This is Water

I loved this video about the no nonsense choices during daily routine that determine our experience of life.

Seeing the World in a Coffee Cup

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour. ~ William Blake

Being inspired by Blake's famous words is one thing. Seeing with the eyes of a mystic is another realm of experience all together. Most of us view the world as a collection of separate objects, individuals and events. At best we see the dots and lines connecting them.  But this intellectual exercise is not the same as engaging the network of existence as a shimmering web of energy and intelligence, one that speaks through each grain of sand and wild flower, through each doorway and face. It is getting beyond the isolating belief that you are a contained bag of bones with a limited lifespan and, instead, dwelling within this living web as an integral participant in a loving and wondrous unfolding mystery.

If living with vitally and connection interests you, the question then is how? Usually, the ways that come to mind are the altered states induced by hallucinogens, years of meditation or the luck of being born with magical sight. The cosmic experience Blake suggests is not an hallucination, a retreat from the world, or the luck of the mental draw. We are inspired by Blake's poem because we sense that mystical experience as our primal state of being. It's what we are in our bones, but have forgotten how to access.

So, how do you see consciousness shimmering in things, from coffee cups to the global biosphere? How do you break through the foggy lens that separates you from the world and cleanse the doors of perception so everything appears as it is, infinite. There are many ways to do this, but the following guided journey is a way that has come to me through many years of seeing. 

Place a coffee cup on a table... Notice its shape... Look at the play of light and shadow defining the cup's shape... See the light playing on the cup... If it's sunlight, sense the rays traveling millions of miles from the exploding surface of the sun and bathing this object... If electric light or candlelight is illuminating the cup, sense the energy glimmering through these rays... In the cup's curves, color and choice of material, see the consciousness of the person who designed it... Sense the life of the cup's designer, her hopes and fears, her achievements and disappointments... Imagine the DNA guiding the growth of the cells in her body... Trace the lines of her DNA back through her mother and father and through them to her ancestors... Imagine the web of living that supports the cup's designer, the plants producing the air she breathes and the food she eats, the culture that connects her to language, knowledge, art and friendship... Notice the awareness extending from your eyes to perceive the cup... Sense the energy and intelligence in these rays of awareness... In the light on the cup and the shape of its design, sense the rays of energy and intelligence that give the cup its substance... Look through outer appearances to see that the same energy and intelligence are flowing through your perception and giving the cup its identity... Notice the silent space within the cup... Behind all of your perceptions, notice the silence that is aware of your thoughts, words, actions and surroundings... Sense the similarity between the silent space within the cup and the silent awareness perceiving the scene... Open to the aliveness of this moment... Notice if you are closer to "seeing the world" in the cup. 

Run through this visioning process with other objects and when you are in other places. Try it while you are in the checkout line at the market. Your shopping experience will never be the same. I'd love to hear what you discover.

Dwelling in the Sacred

To dwell in the sacred is to live with shimmering presence in the physical world. It is to experience your home and community as living, breathing extensions of your mind, body and nature. It is to engage visible forms and colors, objects and places as allies revealing the unseen forces energizing and guiding you. In the middle of the crushing craziness of daily life, it is finding spaciousness and peace wherever you are. Dwelling in the sacred is your natural way of inhabiting the earth. But it gets lost in the fears and limited patterns of thinking promoted by our materialistic culture.

To reclaim sacred ways of dwelling involves expanding beyond the conventional mindset that views the world as isolated, lifeless objects. It is to see with fresh eyes and shape your surroundings in ways the promote renewal and awakening. Sacred seeing opens you to experiencing walls and windows, chairs and cabinets as the alchemy between human imagination and the earth. Through such awakened eyes, inhabiting your home and city becomes an active meditation for touching profound vitality and connection through physical places. Sacred making offers you ways to create homes and workplaces that nourish wholeness in your mind, body and family. It is a means of entering a dialogue with nature and finding healthy, sustainable ways of establishing your place in the world.

The foundation of sacred seeing and making is creative play that discovers how the earth truly longs for you to inhabit it. In turn, it is finding out how you can live on earth in ways you have always wanted to. Through the creative play of sacred seeing and making your sense of home can expand beyond the walls of your house or apartment and include the entire world.

You can learn how to dwell in the sacred at a workshop I am leading May 17-19 at the Shambhala Mountain Center. This retreat invites you to experience your home, workplace, and community as sacred places that can serve as allies on your life journey. Exercises held in the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya will allow you to feel the archetypal elements of holy sites and to learn ways of finding peace, healing, and inspiration within the buildings you inhabit each day. Through a variety of practices we will sense the connections between the buildings sheltering you and your patterns of thought, speech, and action. You will learn ways of arranging furnishings, selecting colors, and choosing materials to increase inner and outer harmony, health, and happiness, and to engage your living spaces as vessels for spiritual awakening. To find out more and register click here. I hope you will join us for a fun, inspiring and transforming weekend.

