On this holy day - and ALL days are holy - I have to say there is danger in the world but there is also beauty.  Whichever you give your attention to is a choice. 

And, there is no Daddy in the sky to rescue you.  The Creator set the laws in motion which are the source of endless evolution and change.  You're on your own in adapting to and forming a relationship with Creation.

We live on a tiny little piece of earth that's full of life and beauty.  Even on our tiny home, our individual life is inconsequential in the midst of life on this planet, we are only a tiny part of the whole and yet the whole is part of us.  Giving your attention to danger, fear, hatred is to turn away from the oneness of existence and Creation.  Letting go our egoistic perception of life and accepting our place in the vastness of Creation is a movement toward peace, understanding and growth.

"Now we can define suffering at this stage as the consequence of the difference between things as we think they are and things as they really are."  Franklin Earnest III, Transitional Man 

There is almost nothing that can be said in response, if I'm able to truly see this.  I am released from unnecessary suffering, if I'm able to stand in front of reality, this minute, and accept it; accept what's real outside myself, accept what's true inside myself.  

I may dislike what's so, and that's part of the truth, but what's real is real.  I may dream of what I will do to change it but thus the suffering begins.  What's so, this instant, is real.  Being in the midst of it, releases me.

Today I say a tearful prayer to a tiny mouse caught in two kill traps:  leg in one, broken neck in the other; nearby another mouse in a no-kill trap.  The safe mouse I released some distance from the house, across two streams of water, where there is much high grass.  The other mouse I assumed dead having seen it, still and silent, in the two traps, the night before.  Opening the cabinet where the death took place, neither trap was visible.  Clearly, it had not been dead when I first saw it and had dragged the two traps behind a wash tub during the night; all that time dying.  Removing the wash tub, I saw a tiny, tiny foot moving; still alive, trapped, in pain.  I released the foot from the first trap; it slowly pulled its leg toward its body.  As I picked up the remaining trap, the little thing cried out in pain, its neck broken, its eyes squeezed shut in a grimace.  I released it from the trap into my gloved hand.  It twisted to find release from the pain and from the giant holding it.  As I carried the tiny dying thing outside, I stroked it and spoke to it quietly; foolishly thinking I could comfort it.  Its matchstick leg was skinned to the bone, its head and neck twisted.  I laid it in the grass next to the truck of a tree.  I am so sorry for its pain and suffering.  I left it there to die in peace.

I’m not afraid of mice, although they can startled me; they don’t repulse or disgust me, although their habits, in my house, may inconvenience and frustrate me.  They are tiny, soft little creatures trying to live and, unfortunately, are at the bottom of the food chain, fodder for many.

I don’t want them in my house to make messes I have to clean up but I don’t want them dead and I don’t want to see their dying.

“If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.” – St. Francis of Assisi

What is the more I need to work?

"Inward, not identify."  "Outward, play a role." -- G

There's a movement that's required of me to continue; otherwise, I'm just going in circles and relying on gifts that are given from time to time to remind me of the prison I'm in.

I've just been reminded of the need for this inner movement.  I remember knowing the need for it.  I remember feeling the movement in rare instances.

At this moment, I don't know what that movement is.  The state of questioning and standing in front of the absence of knowing gives me a second of presence and perhaps the possibility of making that movement.

This is my real condition.

What's Real is What's Right in Front of You.

The sun is trying to come out, daffodil buds are starting to unfurl, a garter snake is coiled in the side yard, a substantial part of its tail lopped off.  I don't know if it was injured by human, critter or car.  

Life is what's right in front of you; not some imaginings about what used to be or what might be.  Good and bad, OK, not OK, is just a judgment.  It just is.

Gratitude

This morning, I set myself a simple exercise:  while sitting to simply notice whatever arises within; no other intention, just to see what's there.  My mind has been dominating; I need to be more quiet and just see.

This morning, it's very clear how much I have to be grateful for:

 -- I have a strong, healthy body that has it's own wisdom and has been a friend, all these years.

 -- I have a strong mind that, while often running wild, is capable of learning and understanding an enormous variety of things.

 -- I have a strong emotional center that, while also often running astray, is capable of deep love and compassion.

 -- I have had the fortune of a variety of accidents of fate which have put me in front of people who know and understanding things that have shaped my thinking, my feelings and my life and have moved me toward a path.

While I am a lazy student and practitioner and more often absent to my life and myself than present...

This morning I am grateful for all that has been given and received.

Wanishi

I have forgotten more than remembered the exercise given in the reading group. The resistance that arises is subtle but powerful.  I have been unable to try more than a few minutes each time I've remembered.  How can I try?  I push too hard, in the wrong way, with the wrong part.

Days and days with no hint of presence or self awareness and then a day of finding myself in the midst of my life, in my body, doing dishes, playing some pointless game online, going downstairs, sitting in a chair, watching television, climbing the stairs, aware of my the sensation of my muscles and joints, every so often, throughout the day, moving in and out of myself, sometimes lost as usual, sometimes leaving awareness, sometimes returning; a wordless question about who I am.  

Today I remembered a recent moment, looking in a mirror and seeing my mother on my face, but, today, I saw several fleeting images of myself in my mind's eye; all of them and none of them all of who I am.

I am blessed and inexpressibly grateful for the moments when I wish and I'm able to be present to my life, exactly as it is, and as much who I am as I know of myself, so far.

Earlier in the week, reading of the law of octaves, I wondered if I could find examples, knowing how easily I lose my way.