Each Place is a Bardo, A Fluid In-Between Space

My friend, Linda Hollier, responded to my poem, Morning Light, by saying it was about a bardo. Tibetan Buddhists use the term "bardo" to describe the space between death and rebirth on. They say it is a time when our consciousness is not connected to a physical body and we experiences phenomena ranging from clear, peaceful spaciousness to a wild phantasmagoria of terrifying halluci-nations. Those prepared for this stormy voyage and are conscious they are taking it have a great opportunity for liberation from suffering. Those ignorant of the bardos they pass through are tossed about by the waves in a nightmarish odyssey that drives them toward an unfortunate birth. "Bardo" can also describe times when our routine lives are interrupted, such as during an illness or a meditation retreat. 

Considering this, I realized that each place we experience in life is a bardo—an experience of the space between the formations of consciousness that came before it and those that follow. Viewing my experience through the frame of the bardo loosens my attachment to the mistaken perception that present circumstances are fixed and solid. Instead, I remember that each place and time is merely another episode in the ongoing journey from one bardo through another. My attachment loosens. I breathe more easily. The forms I inhabit become a fluid interplay of colors, textures and sounds. The people I encounter appear to be richly developed characters parading through an unending story. I am both playing one of the roles in this story and am witnessing the story unfold. Looking back in time, the plot line of the bardos spilling one through the other seems wisely orchestrated. Attempting to see forward, I peer into a cloud of unknowing.

Dwelling within the fluid land of the bardos, I have less fear of taking creative leaps. It all becomes like drawing on water. Forms appear and disappear. The beauty and honesty of the gesture is more important than the passing marks they make. Since my persona is a temporary character in a watery play, the flow of love and appreciation becomes more important than worrying about gaining approval for my self-image.

Certainly, I prefer some bardos over others. There are icky bardos, as my friend Tricia calls them. There are confusing, terrifying, heartbreaking and obstacle-filled bardos that can show up between harmonious, inspiring and wisdom-filled bardos. Life relentlessly carries me from one bardo through the next, not letting me cling to or push away any of them for long. Seeing them as bardos, I remember that all of them are temporary and passing through the open sky of the consciousness I am. When I remember this, each place is more like living poetry and for a time I'm liberated. 

The Power of Patterns

Here's a video on a talk I gave on the power of patterns describing the material in my book 24 Patterns of Wisdom. Enjoy!

Creative Process

Again, dawn breathes.
Again, the river of creative energy longs to flow.
Again, hesitation.
Again, cracking the ice of fear reveals the waters of the soul
and the currents singing.

Morning Light

Stillness infused with shadowed radiance
hovers between being and becoming.
From this, the day will pour forth.
Now, before all that
night’s shadows breathe the glow
beyond the horizon,
drawing in what can be sensed
before it is seen.

The dreams that tumbled through the night
pour into this pause,
this in-between.
The noisy, brilliant day is coming,
to relentlessly roll out its dramas.
Here
Now
this blessed still-space
enfolds all beings.
This blessed opening,
after regrets,
before promises,
is a peace 
fingers can touch
ears can hear
eyes can see
my soul can be.

Birthday Thoughts Here and Now

Today, I'm loving how we all share a similar life journey, all trying to make sense of it and none of us really understanding it. Along the way, there is so much beauty and wonder to inspire us, so much confusion and struggle to challenge and strengthen us. Each year I know less and feel the energy of aliveness more. Each day, objects and accumulations seem less important while love and compassion gain more significance. Moment by moment, my time in this world lessens while the sense of timelessness increases.

Today, this is what is important to me:
- Amidst the horrors and tragedies in the world, I open to the wonder of life.
- Through fears and doubts, I share the creative vision that is calling to be expressed through me.
-Within an aging body, I feel the vast strength of spirit animating my life.
-Despite reasons to the contrary, I live the unreasonable mystery I am.
-Clouded by the illusion of being a separate self, I embrace my interdependence with the rest of creation.
-Despite the grasping and aversion of my mind, I am grateful for the blessings in my life, not as trophies to be enshrined, but as currents in the ongoing stream of living.

Thank you all for sharing this crazy, wondrous journey.

