Love Without Expectation

So much of what we do is based on fear.  When we discover our lover we are filled with joy, and then we sabotage ourselves, worried, obsessing about his end.  What if when he leaves town, works on other projects he forgets us, disappears from our lives altogether?  What if we do something so stupid as to make him hate us?  What if he dies?  Then we fear what has always terrified us - that we will be left alone, alone, alone abandoned by the craving, beating visceral love we recognize as the only thing that's real.

We are never alone.

We've let our minds become sticky, clingy, constantly wanting, bogged down by an insecure, ego glue that must loosen.  Meanwhile, our true self waits below for freedom.

The truth is we are unbounded and unlimited.  Our lover encompasses us without bounds.  We are swimming in love, blanketed by it.  We cling because we forget the moment, the now where our lover's cry of satisfaction is real.  We can never become redundant to Him, the ultimate lover, our darling friend.


The challenge is to receive love without limit, without the clench - to open to real love, to be secure.

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream and the Free Fall

Lately I've been eating lots of chocolate chip ice cream - mint is my favorite, but as long as it has chocolate chips in it I love it.    My real challenge is scheduling everything; it's as if I'm trying to stay in control to counter a deep-seated fear of being out of control and that's funny.  I feel like if I lose my hand in everything, I'll be in free fall, and then who know what might happen in the end.

The truth is - I'm not in control, and there is no end. 

Instead of being overwhelmed, the insight is to let go and express being without fear, without constriction, unadulterated.  That's how we uncover the love that makes up everything anyways.

And in the meantime, as mom would say, relax, get rest, eat properly, and enjoy the ice cream.

Sticking to Salvation

So much of what we focus on is of no consequence.  It's easy to get hung up on worries and regrets - I'm noticing I create many of my own fears in order to avoid responsibility.  Sometimes it seems easier to spin with what's negative, what's gone, than to choose joy.

All that seems lost was never needed in the first place.  Every fear, every regret, every longing for the past, or uncertain waffling about the future is inconsequential.  No demon, no monster, no tremendous antagonist hovering in the imagination can harm us.  Even unto death we are immune. 

We are the constantly changing self that is the all and morphs and moves and allows and exists and pumps through the breathing, living, being of eternity.

None of the rest matters.

Obsessively in Love

...with my daughter.  Don't know how it happened; she's just crept up on me.   Is this a typical mommy response when your daughter is about to turn eighteen?  Or is it something that hits all of us when we realize someone around us is really our teacher?

It's hard to be objective.  Teenagers carry such passion, such rage, such insight.  When I'm lucky, she'll tell me she loves me, bestow a kiss on my cheek.  Lately, the best gift she can give is a flash of her luminous smile.

(Here she is as a semi-finalist for the National Merit Scholar award.  The top picture is of her, on the left, and her best friend, Rebecca, at the first book signing for Bear Speaks.)

Here, Now, Always

A short thought for today:

We are never alone. 

We are here, now, always - in and as the movement of life.

This moment is Eternal.  Truth is in that infinite moment, and there is nothing to fear.

(The photo is of me with my darling friend Anne in Montana.)

Yeah, That - Eliminating Resentment

How easy it is to feel like everyone around us is a threat!  Those of us who claim to be spiritual, on a "special" path, are especially prone to the foibles of resentment.

What we tend to forget is that now is all there is.  No prophesied lighting bolt will hit at such and such a time in the future.  Instead, the very people who seem the most irritating - the very ones who seem to interrupt our future enlightenment -  warrant our immediate attention.  In other words what is current, what look like distractions, are the point; the people in our periphery right now are our saviors and our teachers.  I've been fascinated by time travel since I read H.G. Wells and the C.S. Lewis Perelandra series as a teenager.  Turns out, the key isn't time travel at all - its now travel.

Now travel reminds me that time and space are a farce.  You only have to engage in now travel once to be hooked because travel in the now is so unabashedly real. 

The key is do it with purity, the innocence that takes life times to master.  It can never be forced.  Nothing is valid when it is forced or enforced.  What we are looking for is a soft realization, the opening that presents itself all of a sudden.  We have to allow the now travel.  We have to go to the point beyond expectation - beyond seeing ourselves and interactions with others as wanting.

People get hurt with forcing, jamming, set rules.  The most valid concepts in the world go sour, become stale if forced.  Instead of purging, we're looking for a soft release.  That's when resentment against the angels around us fades, and we recognize who we really are.  That's when the magic happens.

Beyond the Beyond - Indefatigable

Love exists beyond our physicality; unbound by the laws of gravity, by this small sphere.  Yet it is always here - as being above and through and as we are.

Boundless love - all permeable - indefatigable. 

How then have we become so situated, so forgetful as to let ourselves be trapped by rules that aren't real?  Love is not a lie.

I'm ready to stop falling out of it.  I'm ready to stop being tortured by the falsities of my mind. 

Yes, we are in transition - but it's already happened - it's happening right now.

Let's stay in the truth of love then, brothers, sisters, everywhere.  Unstoppable.

Everyone - Always

It's easy to feel insecure.  We think if we let go we will be abandoned, but that is impossible.  Fear is paralyzing - it coils in and through the gut.  When I am afraid my jaw gets stiff (followed by everything else) and it feels as though I am grasping for something.  I become unaware of the presence of it all.  It's like clutching onto pain.  In the pain state there isn't much I can do but duck, squirm, pace, grab onto something to relieve the pressure.

The longing is always there, within.  It is a longing for the truth.  It's not something a man or woman can fulfill exclusively because it has to do with love.  The onus is on us.  It feels like we are personally charged to take action.

It's helpful to be tender with ourselves, and then we can remember where we are, who we are - and live.  Everything we seek is always there, available to us, non-exclusive.  Everyone - always.  All of us - together.  And then instead of going into fear we realize the blessings.  Blessed world, blessed now, blessed all.  Awareness becomes the joy, the celebration, and we know ourselves as forever an effect of God.