“Love is not an attitude.  It is a bodily act.  In my crisis of conscience, I have to yield myself to the transforming condition of love.  It is a frightening and sacred moment.  There is no return. One’s life is changed forever.  It is the fire that gives us our shape.” ~ M.C. Richards ~

“Love and Truth are inseparable.  We cannot be in Truth unless we are in unconditional love. We cannot Love if we are out of Truth.  The expression of Love is Truth and truthfulness.  The expression of Truth is love.” ~ Adyashanti ~

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

~ The Prophet ~

~ Goethe ~

Let love be welcomed the moment it seeks us. ~ MC Richards ~

shame
kills
shame
destroys
shame keeps
me separate
shame keeps
us separate

i want life
i want wholeness
i want forgiveness
i want contribution
i want union
i choose these things
and as i choose

i come face to face
with what has kept
them away
what has kept
me small, hidden,
limited, fake, angry,
abusive, impotent

shame…or the denial
of shame and the shame
screens that keep me
imprisoned

brene brown says,
“shame is an unspoken epidemic,
the secret behind many
forms of broken behavior.”
and i think she is right on.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html

i do think it is the root of
separation, violence
and unlove…at least
that is true for me

so here i am
facing, feeling, befriending
shame
looking at what is there
feeling the nausea in my
body, breathing, tapping,
being, freeing

why?
why not ignore this?

the price is too high
to you, to me
it’s deadly
costly
a killer

why?

because i want
freedom, truth and unconditional love
i want real relatedness
i want to offer these
i want to receive these

and i am willing to go
to any length to live
wholeheartedly
to love wholeheartedly

to be transparent
vulnerable and real
with my imperfections

i want to know you
i want to love you
as you are
as i am

there is a field
out beyond right-doing
and wrongdoing
will you meet me there?

***

The Man in the Arena

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

Only the soul knows what love is.

~ Rumi

Love endures all things…

Thursdays are one of my favorite days of the week. Every Thursday I drive to Intel to teach mindfulness meditation.
We gather in a conference room, lights down, to be here now. Today, we practiced mindfulness with eating a blueberry.
At the end of the session one of the engineers came to me, bright eyed with a blueberry in his hand. “After being present with the blueberry and noticing it for the first time…all the shades of blue and textures and shape…I couldn’t eat it…I just didn’t want to eat it.”  He left the conference room tenderly holding his blueberry. Ahhh yes, mindfulness leads to deep reverence for life.  An appreciation for the wonder and beauty of life.

What would it be like to behold ourselves and one another, like this man and his blueberry?

reverence, respect, regard
for all life
amen

It is my awareness of this that falters…
when I separate and polarize.
When I struggle to meet myself as all I am.
To know the hidden wholeness.

In this current of awakening I am being
brought to that hidden wholeness
within. Meeting unknown places.
Meeting the dark mask of shame.

There are so many layers here.
The false self that was created to
cover the shame…which had to be
quite grandiose and exaggerated
in her goodness to hide the mask
of shame. And then, there is what
lives behind the mask of shame.
The shame, a worthy protector at one time
to keep me safe from the outside
world, outside threat. I’ll just go dark
hide myself inside this shame.
No one can see my light, my love and
no one can take it from me.

What was once a protection has
become a death sentence.

What lives behind the mask
of shame?

A smile and a warmth come
in response to this inquiry.
Joy in the nothingness
Fullness in the emptiness

I don’t know…
This is a mystery to be lived.

I had a dream a week ago.
I was watching man putting
on foundation in front of a mirror.
He had dark skin and the foundation
was too light. And then I was
standing in front of the mirror
and moved my hands across my
face…black paint began to cover
my face until there was only a
small circle with my tiny face
looking out.

Hidden behind the shame.
A life trying to be lived
from that place.
Impossible.

Suffocating
Strangling
the True Self.
Heart breaking.

The dark mask meets the light of day.
Falls to the ground, shattered.
Broken and open to be free.

I am free.
I am this free becoming free.

And as I wrote this in my journal
this morning, an email from a
dear friend hundreds of miles
away pops in:

Subject: Let There Be Light
Message:

Dear Anakha,

I thought that you of all people would best appreciate
a recent event in my house. One year ago I purchased
a little Aloe plant. It lived in my kitchen. It seemed
very happy and grew quite wonderfully. About 3 months
ago it started looking very sad –too much water, not enough
water? It got sadder and droopier. Julie had the inspiration
to relocate it to a really sunny spot in the living room.
Amazing, it perked up in the first day, it is getting greener
and more erect every day. Seems to be growing overnight.

So lots of instruction here about finding the inner Aloe and
finding the proper environment, about flourishing and happiness.

Let us both work on our inner Aloe today,
it is certainly a beautiful day for it.

Love to you.

***

Yes, Dear God
Let there be light
Let there be freedom
From what has bound
Let Love be the lived
reality in my life,
in this Life we live
together.

Amen.

-Chang Chui-Ling

How does one function when everything one used as a gauge of how to function disappears?  The tendency is to look for a new way, a better way, an improved way.  But if we don’t try to possess it and we don’t try to know and we don’t try to solve this coming into a new way of being.  Because that’s what awakening is, it’s coming into a new way of being, a totally different way of being. Then, where we are functioning from is the ground of being itself rather than from this little thread, my little view of things.  We start to function from the wholeness itself.

Root yourself in the unborn, the unmanifest…the ground of being itself. Letting things happen…letting the boat steer itself!

~ Adyashanti, The Fabric of Reality

And as that falls away,
I sense being
open spaciousness.
No-thing-ness.
Quiet within movement.

At first this feels vulnerable,
out of control, heart piercing
intimacy with the moment
and everything and everyone
in it.

Divisions within without
fall away.  They were devised
in separation for separation.

Beyond that, love…the
truth of this moment
and all moments of
existence.

Exhausted from trying
to understand, attempting
and failing…quiet now,
a simplicity, humility…
as breath as life.

And the truth of now?
Love awakening to itself.
A deep sensory resonance
of love as the fabric of reality.

Love is lived in the reality
of this moment.

There is no figuring it out.
No assessment, no diagnosis,
no one up or one down,
better than less than,
broken or mended.

All existence being.

And then, feed the dog,
write an email, go to the DMV,
take a walk…

It is all the same.

I sat in a room full of people this
morning — traffic court.  There
I was with my brothers and sisters.
No difference, no preference.
Happy to be there with them.

Delighted to see the diversity
of being embodied.

I don’t know…
What is true?