Category: Inner peace

Breathe Your Life

Mystics have written that each breath holds birth and death in it. Perhaps each lifetime is one long inhalation and exhalation, as Spirit fills us and then gradually, finally, empties back into the Source from which it arose. We are spirits passing through, part of a mystery that only our souls know the extent of. Our human lives courageously carry us into the unknown of life on Earth, and as we travel, soul awareness slowly seeps into our consciousness. If we are fortunate, we grow wiser with each year we live.

Those who have passed through a serious illness, such as cancer, and come out the other side, often carry within them kernels of insight that may help them understand a bit of life’s mysteries. At the very least, it expands their view of their own lives and life itself. (I think of writers Mark Nepo and Suleika Jaouad.) They have looked into infinity and seen themselves. Everything is different after that.

During the months I was treated for breast cancer, I had moments of seeing the universe as a giant tapestry with moving parts that are perfectly interconnected. The pieces engage in a dance of beingness in which we all are included. There are no mistakes; everything unfolds according to a greater purpose that our souls know and our human selves catch glimpses of in our lifetimes. What I experienced carried me through treatment to survival. I could see at the deepest level that facing cancer was all part of my soul’s plan for this lifetime. I felt peace within my heart in that awareness.

A “peace that passes understanding,” as the saying goes. I experienced peace beyond any rational attempts to understand it. This is the peace that lives in each breath and is the essence of every one of our lifetimes. To live through both challenges and celebrations and accept them as integral parts of your life. The breath holds this wisdom within it. Each time you or I inhale, all of life moves into and through us. Each time we exhale, we fill the world with Source energy. The human form is a container for Spirit. When you consciously breathe your life, Spirit flowers in all you say and do.

Not everyone faces a health challenge that opens the door to eternity, but each of us, in the course of a lifetime, eventually looks beyond the mundane into the infinite. It is why we are here. To stand firmly on this Earth, this beloved blue planet full of varied experiences, and see the entire universe before us. It may happen at any time, for any reason. Or it may happen as you move through a “review” at the end of your life. Ultimately, you are Spirit embodied, and all the wisdom of the ages lives within you. Take a deep breath, open your heart, and see the invisible flow of your life and all lives, perfectly, peacefully, orchestrated in each moment.

Joy, Grief, and Miracles

My entire life I have carried within me, in equal parts, exquisite joy at being alive and profound grief at one day having to leave this world for the vast unknown of eternity. That unknown, and the sorrow surrounding it, frightened me terribly as a small child. At night, I would cry about this seemingly insoluble dilemma of life and death and the infinite universe. As I explored a spiritual path in my adult life, I came to see that this life/death dichotomy arose as part of being embodied spirit in physical human form. My soul saw no polarized separation; only my mind did.

There have always been times in my daily life when I saw the world as my soul did: expansive, wondrous, flowing, filled with miracles. When I am walking quietly in Nature, surrounded by birds and trees and flowers. When I am with friends and family, feeling the love that connects us. The trajectory of my life has been to balance out the joy and grief, to come to peace with all the varied and sometimes contradictory experiences of living as a human being on Earth. Perhaps this is what we are all doing in our own way.

Immersed in presence in the natural world, I feel that balance. Trees, birds, clouds, flowers, seasons. I am outside of time, beyond the mind’s observations. I connect to all parts of life with each breath. Breathing like a tree, like a flower, like a bird. Therein is calm, a surrender to something greater that is comforting not frightening. Here, infinity is who I am. It flows within me and surrounds me as well. In Nature, I recognize that life holds infinity in everything. Somehow grief falls away in those moments, and I only know the peace that is at the center of my soul.

The key perhaps is to see the entire world as one with Nature, to recognize that Mother Earth and Spirit are a single seamless creation with no beginning and no end. And within that eternal, never-ending Presence is something beyond the mind’s ability to understand. Only in completely letting go of the need to solve the puzzle of existence and accepting the wonders before us each day do we experience peace. And a balance that brings together joy and grief in the human heart and makes them whole.

