Tag: awe

Treeness for humans

The great Maharajah copper beech on the Breamore House estate. My favourite tree of pilgrimage

Treeness for humans

A tree is not an active message bearer. We also stand vertical. We reproduce. We have inborne defences which help ensure our survival.

A tree relies for its longevity on tolerable levels of the influence on it of environmental influences, such as climate or pests.

A tree relies on the absence of human intervention during its lifetime. In a lifetime normally longer than human, a tree has safety in numbers, which dilutes the chances of it growing where humans are hostile or predatory.

Trees during their long lifetimes do not use communication actively in defence of their existence as humans do, nor do individual trees possess the ability to use mobility for avoidance of harm.

Trees disperse seeds which gives them the long term mobility they need to colonise new fertile soil.

When a person arrives at a tree, all these properties of its growing physical presence are abundantly obvious. No person has need to analyse a tree in terms of threatening behaviour or other risks. No one feels it necessary to be informed about the details of its origins or future in any detail.

When an adult person and a grown tree confront one another, the majority of the communion can be classified as static unconditional acceptance.

We both share the time in which we stand together. We take it as given that both exist in the present moment.

The solidity of the grown tree offers immutability to the softness of a human body.

The knowledge of the continuation of the tree’s existence after we are no longer in each other’s presence, offers reassurance for our own continuity, in a parallel timescale, be it ever so short.

We take away from the tree-to-human encounter the same invisible unknowns inside the hard density of a tree trunk, as soft-bodied humans possess, as we move over the same earth in our own silent life functions.

In the end, a person may stand near to a tree, and knowingly become sensitised to all the foregoing bland factual statements. The pathway opening between the two beings is mindful andcompassionate, observing with no preconception the ancient will to live in our inner heart and in the heart of the tree.

Remaining like this, with feet on the same shared earth, we can join with the tree as an experiencer of pure aliveness.

What may then arise as one branching, five-pointed human stands and gazes on the treeness of the tree?

Here is where it becomes possible to perceive existence twinned with the human perspective.

Here can be a powerful sense of awe, delight and mystical reverence. Recognise and be astonished, in mutual wordless sharing, the life that rises in the tree and in you from life’s unboundaried love of life

~ Love is present EveryNow

Embrace the unembraceable?

Lucky chance

As Angela Trainer says, “Nothing terribly wrong with seeking something more or new; but it’s often futile when what we are often really seeking is a sense of Connection.
We crave a sense of Awe. A sense of the SACRED in our lives. And that is an inside job; it will never be sustained by the externals in our lives in any truly satisfying way.”

Peter Pilley says, “Tremendous, terribly, too true. It was a choice, a series of choices since 2013, after the year I call The Year of my Life, to get to know what non-attachment means to me. It has been a self-imposed discipline of learning for me to embrace non-attached Love. This is “the unembraceable”. A concept.

I know only about my personal journey into the unchartered unknown of non-attached love. For me, at the beginning, those two words together mutually cancelled each other out. I could not see the least grain of logic there.

I was in state of confusion and of desperation – I was at that time trapped in my own unattainable seeking. I was in severe disconnect, yearning for connection, and only able to thunder against hard rock.

I do not know what the journeys of others are like. Perhaps it may be that some are the compliant students of masters of non-dual thought.

I was lucky to have friends to help point me towards understanding. It became clear to me my redemption, my emotional, spiritual, and even my financial salvation, my restoration to myself lay in getting my head round this obscure and novel area of enquiry.

And eventually, I did. I have compared the process to crawling through fires.

Thus empowered, I began to engage in the most meaningful part of my little life. Permanently in surrender, satisfied by anything and everything, seeking neither good nor bad outcomes, flooded by awe, joyful at the micro and the macro, unshakeably and beyond reason” 🌈

~ Love is present EveryNow

Apophaticism, or, You can’t eff the ineffable

Apophatic ecstacy

My EveryNow blog developed and began in 2018 from a life-changing outburst of heart pouring and opening for me in 2013.

