welcome to day 27 of a season of peace, how “just right” it is that while we are going through such turbulence, we have this organizing matrix of a season re- minding and re-heartening us to come into the stillpoint, slow down and be an instrument of peace, a harmony frequency raising all in our ever widening orbital circle to the vibration of compassion as we awaken to the true reality that we all belong to each other, that no being is free until all beings are free and that when each of us awakens, it is a tremendous gift and catalyzer for the awakening of the whole…

“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.”

~ Ram Dass ~

as we dance the via transformativa, the way of rebirth, of awakening, i find myself being in dark, unknown spaces, uncertain moments which open into portals leading home as i return to the breath and the magical blessing of thanks transporting me into the  deep earth of our being, the wisdom place in the core where we float in the sea of love energy, the most powerful healing, wholeing medicine that gives birth to dancing stars… with the dangers of this moment so intense, i must match that intensity with being a living prayer of peace – thank you for standing in solidarity as a huge orchestra of instruments of peace – i love envisioning us all encircling and encircling and encircling this third rock from the sun where we dwell committed to living in peace and harmony with every breath…

as we close this circle, let’s conspire, breathe together and feel the golden light we are pouring into every one of our trillions of cells illuminating the pathless path of the deep self and hear the music of the celestial spheres ringing through our ears transforming us into seers of the beloved community that is our birthright… 

welcome to day 27 of a season of peace, how “just right” it is that while we are going through such turbulence, we have this organizing matrix of a season re- minding and re-heartening us to come into the stillpoint, slow down and be an instrument of peace, a harmony frequency raising all in our ever widening orbital circle to the vibration of compassion as we awaken to the true reality that we all belong to each other, that no being is free until all beings are free and that when each of us awakens, it is a tremendous gift and catalyzer for the awakening of the whole…

as we dance the via transformativa, the way of rebirth, of awakening, i find myself being in dark, unknown spaces, uncertain moments which open into portals leading home as i return to the breath and the magical blessing of thanks transporting me into the  deep earth of our being, the wisdom place in the core where we float in the sea of love energy, the most powerful healing, wholeing medicine that gives birth to dancing stars… with the dangers of this moment so intense, i must match that intensity with being a living prayer of peace – thank you for standing in solidarity as a huge orchestra of instruments of peace – i love envisioning us all encircling and encircling and encircling this third rock from the sun where we dwell committed to living in peace and harmony with every breath…

as we close this circle, let’s conspire, breathe together and feel the golden light we are pouring into every one of our trillions of cells illuminating the pathless path of the deep self and hear the music of the celestial spheres ringing through our ears transforming us into seers of the beloved community that is our birthright… 

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

In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them
When all their silence
Is on fire?”

~ Thomas Merton ~

silence isn’t empty, it’s full of answers… everything is alive… everything is awakening… everything is moving…. everything is dancing… be still, silent… listen….

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 27 of a season of peace on this twenty-fifth day of freely flowing 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 with the courage to say yes for the good of the whole… and, even with all the turbulence in the outer world, today, i’m so encouraged by so much light being shone by so many and entranced by snow flurries into quiet reverie…

In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them
When all their silence
Is on fire?”

~ Thomas Merton ~

the whole world is no longer secretly on fire, it’s all too apparent as is our need for refuge in silence…