Unexpected Gratitude

 For all of us around the world, my goodness, what a time it has been over these past years and what challenges we have all faced. And yet, even amidst overwhelming anxiety, care and worry, let us not forget:  there is a place of rest for us---ever-present, ever-available and untouched by any of the descriptions we could apply to it. To be able to rest in this basic space of bliss, peace and clarity for short moments many times is a blessing beyond compare. In the great natural abundance which is our birthright, we are embraced by beauty, and not only reminded of our many gifts, but brought into full appreciation of them.

   On this beautiful morning in this beautiful place, I am surrounded by the reminders of these gifts.

   So, so many things that we can't even account for which have been given to us...... A man whose head is being held underwater for minutes has forgotten everything else but breath, and once his head emerges from the forced imprisonment of the water, he breathes with delight and joy, gasping in appreciation for something that he had taken for granted for the whole of his life.

   A village woman in a war zone in the Sahara gets up early each morning to fetch water from a well six kilometers away and hopes to avoid the rape, robbery and murder that could await her along the way. Upon her safe arrival back home, she revels in the good fortune of the tenuous safety that has been provided to her on that one day. She would have difficulty imagining people whose source of water is only a few footsteps away and whose access to it is without any impediment.

  There are circumstances in which one feels trapped and limited and unhappily dictated to by the course of fate, and possibly in that circumstance cannot see the benefit. And yet, AND YET, as we look back on those same circumstances that had been labeled unfortunate or sad, we can come to feel gratitude for all that we were given---even if those gifts were hidden from us as they were being given.

  As we continue on our way and our vision becomes clearer and less distracted, we won't have to artificially create thanksgiving and fix it for a time or place. We will become closer companions with the wisdom which embraces us and the sweetness of experience unfettered by wish or expectation, and the fragrance of these blooms will be so present and evident for us that no summoning will be necessary. 

May it be so. May we rest in our essential being.

  

                                                               Abundant Life

 “To live life more abundantly.” Isn’t this a call that so many of us want to heed? In all the many shapes it takes in our lives, don’t we hunger for greater meaning, understanding, love, insight and connection? Even in the misshapen forms that seem so foreign to genuine abundance—greed, mindless consumption, utter self-focus, competition—there is the same wish to live more abundantly . . . only misperceived.

Throughout our lives we have been so grossly miseducated about our true being and what this “abundance” is that we are searching for. We have been trained to seek within the limited context of a mere human individual looking out at a separate world of objects. We have been trained to think that we are enclosed within this skin suit of a body and that we were born, live and then will die within that body. But, dear ones, is this ultimately true?

I have no conclusive or satisfying answers to give you, no guaranteed steps to take. All I can offer is an invitation, to myself and to others, to simply be humble and open. Humble and open. Maybe also courageously available to the possibility of being shocked into recognition by the wonders that surround us—hidden as they have been by the erroneous, inherited assumptions we have cultivated.

Yes, open to what we don’t already know, and extremely skeptical about what we think we already know. To be gifted with the amazement that comes from gently resting moment-by-moment as the settled basic state of infinite intelligence, where there is no goal to be accomplished, no improvement that needs to be made. We can take instruction from a rainbow which both is, and is-not. Teachings surrounds us on all sides. We are not lacking.