WWW.EVERYNOW.BLOG

In 2013 I was utterly confused. There were no old reference points. Everything was unfamiliar, new and untried.

I knew it as a strange, safe and beautiful place to be. Talk about “Lost for Words”! I couldn’t explain it. At first I could not tell anybody what was happening, for the simple reason that I could find no English vocabulary to describe it.

After weeks and months, with help from Soul friends and formal research, I sussed ‘up’ from ‘down’!

So then, what did I understand? Not a thing! I still understood nothing. Now I realise there’s nothing to understand. It’s all about being.

Understanding is simply another unnecessary step to work around.

With conscious effort, I have reintegrated into this new present time. It is continuing newness. When I am in the flux of newness unending, it’s like being aware all of the time that this present presents as unique, precious, sacred.

This all-consuming belief is strengthened every moment I glance around, take a step, hear a sound, even notice a passing thought. If you notice me smile as you go, this is what lights my smile.

You’d think these experiences of utter newness might destabilise, interfere, be bothersome. I am here to tell you it’s like being an inquisitive youngster who’s strolling through and residing in a vast fairground of wonderland.

I don’t feel special or ‘other’. I am grateful to be me, and in awe of living through the sequences of life events which whizz me around my personal pin-table.

Close friends in these last ten years, Soul friends as I call them, inspire, power and light me on this journey.

And now here I am. I’m on the way to be nowhere.

No place could seem more desirable right now than nowhere. Oh, to float, alert, connected and intimately present nowhere, EveryNow!

Self-love quenches fear

Time spent in little things

{Now – (Past + Future)} = Infinity in Zero


When I don’t allow myself to accept my circumstances, conflict begins.

I put it to you, I have no need to experience frustration as long as my consciencious attention is fiercely focused towards observation of the fruits of the moment, with every one of my senses awake, tuned, alert, receptive.

There is nothing specifically prescribed to concentrate on. After all, where my body is located, it is surrounded by sights, textures, sounds, scents – an unending procession of the external stimuli of Realia!

I, or you, can engage in this close focusing now and then, if we like.

However, when I choose repeatedly to take the time to plunge myself into immersion of the sensory moment, then from out of this microcosm, I may be blessed to receive radical life-enhancements with the power to permanently change the way I perceive the quality of my life.

These are the slow-maturing fruits of microcosmic inspection. The sweetness they bring is so sublime, I overflow with joy and I simply have to share!

I know from my own experience there is an uncomplicated way to release joy and open the floodgates to love and peace, when I recognise that my mental images of the past and the future are illusions.

The distractions of frustration, fear and anger live in the unreal past and the impossible future. These products of misdirected attention are irrelevant and wholly superfluous to human requirements!

What validates this leap into a blissful state, where rushes of love chase away every last residue of fear?

Well, for a start, being intensely nose-to-nose with the absence of time in the flying moment is thunderingly awesome.

Here are the pleasures of non-attachment, where I cultivate my close attention, and it returns intensity of awareness back to me without locking any part of me into what I am doing with my directed attention.

Explanations about the pleasure of being released from the past and the future is not the thing. The thing is to be thankful.

Gratitude is the right reaction. Be grateful for release into lightness of heart. Be thankful for sudden intimacy with the giant world of intuition. Be in awe of the strange new ability to read hearts.

Flow in the moment helps self realisation.

In the moment when a fragment of birdsong triggers my smile, it triggers also my self love. The union of self with self is union with the whole of existence. What other respectful ways of being glad are there than the gladness of humility, awe and gratitude?

~ Love is present EveryNow

B O R E D O M

Beneath the cloak

Boredom stems from ignorance of, or more kindly put, from a lack of attention to the expressions of bliss in material form continually manifest at my fingers’ reach, before my very eyes and all around me.

