Week One - - - Day Two
Love, Lust and Enlightenment - - -
Wake up to Now
Why?
It’s your life.
Right now: what do you see?
Who is seeing that?
This is a trick question.
Why?
Because being aware in the moment is perhaps the most important choice a person can make about their life.
Huh?
BEING AWARE IN THE MOMENT IS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT CHOICE A PERSON CAN MAKE.
And guess what?
NO WAITING! NO LINES! NO REQUIREMENTS! NO UNIFORM!
YOU CAN ONLY COME TO THE NOW, IN THIS NOW.
AND THIS NOW . . . HOLY DAMN . . . IT’S ALWAYS HERE.
Back to looking : better out a window.
And come back into the joy of seeing something now.
Right now.
Now, think about what you are seeing: what is its name, what does it remind you of, should it be better or different, should you be better or different at you look at this.
And: drop that.
Let it go, as they say.
Just see, SEE what you are seeing.
No name. No commentary. No associations. No mental jabber.
Just see the thing you are seeing.
(Smiling and breathing more deeply while doing this is encouraged.)
Just see.
Who is doing that?
What is doing that?
Don’t even have a name for an answer, except maybe something simple, like “I am,” or “me.”
Anyway: we see.
In the moment.
Even if it’s just (“just”) the words in this book: notice that you are seeing them now, these little shapes with white all around them.
Then bounce out and SEE something in the room, or in the yard, or in the park, or outside the window.
Enjoy that.
Looking.
Hearing.
Now.
Now add on hearing. What can you hear, right now?
Sounds come in your ears.
Sometimes we notice real time sounds. Often we have a batch of auditory hallucinations in our mind, called “thinking,” aka “words in our head,” and they crowd our listening.
That’s okay.
That’s the human mess.
We have real brains that can do real thinking (which will come in very handy later to do what thinking does best: notice differences) and we waste them on inner chatter.
So what? That’s the trap we all fall into and the cause of most human suffering in the first world.
Peace?
Want peace.
It’s only when we get free of our words in our head, which doesn’t mean stopping thinking (hard), but not believing them, which is work, hard work, and super well worth it.
Back to the now.
Right now.
And right now, you can see what you are seeing right now and add on hearing what you are hearing now.
Does that have a bit of a delight to it.
Does that world seem brighter and more real?
The middle layer of our body/ mind.
Air and lungs and ribs and chest and BREATHING.
And that’s just the top layer, the head thing above the neck.
Let’s descend to the torso area.
What’s going on there?
Air.
Breathing air in and breathing air out.
Whether we know it or not, whatever the weather, whether we even want to or not, if we are not dead . . . we are breathing.
How about turning the attention / awareness towards that?
Can you delight in noticing right now that you are breathing?
Not just notice, but delight in knowing, feeling, sensing in real time, noticing in real time the old fashioned core of life:
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Good.
Breathing.
You are always doing it.
Noticing it provides a sort of jolt to our awareness of one of life’s central truths, we are alive.
Right now.
And so enjoy delighting in and noticing and deepening and softening your breathing.
And do let it relax and come a little deeper into your belly.