This is where I am now, sitting silently on the edge of eternity and knowing it as who I am, who we all are. William Blake could hold “eternity in an hour,” infinity in the palm of his hand. He saw a “World in a Grain of Sand, and a Heaven in a Wild Flower.” To me, this is the greatest and most exquisitely beautiful wisdom I’ve ever encountered. Within it is the amazing grace we all hope to find in our lifetimes, no further away than our own miraculous hands or the flowers at our feet.

This Is Life, Now

In a conversation with my doctor at my annual physical, we talked about various things, including the current state of the world and how people are reacting. We agreed that in order to get through these tumultuous times, individuals don’t need prescriptions or palliatives, distractions or diversions. This is just the way life is now. It is what we are experiencing on Earth as our species and planet evolve. And there is more change to come. Within change is hope, possibility. If I focus on accepting each moment and envision the light ahead of me and within me, hope opens up in my heart. Peace becomes tangible. I can feel it and glimpse it in the world.

That seems to be the wisest perspective for me, as I negotiate my day-to-day life through change after change. My feelings are unpredictable, not necessarily tied to a specific event. I’ve thought perhaps it is post-traumatic stress, after surviving breast cancer, three years of a pandemic, the passing of dear friends, as well as the ongoing challenge of a country (and a world) at war with itself. Or, more immediately, it could be tied to the fact that Anne and I are in the midst of a move between two towns, each very different from the other. Our third move in five years. We are trying to get our bearings, feeling our way. Not everything is cohesive or understandable. It’s a mix.

For instance, across from the building where we live are thick woods on adjacent land. From our deck we can see blue jays and robins in the trees and stunning blue skies above. Each morning the view is lovely, the sky and clouds ever-changing. Our neighbors are friendly and welcoming, one bringing us homemade pumpkin bread the day we moved in. Meanwhile, down the road is a pistol and rifle club where we can hear gunfire in the distance if we are outdoors. A few yard signs advocate stopping a state bill that would tighten restrictions on gun possession and sales. Unsettling, to say the least.

Two or three miles away, the public library has an excellent educational display about books now banned in the U.S., including The Color Purple, Beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird, and books with LGBTQ content. Many libraries and bookstores in Massachusetts and elsewhere have such displays and encourage people to buy and read these books, which are often literature classics. In addition, a number of cities (like ours, thankfully) have passed ordinances in support of the LGBTQ community. All of this is life now, for us.

The other morning on my daily walk, I encountered a woman, also walking, who began to talk to me in Chinese about all the weeds and plants at the edge of the woods, breaking off leaves and pantomiming rubbing them against her skin. “For healing?” I asked. She nodded and continued her explanations, not seeming to mind that I didn’t know Chinese. I listened for several minutes until she finished, and as she turned to walk away, I thanked her for sharing her knowledge. This too is life now: strangers speaking to each other in different languages, not fully understanding but listening just the same.

Could it be that my entire consciousness, as well as our global consciousness, is experiencing a major shift of Earth-quake proportions? Everything is changing, and nothing will remain the same, including how we perceive and how we listen, who we think we are and how we think. We may continue to face challenges and fear-based events, but if we look up at the heavens and in each other’s eyes, we can find inspiration, strength, and the courage to continue. All I can do is wake each morning with an open heart and peacefully surrender to my soul’s life journey and what the day brings. This is my life, now. This is our life now.

No Where

If you walk or sit in silence long enough, you blend with everything. You are no longer separate from the world around you, gazing outward, because there is no out or in. The mind stops grasping and relaxes into blankness. You are no where—because where ceases to exist. This is infinity. Some call it Presence or universal consciousness. It is pure awareness without parameters or definitions. Just being.

I sometimes find myself there when I am walking in Nature or deep in meditation (and once as I was coming out of surgery). But even there is a misnomer because how can there exist in no where? I assure you I am not trying to trick you with word games. I am attempting to move beyond words to the silence of the soul. Of course, you can’t really find your way to silence with language. To describe the process of becoming completely silent seems almost contradictory.

