Why is "Now" so important?

Because if we are not “Here,” then we live either in the future or in the past, and what good is that for? “Now” is when things are happening, “Now” is when we experience joy, pain, fear and whatnot,  “Now” is when life happens.  Yet, this constant babbling brook of thought running in the background, which we fall prey to, are used to, and take for granted, prevents us from being in the “Now.” But it doesn’t have to be so, the mind is trainable.  I read about a South American shaman, who had the opposite problem.  He could not understand our Western mind frazzledness and was trying to comprehend how our minds function because he only lives in the "Now."

Actually, the ideal would be to be able to go back and forth between both mindsets.  We need the Western capability of analyzing the past and mapping out where we want to go in the future – to make a plan with intent -  and we need the Native “Being-in-the-Now”  for all other times, when we are doing and being.  For inspiration take a look at Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now, as well as the Pachamama Alliance and the Eagle and Condor Story.

it's all about people

Life is really all about people.  We can’t live in a vacuum, or on a lonely island for that matter.  We feel an affinity to other people who are similar to us, and thus see reflected back to us how we are already.  When we dislike something in another person, it mirrors our shadow side back to us, something we still need to learn or to accept.  This means that we define ourselves in comparison to and with the help of others.  My meditation teacher Bruce Rubin posted this amazing year-end talk on the human condition and relationships.  It’s truly enlightening.

the spirit of Christmas

Old School Baptist Meeting House Warwick, NY Though I love watching everyone unwrapping presents (and unwrapping some myself, too), good food, the glow of Christmas candles and the sight of the Christmas tree, the highlight of Christmas Eve this year surely was the annual Christmas Eve gathering at Warwick’s Old School Baptist Meeting House.  In the twenty years we have lived here we never attended this event because of our own Christmas Eve family routine.  But several people mentioned it this year, and I listened.

Sharing this event with so many familiar faces in this historic and picturesque white church on top of the hill right in the center of our beautiful town was simply magical.    It was a spiritual event because it nourished the soul, even though it was not a church service.  And our mayor said so aptly in his address:  “There is nowhere I would rather be than right here.”   I couldn’t have agreed more and I am so grateful to be living in one of the greatest little towns on earth.

mirror mirror

Did you ever wonder why the world may seem full of wonder and beauty one day, and perhaps gray and miserable the next? It’s the same world after all, the world hasn’t changed suddenly. We see the world through our emotions, or I could say that the world reflects back to us our state of mind.  If you have never thought about it in this way, it might seem far fetched or even crazy.  What, there is no objective world out there that “is the way it is?”  No, everything is in the eyes of the beholder.  Even quantum physics says so.

Think about it.   If you have endured a calamity, or you are simply down and out, the world appears utterly bleak to you.  Yet, the same world simultaneously appears full of magic to someone freshly in love.  We tend to blame people, situations or the state of affairs of our world for our experiences; we put the cause outside ourselves.  In reality it works the other way round.  We attract or get mirrored our state of mind through interaction with our environment.  A shift in emotions, a shift in beliefs and values, shifts how we experience everything around us.

Looking at your experiences, your life, from this amazing perspective opens up a world of possibilities for spiritual growth.

health is a balancing act

I selected this post to be featured on my blog’s page at Culture Blogs.

Healing is much more than “fighting” symptoms with mechanical or chemical means in order to get rid of them.  Health is an ongoing balancing act that requires continual and never ending internal adjustment.

When you are in tune with your body you begin to notice even slight imbalances, such as fatigue, digestive system upsets, aches, or stress.  Such minor imbalances can easily be rebalanced with gentle methods, like rest, better food, lifestyle adjustments, or energy healing methods (EFT, acupuncture, homeopathy and others).

It’s actually all about your needs. When your emotional and physical needs are met your body, mind and spirit all function in harmony and unison and you are healthy as a consequence.  When, on the other hand, you have unmet emotional needs and you keep ignoring them and your body’s nudging messages, more serious physical symptoms are eventually bound to develop from this stress.

“Perfect health” is fleeting and unattainable on a continuous basis, healing is ongoing as long as you live.

just being

Usually I am just doing.  Dipping under the radar of doing accesses a place within me that is peaceful, timeless, and emotionally removed (not remote!).  This place permits me to observe more objectively without the emotional entanglement, and it lets me feel, hear, taste, smell, and see without the mental word chatter that permeates my mind. It is difficult to even achieve seconds of this peace of mind, but boy is it worthwhile.

a gray rainy day and the perfection of opposites

The beauty in this gray rainy day today lies in its perfection.  It is not bad weather, rather it simply is, and it is perfect.  While we consider it something like an opposite to a sunny day with blue skies, it helps to see it instead in a more holistic way, as the flipside of the same thing as the sunny day. Take night and day as an example.  The concept of night is totally intertwined with the concept of day.  They do not exist in isolation.  And both are continuously on their way towards each other.  Day is always on its way towards night, and night is always on its way towards day.  They are not mutually exclusive, and one is not better or worse than the other.  They both simply are an aspect of each other, and therein lies the perfection. 

the heart as a portal, not as a pump

This past week-end my meditation teacher equated the heart with a portal, a portal to within, a portal to infinite self-love and compassion. Rudolf Steiner said over a century ago that our human destiny would change once we recognized that the heart is not a pump.  There are two interesting articles on that, one by Thomas Cowan, MD and the other by researchers from Temple University.  Both articles refute the pump idea from the perspective of fluid dynamics and propose an alternate way of understanding the heart.  Perhaps rearranging this understanding of the mechanics will lead us to recognizing our interface with the spiritual.

Consider our cultural symbolism of the heart as the center of love, as an expression of our compassion.  I like the portal analogy, especially after reading Harry Potter and its many portals, unassuming gateways to much larger realities, unrecognized and untapped by those not in the know.

Food for thought indeed.

life's yummy factor

Holistic comes from whole and also holy and means that something includes both the qualitative and the quantitative, seen and unseen, physical and metaphysical aspects.   Our culture is a bit lopsided because it has favored the quantitative aspect of science over the spiritual aspect at least since Isaac Newton.  But the qualitative aspect, the spiritual, the unseen, is what adds the yummy factor to life.  Knowledge of the calories of a strawberry, or its vitamin content, is pretty dull and meaningless without the smell of the ripe fruit, the visual appreciation of its red ripeness, the feeling of the teeth sinking into the juicy flesh, and finally that distinct sweet strawberry taste on the tongue.

The yummy factor is what makes life worth living.