Hari Om

Today’s sit really honed in on the simple practice of three breaths as a way to begin to bring peace and quietude into our daily activities and relationships. The implications of taking a pause can be huge and long-lasting, helping to guide us into a place of solace within ourselves. I am not going to spend a lot of words on describing this right now, except to say that I have found, for myself, a key to unlock doors I thought were closed, or ones that were closed for so long and hidden so well, I thought they were walls, with the simplest of practices. You can go in for whatever methods you would like, and will no doubt find some really helpful and life-changing results; and still you will be breathing in and out all day, and night, for the rest of your life. So, why not incorporate that into your practice?

It is through the steadfastness of breath that we can become in sync with the movement and cycles of our body. And it is through the body that we open the pathways into emotions, thoughts, fears, loves, joys, sorrows, and everything that a material existence has to offer and teach us! Amazing, really! When we get in touch with our body, we can feel the magic of connection to everything we have ever known, and know that it is all at the center of who we are. We are not the center of the universe, yes, and it is at the center of who we truly are.

At Blackwater Pond Mary Oliver At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?

Life is that beautiful thing, again and again and again and again.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

Today I made a mistake. It happens (often). It was a simple mistake, easily remedied, and I was SO HAPPY about it. Because I knew I was okay. This is a big deal for me. I developed a touch of perfectionism, which is a nice word for the ways we rationalize feeling like a failure all the time. It is easy to justify self-criticism if you have a standard for your actions and results that is unattainable. So we do. And we even laud this behavior as one who works with a high work ethic, or other such nonsense. Truthfully, though, we are usually making excuses to judge most of our lives as subpar. So I was very happy to make a mistake and feel good about myself and move on.

I work through a lot of this in the first part of the sit today, and incorporate some more wonderful work of Andrea Gibson. We come to a crescendo today with a wonderful poem by Angela Franklin. I absolutely love this poem. The layers are as deep as you would care to go, and also work very much as a collection of beautiful sounds and an ode to grief. I personally prefer to dive deep into the work, and it takes me on a journey with each reading. I encourage you to try out digging in a bit as well.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video Mon-Fri 8:30 AM PST in the app.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Hari Om

Coming in a bit later this morning, I am reminded what it is to feel rushed, and to function from a place of ‘not enough’. So, as I said to kitchen staff for years at my restaurants: “if you are in a hurry; slow down!”.

This counterintuitive guideline has saved me from fumbling through more days (and omelettes) than I could count. The notion of slowing down seems antithetical to the operation of a fast-paced kitchen or a fast-paced mind. I promise you, though, it is precisely what is needed. Coutnerintuitive ideas are sometimes the most helpful because our intuition has been taken for such a ride on the trauma train that it is sometimes patterned to keep doing what we have done that got us where we are. We have survived so whatever it is I am doing must be working, right? Sure, could do. And what is also true is there is a way to see that you want to grow out of old patterns and to stop receiving old results. You have to try it different. Here is Andrea Gibson to help us out a bit.

And then Wendell Berry comes in for the can opening poem Breaking.

Breaking Wendell Berry Did I believe I had a clear mind? It was like the water of a river flowing shallow over the ice. And now that the rising water has broken the ice, I see that what I thought was the light is part of the dark.

Did I believe I had a clear mind? What a question. To even begin to believe may already be the muck and mud of a clouded mind! Brilliant. Muck and mud are not so bad, though. Lots of things sprout in the dark.

Thanks for being here today. Please engage with the posts by commenting and sharing with us a bit of your practice. Three uninterrupted breaths.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

Hari Om

When I rise

Let me rise like a bird with no regrets.

Joyfully.

When I fall, let me fall like a leaf with no regrets.

Joyfully. - Wendell Berry

And a love letter from the afterlife from Andrea themself.

My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.

…..

Thank you for being here, wonderful people.

I adore you.

