Everyman's Journal 2011

Everyman's Journal 2011, #41

March 13

Sometimes I feel pregnant with something to express, yet when I sit to write, there are no words findable to do the expressing, at least on the level of beingness my I-dentity is being at that moment. This gives me a choice.... to push through, or to wait. I don't think either is 'wrong', but as I have found from experience that 'back to waiting' is generally where 'pushing' usually takes me in the end anyway, I am learning to just choose waiting more often right off the bat, and thus avoid much of the reactive & resistant karmas that committed pushing tends to generate.

Spiritually, this also just means learning to be willing to go to the back of the line happily; or said another way, to develop the habit of being in service. Actually, one of my favorite types of moments is when there is an opportunity to lend a hand where no thank you is needed or expected. One such moment happened a day or two ago... I noticed as I turned a corner that a big motorcycle was laying down at the opposite intersection--- not from an accident, but just because the rider had lost balance somehow at the stop sign. That rider was struggling to right it, but it was clearly too heavy. It's a shared guy thing, I think, to offer a hand in a situation like that, so I braked and parked, as did another guy clearly on the same wavelength, and we three did the deed without introductions or thanks... not to say they were not palatable, but it was present in the space of 'the unspoken brotherhood' that we all understood. Within a few seconds the whole thing had disappeared from my thoughts, until this writing led me back to the memory.

I think that this is the way true service most validly happens.... like with a kind of automatic-ness.... where it doesn't matter who it is who is receiving the benefit, it is given simply because we are there and recognize the need. And it happens without any sense of sacrifice. Like helping right the bike only took a couple minutes as most, didn't make me later for anything, didn't wrench my gut with any should I or shouldn't I dilemmas or dramas....in other words, it was easy and natural.... you might even say.... expected--- by my heart. A Course in Miracles appears to concur, as there are many places in it that clearly teach that the path to the Peace of God is not to be found in 'sacrifice'.

In the perfect and non-accidental world we live in, instead of operating from a foundation of guilt or sacrifice in order to be worthy to earn 'salvation, atonement, enlightenment' what is available is acceptance of and surrender to the exact life we are experiencing. What it takes to come from there is just to be willing to be empty of opinions. The world calls for us to be opinionated about everything... that is it's currency. That is it's weather engine.... that creates the force called 'the mass consciousness', or 'public opinion'.

As the 3rd Zen Ancestor teaches, the Great Way is not difficult for those who have no opinions for or against anything. So to put that in a present day practical practice is to watch the mind a bit to see where it's got a few or more still going on. It doesn't take much to find them, right? I watched a bit of the tsunami footage online and found more than a few... opinions about personal survival, for instance. It's clearly pretty easy to lose your piece (your body) if you're in the way of that level of nature's expression.... and it doesn't matter how significant you might think your life is to this universe. The thing is, our own foresight may be no better at aiding us to escape our own future rendezvous with a similar fate, try as we may to avoid danger and establish safety protections. We just don't have the ultimate control. All we can really control is one thing.... how we choose to think.... that is, IF we use our time to master our own minds.

There is a famous Zen story that is worth retelling even though many may have heard it before... A tiger is chasing a monk, who comes to a cliff above a river with the tiger a step behind. The monk sees a small bush growing in the cliff-face. He dives for it. Now he is out of the reach of the tigers razor-sharp talons, but he is trapped, the tiger trying to reach him from the top of the cliff, and snapping crocodiles waiting in the river below. As the roots of the bush he is hanging on begin to pull out of the cliff-face, the monk sees a beautiful strawberry growing in a crack nearby.... he reaches over and plucks it, puts it into his mouth, and utters "Delicious!".

That is the power of a clear mind living in the absolute present. If I had been in the way of that tsunami could I have accepted the experience without resisting? Not yet. But I did use yesterday to practice being present to what it gave me.... and I will use tomorrow to do the same. That we can all do.

There is a book I keep hearing about at church.... "How to have the life that you love by loving the life that you have"... it's just my opinion so it definitely isn't 'the truth', but I do like very much the second part of the title. The book is probably great... I don't know.... but I think the 'how to' part is there in the title to 'drive the sales'... like as a promise to a 'have-not' mind that there is a way to 'have'. It's kind of a catch-22, because (in my opinion) the only way to love the life you have is to let go of having a 'have-not' mind.

Namaste,

David

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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

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Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

david@davidseacord.com

www.davidseacord.com

(my fine art website)

www.davidseacord-everymansjournal.blogspot.com

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

www.davidseacord-acimcommentaries.blogspot.com

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

www.everymansjournal2011.blogspot.com

(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)