If I am travelling at night, I might suffer from the delusion that darkness contains nothing of worth, and so I do whatever I can to accelerate my removal from an experience I tell myself I don’t like.

What I am failing to do is look up and see the briliance of stars. I am failing to halt my footfall to listen to the awe of silence. I am failing to bring to mind the stories of those lives who dwell in the nocturnal.

Boredom is a cloak whose unwelcome weight, when its onset is detected, stimulates a search for what my senses can detect that fill me with wonder, awe and the very delicious delights of discovery.

Truth: I cannot recall the last time I was bored

~ Love is present EveryNow

Do nothing? Do something?

Nothing else

Counterintuitively, doing nothing all summer long wasn’t so frustrating as you might imagine.

When I wish for something other than the status quo, when I don’t allow myself to accept my circumstances, the conflict of frustration begins.

I arrived home from my operation dog tired. All physical exertion caused unpleasant dramatic effects. So exercise was obviously something to avoid.

With that, fatigue held me back. Fatigue was more of a welcome than a hindrance, because I wanted to rest, to sleep. My sleeps so refreshed me, I kind of looked forward to being tired. This became a self-sustaining cycle of pleasant reward for giving in to sleep.

Everyone agreed it had been a good summer!

My daytime luxury was to sit in the sun in the garden for long periods of time. I’d photograph insects and flowers, snooze. And then photograph flowers and insects.

Knowing that I was limited to these activities, grateful I have no need of employment, and with no other obligations, these few things quickly became what I owned.

I strongly suspect there is no need for anyone to experience frustration as long as their consciencious attention is directed towards observation of the fruits of the moment.

I learned to work on this internal reward system when I was still an employee at work, most often performing to others’ orders at others’ set times of day.

The moment of my activity becomes the world of my engagement and so it becomes my engagement with the whole world.

With the most repetetive boring work tasks, I set myself miniature milestones to achieve. That way I competed for efficiency with only myself. Only I and nobody else rewarded me for reaching my own set targets as I worked through my day.

I had no need to compete with others at work. The fact was I had no time to look over my shoulder, while I was so absorbed in my keeping up with my personal best.

These principles applied to filling sacks with builder’s rubble, as much as to achieving sales targets.

This state of mind can come from fiercely focusing on what my mind is making of where my body is, with every one of my senses awake, tuned, alert and receptive.

There is nothing special or specifically prescribed to concentrate on. After all, where my body is located, it is surrounded by sights, textures, sounds, scents – an unending procession of the external stimuli of Realia!

I, or you, or any one can engage in doing this close focusing from time to time, if we like.

Radical life-enhancements that can permanently change the way I perceive the quality of my life derive from this style of applied attention when I choose to take the time to plunge myself into and practise immersion in the sensory of the moment, either by choice, or because some life event, such as illness or injury brings these choices front and centre.

In my EveryNow blog posts, I try to write about these fruits of microcosmic inspection. My motive is simply to share the joy and the sweetness they bring.

I know from my own experience, there is an uncomplicated way to release joy and open floodgates of love and peace, when I can recognise the distractions of frustration, fear and anger as illusory, irrelevant and wholly superfluous to human requirements!

What validates this leap into a blissful state, where fear has no existence and rushes of love flit and flutter about with me on stage in the moment? Well, for a start, being intensely nose-to-nose with the absence of time in the flying moment is thunderingly awesome.

Here we have the pleasures of non-attachment, where I cultivate my close attention, and it returns intensity of awareness to me without locking any part of me into what I am doing with my directed attention.

The pleasure of being released from the leg-irons of the Past, and the cheeky cheery turning of my back on the caverns of Future is hardly worth bothering to explain.

And explaining is not the thing. The thing is to be thankful. Gratitude is the right reaction. Be grateful for release into lightness of heart. Be thankful for sudden intimacy with the world of intuition.

Accept and thank my lucky stars for the oddness of being able to read hearts!

