Holtom created the design and then brought it to an organizer of a local British peace group. After several revisions, it was unveiled publicly on Good Friday of that year, by anti-nuclear demonstrators — the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) — who marched 50 miles from London’s Trafalgar Square to the weapons factory at Aldermaston. It was the first Ban-the-Bomb March.

When Gerald Holtom sat down at his drawing board sixty-two years ago, he was in almost total despair. He later told the editor of Peace News: ‘I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalized the drawing into a line and put a circle round it symbolizing Earth.”

Welcome “International Peace Symbol Day.”  May we hoist peace everywhere waving the remedy for despair…  Peace Out!

welcome, welcome to day 22 of a season of peace, on this 20th day of flowering field february in the year 2020 so that we have a day pulsing at the frequency of 2222, a day of grace, wisdom, clarity and a day also known as world social justice day – may it be so, may we roll up our sleeves, come home to our heart and in thought, word and deed be in balance with all our relatives… and, it’s another beautiful day of gathering the quintessence as ambassadors of love and light who vaya con gaia en paz with the sun shining through the clouds on the liberating energy of  freedom…

i have arrived, i am home in the eternal now, this present moment… to live simply and wholeheartedly as a willow tree who offers her branches freely as resting space for great mystery to breathe us sacredly…

here, in this home of flow, this openhearted place of welcome, perch and listen for the hum, vibrational tune of whispering wind, spirit waves of spiraling notes… singing of love and devotion across the many splendored vast wild ocean of ever changing being… always different, always the same…

in this place of deep repose, hear waters falling home, singing of a secret joy deep within, always present in the moment, listen to source and attune to the music of the spheres, haunting melody animating all, cosmic harmony ringing out a call…

in this moment, our one heart’s a tree providing belonging space for you, for me to sing our soul song of mystery… many voices, one frequency… multiversed universiddhi…  shanti, shanti, shantihi…