Love, Andrea 🖤

Rest in Peace with love and gratitude, Andrea Gibson

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Hari Om

We must be willing not to turn away. Our belief that we are not enough is fueled by our unwillingness to sit with feelings of powerlessness. Being unable to enact the change we would like to see is a defeating position to take and is absolutely rooted in our tendencies toward monothoughtism. Monothoughtism is the overarching belief that the way I see myself in the world is the way the world is. It is most likely exactly the opposite of this, ironically. The way I see the world is the way I am.

Now, this can be a wonderful understanding that can bring a level of equanimity with our own thoughts. It could also be a direct route to spiritually bypass our responsibility to actively participate in and engage in the reduction of suffering in the world. That is going to depend upon how we engage with our own awareness. Are we going to find a way out or a way in? The way brings us fully into the level of awareness that lives in these bodies, in these houses (or not), these cars (or not), with this food (or not). We are material as well as ethereal. Engage appropriately.

Speak the Metta Meditation with goodness in your heart and in your mind. This is key to creating action of goodness. Goodness is not dependent upon the approval of our identity or aligned with our identifiers. Goodness brings love into any situation. It is not the opposite of badness, but the water that feeds the garden so that it may grow as it needs. It is a choice that is informed by a lack of choosing. Not choosing as a choice is a bold and challenging way forward.

Recently, I was espousing my self-righteous anti-capitalist stance on death and dying to a fellow death worker who has been doing this work for a long time as well. He is also a teacher and “Minister” of the holiness of dying. He reminded me to boldly not believe that I should choose who does and does not get to receive the teachings of what I have gained by my time sitting with death. It is for everyone, always. I needed that reminder, as speaking from my pain and fear wasn’t acting with goodness in my heart, mind, and mouth. Thanks, Bodhi Be.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Hari Om

It is often that experience a thread of thought and teachings in the world of “spirituality” that the abandonment of the flesh, the material world, is a cornerstone. I could not be further unimpressed by this idea. We are in bodies for some reason, and for some reason, these bodies have sensations. I find these sensations to be beautiful and sensual gestures of spirit, and embrace them as fully spiritual experiences. No apologies for loving what your body loves. Of course, beware the traps of becoming stuck, or of chasing down and grasping onto expectations of sensual pleasure, but why would this mean do not experience the rhapsody of material life knowing full well that this is temporary?

It is precisely the temporary nature of all life that we find our greatest joys and our greatest sorrows, and through our awareness that we learn they are the same.

To love something means to be brought into the place of love, the experience of love. This is equanimous in its essence. It is our judgments, read: fear, that removes equanimity from love. This is okay as well. It is when meeting my greatest fears that I have opened my most tender loves.

“The poet says, I sculpted my mirage out of language and brag. Yeah, that sounds, I can identify with that. Some of us sculpt our mirage out of fitness. Some of us sculpt our mirage out of financial success.Some of us sculpt our mirage out of silken scarves and spiritual necklaces. And some of us sculpt our mirage out of anger and resentment. And some of us sculpt our mirage out of each of these things in different times in our lives and in different ways, in different moments. But we're all just working with lumps of clay”

The inimitable bell hooks brings us home today with number 19 of her Appalachian Elegy.

Appalachian Elegy 19 bell hooks all fields of tobacco growing here gone now man has made time take them surrendered this harsh crop to other lands countries where the spirit guides go the way of lush green leaving behind the scent of memory tobacco leaves green yellow brown plant of sacred power shining beauty return to Appalachia make your face known

Thanks for breathing together today. Thanks for returning home.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Hari Om

Hello friends. If this practice is to invite wholeness, we must begin to question individualism. I think, with any level of serious scrutiny, the concept that we are individuals begins to fall apart. Not a single one of us was born of no one. Not a single one of us was fed by no one. Not one of us could live in this world without anyone. We are inextricably interdependent upon one another. I would go as far as to say that we are never not one. Oneness does not begin with our awareness of oneness. We always were and always are. This can be a statement of comfort, and also a statement that opens extreme discomfort. How would this understanding work with my current belief that I am solely responsible for my spiritual life? My practice? My healing?