Flow in the moment helps self examination. In the moment when a fragment of birdsong triggers my smile, it triggers also my self love. The union of self with self is union with the whole of existence. What other respectful ways of being glad are there than the gladnesses of humility, awe and gratitude?

~ Love is present EveryNow

Green EveryNow

EveryGreen

Will you walk in light along paths of silent awe?

Will you revere the secrets told to you from your right and from your left?

Will you step aside from crunching doubt?

Will you believe your heart’s blood flows green and green and green

💚Green presence EveryNow

🟡Freedom EveryNow🟡

Ridding ourselves of the identification with self – that there is a thinker of thoughts rather than just thoughts – offers a kind of freedom. 

It is said that identification with self causes suffering and removing it results in a much sought after state, variously called – enlightenment, awakening, Buddha mind, etc.

In my EveryNow blog, I try to put into accessible words my powerful experiences of this freedom. And I try to write about the ways and means by which people can benefit by consciously paying increased attention to the world of concepts and perceptions.

My hope is that my readers can readily believe they too can taste this freedom, or at least set up in them a curiosity to find out if it can easily be a valid outcome for themselves, as it has been for me.

I agree with some who say such an exalted state of freedom is readily accessible and on the surface of consciousness. I too do not believe it is so tough to access, so deeply buried that it requires the dedication of a lifelong quest.

Others like me, who were born and educated in Western dualistic traditions of thought and action, rather than in oriental non-dualistic cultures, may need to look to the example of others if they are to begin to examine the value of this freedom.

People who feel the promptings which give them reason to question their fixed beliefs are in my readership.

The promptings they receive from unexplained aspects of their inner life and the observations they make of their own experiences of awe, may be the conduits to discovery of the extent of the limitations they place on themselves by their long-standing willing acceptance of the status quo as defined, unalterable and axiomatic.

I know that the most ineffable trancendental concepts are far easier to define by talking about what they are not. It takes an) increased intensity of creative thinking to avoid description by negatives. It is always a productive, even revelatory exercise.

So here is my non-negative sketch of the me I call myself.

I am mortal, biological, animate. I will die. The atoms and particles of which I am composed will scatter and outlive my physical form. Something will remain of the effects on the world that my presence and interactions in it created. Those effects will dissipate according to the law of entropy.

A time will come when all records and traces of my life will have grown cold and vanished. I am happy with this scenario, because I recognise all my human responsibilities revolve around the axis of my present moment.

I have arrived at a visualisation of the moment which satisfies my human inclination to forever find answers. I characterise it, within my own limited understanding, as “EveryNow”.

If I have to pick out one outstanding quality of “EveryNow” it is abundance. The moment in which I am held is abundance. The moment into which I am constantly falling in cycles of helpless harmless renewal is abundance.

The whelm of moment causes me to envision myself as so richly endowed with all my needs fulfilled, that I am nearly swamped by its sufficiency.

In this state, I have only to exercise a degree of voluntary acceptance and my being is lit by delight. Considerations of grief future or pain past are laughably insignificant.

Therefore I laugh
in
Love’s
Presence
E v e r yN o w

Mystery of EveryNow

What is this innocence?
I see it everywhere.
It flows with
visible invincibility.
A newborn wild animal
looks at me.
Twin acceptances of awe.
Everything happens
Differentiation occurs
It is observed in the EveryNow.
The joy and the beauty of the EveryNow I am bathed in
— and which I share with sentient life and with nonliving elements —
are ecstacies
that flame up
from my perception
from the vortex of axiom
seen only by my newborn eye
they honour me with the vision of the burning ungraspable plasma
The mystery of EveryNow
~ Love’s presence EveryNow

True primitive wonder

Created or not created, it’s the absence of true primitive wonder that characterises our era.
Whatever can today inspire and keep alive the awe of the unknown fulfills a vital function – to bring our noses up against the fact we are not the creators of what we observe.
We are stardust gathered up by ageless energy into sentience, and to stardust we return.
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      >       {)      ॐ
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