After taking a similar course I taught in New York, a real estate agent there sent me this email: “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of you and the new awareness you brought me as I walk through my city. It really added to my fascination with the architecture of NYC in that now I really look at all of the little details and feel the energy behind their creation—the joy and beauty. It brings me into the present moment and I feel a connection with timeless existence and my place in it. Quite a gift! Many thanks.”

Meditation Space: Moving from resistance to flow

 

This is a sketch of a meditation space I designed. It is meant to provide a place to explore different levels of your identity in relation to silent awareness. The structure is defined by an outer wall of stone, an inner wall of sandblasted glass block and an innermost wall of clear glass. At the core of these walls is a pool of water. This organization reflects the experience of awakening consciousness described by many people throughout history. As your mind opens to silence, your identity becomes less opaque and more transparent and fluid, the freer and happier you become.

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron describes it this way, "Ego Clinging is how we try to put solid ground under our feet in an ever-shifting world. Meditation practice starts to rode that fixed identity. As you sit, you begin to see yourself more clearly, and you notice how attached you are to your opinions about yourself. Often the first blow to the fixed identity is precipitated by a crisis. When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But this is a cause for celebration." You are becoming liberated from the fixed identity that battles the ever-shifting world. You are better able to flow wi changes that naturally occur and can live more lightly, openly and harmoniously.  

 

This meditation space offers tangible experience of moving from a fixed identity that combats a ever-changing world to a fluid being better able to respond to the shifting currents of living. Benches are provided to contemplate each stage of the journey. Beside the bench at the outer stone wall are loose sheets of paper and pencils. A plaque invites visitors to notice ways their identities are fixed, creating conflict with the changing world. They are invited to use the paper and pencils to write down what they discover and place their sheet of paper in one of the chinks between the stones, symbolically leaving behind that habit pattern of fixed identity. At the translucent glass block wall, visitors use markers to write words that describe greater flexibility in their identities, but still create conflict with the streams of living. With the sponges and water provided, they then wash the words from the translucent wall. At the glass inner wall, visitors use brushes to write, with water, words or shapes that describe the transparent traits of their minds that faintly cling to a solid identity, but dissolve as quickly as they arise. The inner pool offers an opportunity to meditate on fluidity and sense its qualities within oneself.

Imagine passing through this meditation space and experiencing more fluid layers of your identity. Notice where you resist the flow of living, see through these mental habits and discover your fluid nature.

If you would like to build this meditation space or one that is tailored to your life journey, please contact me through www.anthonylawlor.com.    

The Artist is Present

Being present is the basis for making vital art. I was inspired by the expression of it shown in this video.

Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intense love story in the 70s, performing art out of the van they lived in. When they felt the relationship had run its course, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last big hug in the middle and never seeing each other again.
At her 2010 MoMa retrospective Marina performed ‘The Artist Is Present’ as part of the show, where she shared a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Ulay arrived without her knowing and this is what happened.

Facing Emptiness: Seeing through my mind's compulsion to define things

Over time, my explorations in living consciously have brought me to indefinable territory. It is a realm of less and less boundaries with more and more spacious silence. Since definitions and understanding is what my mind lives for, it sees this spacious silence as emptiness. When I face what my mind calls emptiness and look closely, I see through the fictions my mind creates. What my mind defined as emptiness is neither empty or full. It just is. It's a field of being stirred into becoming by thoughts, words, actions and events. Stirring being into becoming, I sense the world resonating to life.

Learning to relax into and trust being seems to be my task in the field of Becoming. As the usual beliefs and stories become more and more transparent, it's strange and disorienting for my mind. There is less and less to grasp and more and more indefinable being to live. There is no problem in this unless my mind labels it a problem and fears for its survival. Since my mind is a story-making machine, it continuously tries to make some-thing out of no-thing. When no-thing won't cooperate by compromising its indefinability, my mind thinks it fails and gets depressed. Undaunted it tries again and again. Over time, my mind is learning that surrender is a more enjoyable option.

This reminds me of the story about the Japanese soldiers found on islands in the Pacific long after World War II had ended. These soldiers were so identified with the war they didn't believe it was over. Wise psychologists knew that these soldiers couldn't instantly change their beliefs. Instead, they had someone regularly whisper in each soldier's ear, "The war is over." Over time, the soldiers' experience showed them they were no longer living in a war zone.