We have an easy enough time believing that “others” are responsible for our pain, but tell us when we are in our pain that our pain requires “others” to see it for it to be opened to be healed, and we run for the hills. This is true for all of us sometimes.

How do we begin to take our collective healing seriously then? Do we follow the teaching of Christ and rid ourselves of our belongings, join the choir of voices singing Hosanna, and live in a commune or monastery for the rest of our incarnation? Well, I think there have been many movements to talk that talk, but few of us in the modern world can walk that walk. But, in short, the answer is yes, this is the way. Not necessarily to sleep twenty to a room and live on unseasoned lentils and rice. Mary Oliver tells us:

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

Thankfully someone has given us permission, and a poet is the perfect voice to do so. Thank you Mary Oliver. Thank you permission to live more fully and more human.

The last part there is the real kicker. It is telling us that sharing our despair is precisely how we will begin to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”. There is no question to me that this is transcribing the message of the collective inviting us all back in. When I say that, what is mean to say is inviting our awareness into what is already happening. It is in our awareness that we discover the truth of our suffering, and in our awareness that we are able to find our way through that suffering. It is awareness that Ram Dass reminds us that is also our love. It is the same place.

Place is important to us, and for very good reason. It is from place that we are born to move into that place’s consciousness of the whole. We are the eyes of place, and the ears, the mouth, the body of feeling of place. Would it be here without us? Of course. But who then would tell the story of the cherry blossom exploding into a spring day? Who then would tell the story of the “little living creatures uprooted” if not for bell hooks.

Appalachian Elegy 18 bell hooks when trees die all small hearts break little living creatures happy and safe uprooted now in need of finding new places when home cracks and breaks and falls all life becomes danger how to find another place where all is not yet barren

We must find one another to find that place that “all is not yet barren”. That’s my story, and I am sticking to it.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here

Hari Om

Thank you Angela Franklin, Kristi Cederstrom, and many others for tuning into the morning sit live today. If you are not yet aware, we hold this space live as an in-person and in-stream shared practice Monday through Friday at 8:30, most days.

Today, we begin where I like to begin, with a bit of focus on our breath. Sometimes this may seem like old hat information. I don’t think, though, that there is ever a time when coming back to the very foundational basics is not helpful. So we begin with breath.

One of the places my personal practice has consistently led me to is the line between discomfort and pain. Both can feel very much the same in our emotional body, and our thought body can only do what it does, which is to think about it (or not) and develop a story to make sense of it. So both pain and discomfort can easily, and often do, become a story of harm. A tale of abandonment, injustice, rejection, wekaness, fear, etc etc etc. It can go on and on, the ways we will attempt to justify our not feeling what we think we should be feeling.

Mostly, though, these stories are entirely historical fiction. Loosely based on something that happened, but prettied up and played by blockbuster actors in our minds. The memory of our unhealed wounds is the hero’s journey. One we are sure we will return from with epic tales of vanquished enemies and stolen hearts….someday. Just not today, right? Anything but here, any time but now, anyone but me. That is the name of the game. So what do we do? We breathe. That is all. Breathe and know that we are breathing and we are, nearly every time, alive. And in this being alive, we are able to find the calm and the peace of living things.

bell hooks takes us there often, into that place of place. That moment we are grounded in our wholeness, and that wholeness is our oneness, our belonging. In Appalachian Elegy, bell hooks takes us over and over through the hills and removed mountaintops of her home place. Today, she reminds us of the peace of living things.

Appalachian Elegy 17. bell hooks straight ahead the road curves signs signal no motorboats allowed this lake our water source let us drink clear and true there are swans resting here magical presence all reflecting peace

I love, and I mean absolutely love, the opening of this prayerful poem, which tells us that it is not our concern to waver from moving straight ahead; the road will bend and curve for us, taking us exactly where we need to go. The road will curve for us. Then, to remind us to be in place. To not impose upon the relationships we have an unnecessary intensity. We are nourished here, and must be present with this. There is magic here in this. Thank you, bell hooks.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here