Lighten Up -- Again!

 

"Get your mind unbound and free; and then from the loosest, highest, best place you have, with the fastest and most humorous mind you can get together, you can reach 

out and make a try at understanding Spirit."

---Stephen Gaskin, This Season's People

 

 

Stephen Gaskin (February 16, 1935 - July 1, 2014)

Sometimes the Universe really lays one on you.  The utterly inexplicable walks right up to you and whispers in your ear "There's magic afoot" -- and invites you to dance.  

 

At those times, the One Love that permeates and transcends each moment lets you know that there is much more to Reality than our rational mind can actually deliver.  That processing channel gets too bogged down in distinctions to grasp the bigger picture.

 

Of course, having Sat Still Doing Nothing (and Everything) for a good chunk of time most every morning for decades, I am often, at least momentarily, aware of the Presence of a dimension of being where magic, miracles, and mystery exist.  

 

Nowadays, even off the zafu, this dimension is more noticeable. It is embedded in the fabric of daily life.  A sense of wonder often emerges amidst the ordinary moments of ordinary days.  

 

In fact, when I'm truly Present, washing the dishes and taking out the trash are as much Ritual Connections to the Sacred as lighting incense, bowing, and taking my seat in meditation. When I'm on my game, the world glows. (When I'm not, Migdalia busts me for the glasses I washed that don't sparkle. LOL)  

 

As best I can tell, Life is just as Thich Nhat Hanh wrote years ago:

"Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” 

 

Yet, for sure, within and beyond the ongoing miracle, there are extra special moments.  There are times that the Grand Synchronicity turns up the volume. This happened ten years ago this month.  The Extraordinary concocted up an experience that still defies any attempt to rationally understand what had happened. 

 

As I sat staring at the blank screen of this very same, now much older MacBook Pro that day, a ringtone on my iPhone may just as well have been Gabriel's trumpet.  At that moment, Stephen Gaskin, who had passed away 11 days before, the worldwide web, and Google conspired to proclaim the existence of a dimension where magic, miracles, and mystery will always have the last laugh!

 

The memory still brings a grin to my face and a glow to my heart.

 

With another deep bow to Stephen -- and to this Most Amazing Universe -- I want to share the post from that day.   It's encouragement to "lighten up" bears repeating.

Lighten Up!   
Originally Posted July 12, 2014

A couple of night's ago, unable to get back to sleep after a nocturnal "nature call,"I had tried to write a memorial piece on Hippie Spiritual Teacher Stephen Gaskin, whose Life -- and recent Death -- touched me deeply.   I got nowhere.  After struggling with it for a while, I gave up and read a bit of a Tenzing Norbu Mystery before finally stretching out to meditate into sleep once again.

Still on the mend from the events of the past month, I've been mostly laying low these days, staying away from the computer and cell phone as much as possible, allowing myself to Heal.  A couple of false starts had showed me quite clearly how energy depleting my addiction to these devices can be.  

 

Scrolling for the next dopamine hit takes its toll.

This morning, I was quaffing my first cup of coffee in a couple of days (another addiction under modification) watching bubbles of confusion and angst float through my awareness.  I wasn't quite sure what to do about this week's commitment to Your MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call.  My attempt to express the profound impact that Stephen had had on my life was going nowhere.  I'd made a few false starts. but the back space key had wiped the slate clean each time.

 

I was first introduced to Stephen when a friend handed me a copy of Monday Night Class, a collection of his talks, questions, and answers delivered to the thousand or so hippies that gathered weekly at the Family Dog to meditate and compare notes on the community spiritual exploration that had emerged and mushroomed in San Francisco in the 1960's.  That book propelled me on a journey that included a daily meditation practice, a couple of extended visits to the Farm, my own attempts at a communal "back to the land" lifestyle -- and a number of conversations with Stephen over the course of a couple of decades. 

Sitting here at a picnic table outside my favorite local farm store on a brilliant, blue-skied morning, I continued to stare at a blank screen.  Then, (probably with a furrowed brow), I reached for my cell phone to check my email -- then, perhaps, just fall back and select an old post to republish this week.

At that very moment the phone "dinged"with an incoming email. Peering down I read the notification

"Your MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call:

 Lighten Up! 

Posted 18 January 2014"

WTF!!!???

I have no idea what strange permutation of the space time cyber continuum at that moment could have possibly have had Google generate and deliver to me an email version of a post I'd written six months ago.  This had never happened before.  (and still hasn't happened again ten years later! -- L.)

How could I not lighten up?  

I broke into a bemused grin as I clicked it open.  The Serendipity of receiving this unsolicited and inexplicably"cosmic" reprint of a blog piece at that moment was magic enough. The decision was made for me.  I'd just read and tinker with it bit, write an introduction describing what had happened and re-pubish it.

 
Then, I began reading the post...

It got even more mind blowing!

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Judge Not and ...

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“We sow the seeds of our future hells or happiness by the way
 we open or close our minds right now.”

 ― Pema Chodron

I don't think there is any greater freedom than being Present -- engaging life as it is -- without the distortion caused by Judgment Mind.  

Growing up immersed in a society that is highly judgmental, most of us have been deeply conditioned to experience our lives in terms of good/bad, right/wrong, should be/shouldn't be.  