Whether this story is true or not, it helps my mind settle into and explore the indefinable territory of being it finds itself inhabiting. This territory is not the territory of the conventional mind which values duality in all its forms. In the indefinable territory of being, pleasure and pain, success and failure, etc. are stirrings of silence into sound For my mind to revel in this indefinable territory is yet another interpretation, a "success", that is enjoyable, but transparent to the no-thing that pervades every-thing more and more.

Imagine all the problems that are created by our minds trying to define the indefinable. Conflicts, wars, discrimination, greed and all sorts of other problems can result from trying to fit the world into our definitions, no matter how well intentioned. I think John Lennon's had it right when he said, "War is over if you want it." Perhaps we would be better served by facing what our minds call emptiness, seeing through our compulsion to define it, and cooperating with the indefinable mystery of stirring being into becoming.  

Bones & Daffodils

Today I went up on Mt. Tamalpais to sense more deeply the shape my life might be taking after my mother's passing. I walked to a tree I have visited for more than 40 years. Beneath the tree were two deer bones and a spray of blooming daffodils. I have no idea who put them there or for what purpose. Encountering this combination of death and rebirth, in this place on this day, all I could do was bow in gratitude and awe to the Great Mystery that nurtures and guides us every day of our lives.

The Great Mother & The Great Home

After a long illness and a troubled life, my mother passed away. Despite her best efforts to create a beautiful home for us and her appreciation of art and literature, she never seemed to feel at home in this world. She never felt comfortable in her own skin. Hopefully, death has brought her some peace. My mother's passing stirred up many unresolved feelings and disappointments. It agitated much grief. At first, I wanted to avoid this grief, to distract myself from this mess of emotions. I wanted to turn away from my fears of mortality, the seeming futility of living and block out the mystery of death.

     In the middle of the night, however, I quieted down enough to experience my feelings. Below the meanings and stories of my mind, flowed vast tides of hope and fear, pleasure and pain, wisdom and uncertainty, and an ocean of emotion that could not be contained by words. In this sea of grieving, something shifted. Exactly what, I cannot say. But I experienced each sensation as a current of energy, a flow of consciousness. Feeling these currents of energy was to be alive. It was Being surging through the numbness of Not Being.

     Feeling these sensations of energy without clinging to them or avoiding them, I noticed the still space they flowed through. I sensed this still space as the womb of creation, the Great Mother that spawned my mother (and me) and nurtured us throughout our lives. I also sensed this still space, this womb of creation, as the home of all sensations, the home she (and I) always searched for. It was always in the background whether or not we noticed it.

     The willingness to feel the currents of both pleasure and pain is the willingness to feel alive. It is the willingness to notice the spacious stillness of the womb of creation and be at home with all sensations. Opening to the aliveness of both pleasure and pain and the home of these sensations is an affirmation of my life. It is a dynamic, living healing. I'm glad to be alive to feel this. I'm grateful to the Great Mother and The Great Home for birthing us, sustaining us and receiving us whenever and however we follow the currents of experience into them.

Life of Pi: Dwelling with a Tiger in a Lifeboat

I saw Life of Pi last night.
Here is what I came away with:

• Each of us has survived a life storm of some sort, the trauma of birth, etc.
• We each find ourselves out to sea in a lifeboat with a tiger (the wild , uncontrollable energy of life)... I do.
• How we relate to this tiger determines our life experience.
• The story we prefer to favor is either one that deals with the tiger or one that attempts to deny the tiger.
• The story that faces the tiger can awaken, enliven and free us to the what it is to live in this world.
• The story that attempts to deny the tiger puts us to sleep, dulls us and keeps us in mental and emotional chains.
• Any story perspective can be used to either face or deny the tiger (science, spirituality, art, humor, relationships, etc.).
• All the ways humans numb themselves with drugs, alcohol, judgement, religion, politics, worry, etc. can be attempts to escape the lifeboat and the tiger.
• The story that there is no story or that life is an arbitrary collection of subjective stories can be an attempt to deny the tiger and can put us to sleep in the name of awakening.
• Conclusion: When I feel more alive and connected I am dealing with my core relationship to the tiger. When I feel dull and isolated I am attempting to deny and avoid the tiger.

Enjoy wrestling with your tiger!

Contemporary Sacred Place at Skyspace by James Turrell

Places for gazing into the Mystery are created wherever people settle. From ancient caves through stone cathedrals to contemporary steel and glass structures, the builders of each era use current technologies to sculpt openings from their cultures into timelessness. James Turrell's Skyspace at Rice University is a sacred space for our times. It transcends religion and philosophy and invites us to directly experience the overlap of energy and matter, light and shadow, the heavens and the earth.