Yet perhaps it is not entirely impossible to offer directional metaphors, as the poet Rumi did in all his work. Recently, a friend commented that the deep meditational experience of infinity was akin to being in the field Rumi describes, which is “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,” judging. Remembering the words of that poem immediately opened the door of Presence even further for me. A field that is empty of everything but shared spirit.

That is exactly how I felt within the depths of the profound silence of no where. Separation completely fell away. No opinions, no judgments of others, just awareness without any definitions or language to infringe on the vision of the soul, pure and true. Perhaps this is the purpose of all life: to reach that experience of being completely immersed in the silence of the soul. Because within it there is no longer inner or outer conflict, only peace.

We humans often talk of peace on Earth and aspire to it. Yet it seems to drift further and further away. Maybe that distance is an illusion, and in truth we are moving closer to it whenever we reverse our gaze from outward to inward. Because that is where peace lies, undisturbed and eternal. Our inner vision can direct us every day to living in a peace that radiates outward to all those we meet. In spite of the conflicts of the times we are now living through, more and more people are being catapulted inward by outer discord.

Our souls are guiding us in this direction, to seek the harmony and oneness that lives at the center of all creation. The no where within the where. Perhaps we came to Earth for this very reason. To experience the extremes of separation and then stand in the field of infinity, recognizing all that we see as one heart, one spirit. Humanity and divinity as one. Home at last.

All I Need to Know

I have always loved the phrase that many Native Americans use to refer to God and all of life: “The Great Mystery.” There is such wisdom and spiritual surrender in those words, a quiet acknowledgment that the universe and our place in it cannot be fully understood by the human mind. This wondrous mystery is what I experience when I walk alone in Nature or stare up at the stars at night.

Wonder, and joy at the beauty. Yet, for me there has also always been an element of sadness in contemplating eternity and my place in it. As a child I felt great fear when thinking of my life within infinity and the “world going on forever.” It was only in my adult spiritual quest that I came to a deepening and expansion of my awareness and a loosening of the fear. In “accepting what is” I found solace for my sorrow. When I stopped trying to find an explanation for life, the closed doors of my perception opened to the experience of Spirit, my soul’s essence and what is at the heart of all existence.

Even at times of emotional and physical challenge (the death of my parents; treatment for breast cancer), the presence of Spirit has sustained me. There will always be a mixture of thoughts and feelings when I look at the world that surrounds me: love of life as well as grief at its transitory, impermanent nature. When sadness arises, I have learned over the years that the wisest response is surrender: accepting those sad feelings and realizing they are only one part of who I am. It is my human identity that feels fear or grief; my soul witnesses all of life peacefully, without question or judgment. Within that peace, I let everything go and live in the Mystery. I don’t need to know all the answers; I just remain open to experiencing the beauty and wonder available to me in every moment.

I recently had an experience that highlighted this wisdom. I am an avid birdwatcher, and every year I visit Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the spring bird migration. Hundreds of migrating birds come through the cemetery because of its beautiful habitat, and local birders are there to greet them. On one particular morning, after days of rain, I walked inside the front gate and paused to get out my binoculars. A man standing nearby enthusiastically commented on the beauty of the day and how he was certain the end of the rain would bring all the birds in. I agreed with him, and as I started to walk away, he added, “I don’t know much about science or exact bird identification, but I know how beautiful and special each one is.” “And that’s all you need to know,” I replied.

 At that, he burst, quite loudly, into song: “That may be all I need to know….” He laughed delightedly as he finished and asked me if I knew the song. I smiled and said, “Yes, I do.” So he sang it all over again, practically vibrating with joy. We then wished each other a wonderful day, and each went our way. As I turned to look back at him, he was still smiling and singing to himself. What sweet synchronicity in encountering this rather eccentric earth angel who reminded me of the wisdom of life’s beauty. I am surrounded by that beauty with every step. And, truly, that is all I need to know, ever.