 

In fact, our ego sense, with its perceived separation and isolation from "the other" is maintained by emotion laden thoughts, opinions, and various mind states that emerge from this conditioning.  Even in its mild form of liking/disliking, Judgment Mind can generate thoughts and feelings that serve to separate us from the peaceful, calm, and caring Presence we have access to in every moment.  

 

If we are overly self-absorbed, distracted, stressed, moving too fast, it's easy to get lost in our conditioned reactions to the events in our lives.  Adrift in Judgment Mind, we loose Presence.  We get lost in the alternative reality we have created -- and forget that the world is really not as it appears to us at that moment.  The deeply ingrained process of evaluating what we experience as bad, wrong, condemnable is a strong and on-going element of our society's collective unconscious, and has had a deep and ongoing effect on most of us.  It appears as discontent, diatribe, enmity, blame, and self-blame.  If we aren't paying attention, it can and will dominate our lives, moment to moment.

 

Seeing For Yourself

 

One of the fruits of meditation is that we can see how that process works directly.  We can see for ourselves that Judgment Mind isn't only the thoughts going through our heads at the moment.  It's deeper than that.  It is embedded in the emotions we are experiencing.  It's embodied in the tightnesses and discomforts of our body.  It directly effects the quality of our consciousness, our state of mind.  

 

It is actually quite amazing to see for yourself how that plays out on the meditation cushion.  

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Mama Said There'll Be Days Like This

"Our thought now being no-thought, even our singing and dancing 

are the voice of the Dharma."

-- Hakuin-zenji, Song of Zazen

 

 "Mama said there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this mama said."

-- The Shirelles

 

For decades now, silent meditation and mindfulness practices have been the central focus of my spiritual life.  Yet, me being me, I've continued to explore a number of practices from a variety of traditions.  

 

In the early 70's, I was introduced to the Chant of Chenrezig by a friend of mine who had absorbed it as he pushed a huge prayer wheel with a group of Tibetan Buddhist practioners in Northern India months before.  Looking into his eyes, standing about five feet away, I could feel the energy of Om Mani Padme Hum as he related the experience.   Coming across the chant again in Ram Dass's spiritual classic Be Here Now a few months later, I filed it away for future reference.  

Later that year, I had the means and opportunity to Practice this chant a bit more deeply.  Unlike my friend who experienced it in India, my prayer wheel was the steering wheel of a canary yellow VW camper.  I was cruising along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado on Interstate 25 at the time.  Using the mile markers as visual reminders to re-focus, I chanted Om Mani Padme Hum for several hours.  At a certain point, I experienced a Shift.  I connected with the larger pool of energy and the Presence. Reality asserted itself.  

 

The Universe hummed along in harmony with the mantra as I drove down the road.

In the eternal now, this moment embraces that moment.  In the seamless whole of One Love, Time and the Timeless dance as One.  There is no separation.

Om Mani Padme Hum

Even Our Singing and Dancing

 
Over the years, I've practiced various other forms of mantra meditation.  I've chanted with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Native Americans, and Christians.  I've come to see quite clearly that words can ring with meaning and power well beyond their conceptual content.  Whether vibrating in sound or in silence, when we experience words we attune to, and resonate with, a  larger pool of energy and connection -- whether we realize it at the time or not.

And then -- although certain fundamentalist strains in many religious traditions may frown at the idea -- it gets even better for me when those words dance in the arms of music. Over the years, I've sung (and danced) bhajan and kirtan with the Hare Krishna's, Neem Karoli Baba's folks in Taos, NM, and a number of local Kirtan walahs.  I've drummed and sang with Native Americans.  OMMM'd with 10,000+ Hippies at Rainbow National Gatherings.  I've sang, danced and drummed with Sufi Universal Dances of Peace gatherings and with other Spiritual Circles.  In full confession, I've also danced freely at Dead shows and Raves (sometimes with, sometimes without medicinal herbs or concoctions in my system. LOL).  In all those times, places, and spaces I've often felt the Grand Connection to my fellow human beings in the embrace of Universal One Love. 

 

Yet A Different Tune

 
Ten years ago, when I was still blogging as weekly mindfulness practice, the Universe graced me with an unexpected, deeply healing, musical incantation just before I sat down at the laptop to begin.   Then, like now, I had recently returned from an unsuccessful attempt to help my older brother through a life crisis in Oklahoma.  It was a tough time in my life.

 

The source of this healing music wasn't one of the mystical spiritual traditions.  This music didn't come from one of compositions of New Age music that I sometimes use to inspire me or chill me out either.  Emerging spontaneously in my mind's memory lane theater were the voices of a quartet of young women from New Jersey. singing the refrain of a 1961 recording.  It just as well may have been a heavenly chorus of angels.

 

Instantaneously, a grin emerged on my mug.  My heart glowed. The quality of my consciousness became brighter and lighter.  The Mystical Magical Musical Chant that altered my state of mind was the from the Shirelle's:

"Mama said there'll be days like this

There'll be days like this mama said."

"Duh," I thought with a grin.  "Of course!  It's just Life being Life as it is.  I can live with that!"

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