INSPIRATION & VULNERABILITY: Rebirth in the Alchemy of Light, Shadows and Silence

Inspiration had been the Big Glow for most of my life. An energizing radiance arrived uninvited to power creative work, travel adventures and loving relationships. It came knocking, calling me out and pointing the way toward expansive realms of knowledge and wonder. The muses seemed to have moved in for the duration. I came to expect their vitalizing presence at the breakfast table, bright eyed and ready to fill each day with creativity.

One morning, the table where the muses usually laughed and bantered was empty. The Big Glow that surrounded them and energized me was gone. I called to them. My voice didn't find an echo. There was no reply. I went out searching for them, traveling to the world's most inspiring places. Their glow was there, but it wasn't big anymore. Luminous electricity didn't surround me. The days of grand inspiration seem to have dimmed and seemed to have no hope of returning. 

Little did I know the Big Glow was the same. It only appeared smaller in relation to my perception of it. Over the years, the concepts and beliefs that had limited my awareness had become more transparent, revealing the expansiveness and silence that had been behind the scenes all along. But my mind had not caught up with this dawning awareness. Through the outdated lens of my old patterns of seeing, I still looked for inspiration in the Big Glow. Not finding that grand energy, I was lost. 

I continued to create, but felt like I was just going through the motions. My work inspired others, but, for me, there was little vitality in the doing. Instead I felt vulnerable and confused. Unexpectedly, this was just what opened me to a new and enriching inspiration. One that goes beyond the Big Glow to include ever-shifting mixtures of light, shadow and silence. Since the energizing radiance no longer descend from above, I had to open my mind, heart and body to invite it to rise within me. This was scary. What if my call wasn't answered? What if I no longer had the creative juice? If I did find some inspiration, would I fail to translate it into successful work?

This vulnerability and questioning increased my ability to listen and respond to  creative impulses that arise. It opened me beyond the sense that the Big Glow was an object, separate from me, to be gained, possessed and lost. My confusion pushed me outside the limits of knowing to explore the elusive and indescribable currents of living. Instead of being a separate-self creator, I realized I was a participant in the ongoing creative work of life discovering its possibilities through each one of us. Inspiration was no longer limited to the Big Glow. It came from every wrinkle in the daily play between light and shadow withing the playground silence. It was there for me to access in a crumpled piece of paper or a soaring cathedral, in an obstacle or a breakthrough. Energizing radiance showed itself in all sizes and moods. The bigness of inspiration's glow had less to do with it and more to do with the largeness with which I embraced it.

Big Glow inspiration was wonderful while it lasted. In hindsight, I see how it became an armor against richer inspirations. Through the vulnerability and responsiveness life urged me to discover, I found the continuously nourishing inspiration of radiance, shadows and silence.



 

When Vividness Dawns: Or Cutting Through the Bullshit to Engage My Life

Then the vividness dawns. Grains of sand to galaxies shimmer with energy. The person on the corner, the siren of the passing ambulance, the thoughts tumbling through my mind, the hawk sailing through the blue, everything is one unnameable substance appearing as the endless diversity of creation.

This happens for no particular reason. In the middle of daily routine my awareness opens and the richness of life floods forward. My mind continues to play with its timeless questions: Who am I? Why I am here? Where am I going? But these ruminations become as transparent as air. So do the petty fears, the grand hopes, the hurtful criticisms, the inflating praise, the outbreaks of war and peace, the gains and losses. All the bullshit pressing in on me with such urgency and importance and turbulence, in an instant, is seen through as clearly as still water.

Instead, the radiance of being shines in every particle and wave, in every sound and silence and every space between. The jogger in the distance, flying hair blazing as she runs, back-lit by the dawning sun; the fresh dog shit in the dirt gleams; the cafe chatter sings; the hot coffee is nectar; the memories of countless mornings in far flung places on the globe shine with rediscovered vitality. From nowhere, emotion rises within me and the tears spill.

There's no reason for this, no particular significance that can be tagged and placed in the box of reason or meaning or purpose. To name it anything, enlightenment, awakening, revelation, hallucination would be ridiculous. To invent a technique to access it and sell in the marketplace would be ludicrous. It's just life in its rawness and power. It's what I live for.

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.”