Tag: compassion

How many is one?

How many is one? Or say it like this, what’s the colour of one?

We all are wholly broken entities, we walk from here to there asking to be whole, wanting to construct wellness from our constituent undone parts, disfunctional, darkly dirty and lost like smoke looking for the fire of its origins.

The only reason we know we are entities is because we began as Ones. Our identity became conscious in a blaze of sound, colour, scent and touch at birth.

We were united with the sensory input with which we were saturated in such a way that we were at first unable to make any distinction between us and the world of senses we were sensing.

Later on came intimations of duality. We got the idea, again through first hand experience,

“I am not what that is”.

“I am I and that is not I. It is Other”.

Our oneness is conscious of experience as suffering or joy – hunger or satiety. By such terms, our oneness is all about polarities of intensity.

As adults, we are wracked by our acquired trauma or injury. We are damaged by our inability to make sense of episodes of damage sustained we cannot or wish not to recall.

Our longing for peace, love and happiness relates to our selves as newborn bundles of love. That was when we were blissfully undamaged, unaware of agencies capable of our damage or destruction.

As adults we spend time and devote our energy to achieving that experience of blissful oneness that was ours at the time of our birth.

In truth, we are all still purest innocent oneness. It is that so much has happened in the years since birth, we have stopped reminding ourselves of our innate purity.

Our notions of duality and the way we so readily devote much attention to our ability, albeit limited, to grasp at, acquire or alter our perception of the world of Other, these serve to remove our attention from the intense heat of welcome, magic and mystery to be found in our molten core – our innate oneness.

If we keep hold of the image we still continue as whole and clear, pure and clean as the day we were born, we will have hope and faith, those fabulous flammable fuels which will power us on our common goal, the journey back to wholeness, Oneness.

We can bring back to our heart and mind the Oneness of our origin, our common origin which indivisibly composed us from birth. For some it is easy. For most it is a lifetime’s labour. For an unfortunate few, death will end their search before they even get a tiny glimpse of eternal love.

Part of what has sustained me, repaired me, enlarged and enriched my life has been about acquiring the skills and tools for recognising the value and importance of self-healing. Healing facilitates and increases my ability to recognise and manage my own well-being. These things in general hold a significance in the living of life that is close to sacred. This form of healing compassion has been recognised as sacred throughout human history.

My journey is coming into the realisation that I only will grow and thrive in direct proportion to how much I can help others in their journeys of growth and self-love, even if I can do so only by not standing in their way.

Becoming who we are

Choices

When choices choose me

There are so many layers to the exercise of choice. I can choose! That is a first. I can choose to go. That’s an adventure beginning. I can choose to go with the flow, to disturb nothing when I arrive, to be one among the passing breezes.

And I can choose to know my footfall is noticed by no one and nothing at the shores of time, like my smile to myself in the dark just before sleep overtakes my sore heart!

It’s Zen-like. When I step back from the sharp end and I choose to grasp at nothing, with the careful and compassionate exercise of choice, in the end peace arrives.

Peace takes up residence at my head and feet. I know it’s present, because it loudly makes zero demands of space or time.

As I stand at the sandy shores of peace, do I know if I am the one who watches the ripples rippling? Am I the ripples? My heart cannot be doing with such questions, when it is rippling with love unending 🕊️

~ Love is present E v e r yN o w

⬜ Acceptance and Sufficiency 🟩

🟢 Meditation on Awarenesses of Acceptance and Sufficiency ⚪

These are awarenesses, resources of great value, that I am unlocking more and more on my Journey.

In seeking to embrace these, I am inspired by the example of a friend, whose startling quality of compassion in action and word has made me strive to understand the source, the better to emulate and assimilate this living spirit of compassion.

I see much value in the practice of Acceptance. Acceptance smoothly paves over the crevasses of treacherous impulse to blunder and bluff.

Daily, daily, I am in confrontation.

These are like great stirrings, as my hot indignation coming upon a selfish arrogant owner who is letting his dog “worry” swans.

Or these may be small stirrings: a person whose relationship to me commands respect, yet whose insistent manner rouses an aggressive response in me.

My responses stem from my self-regard blinkered from and blind to the life I share with people around me.

Acceptance is tearing away my blinkers. It’s me choosing to reach up to a panoramic viewpoint, consciously remaining exactly where I am, but at the same time giving myself the gift of the widest possible perspective at my location.

Once I arrive there – and I can choose to arrive in a flash – I am immediately reduced to my true size relative to “where I’m at”, and so I am released!

I am released from confrontation.

In my eyes, Acceptance is an unwavering loyal friend, as I walk hand in hand with my other awareness – Sufficiency.

If I calm myself and allow myself to come into closest connection with some external event, it can show me clearly and directly a total, utter and complete satisfaction – there can be no outside of ‘Sufficiency’.

Sufficiency is the time from the outside to the still-point centre of anything at all.

Sufficiency is the end contained in the beginning.

When there is no longer a fear of death, the THISNESS of bliss is understood as Sufficiency in itself.

Sufficiency is Love’s second gift. The first is immeasurable presence.

Sufficient is a living beating newborn heart, a rust encrusted pencil sharpener, the fury of blind rage reboant, the fractal three of clover, the pale blue dot seen through Saturn’s rings. 

It suffices with a soundless extreme implosion of perfection not to know, not to have been present, never to have loved, never to be more than only somewhat… 

It is my awareness of Sufficiency which links me directly to the sum of all joys.

Any joy of any sort piercing the living moment is sufficient.

If I go out and about with a pocketful of forethought, and if I encounter a delight, I need not let it enter me and then pass me by.

For example, I may be kissed, and as I stop taking breath, I let myself feel all the breaths I have ever breathed contained in that kiss.

I do not think, “This is a kiss”. A kiss which knows itself to be a kiss will instantly self-destruct and disappear as completely as if it had never been.

The treasure awaiting my discovery in any experience is made suddenly visible by my inborn ability to allow its inherent quality of Sufficiency to overtake both it and me.

Every such wholly-lived experience is so naturally powerful just because it arrives in my life carrying its own tiny share of the cosmic Big Bang.

For me, that presumed Singularity is where time, space, matter, co-exist with love. This is where we came from and where we will return.

Sufficiency is the end contained in the beginning.

Sufficiency may be said to be without form, because it allows for all potential outcomes from void. 

If I can only stop trying to dream, I can awake to find I am being dreamed by my dream.

The naked flesh of humility is clothed by sufficiency.

Awareness of Sufficiency has more gravity than its own mass! It is the cornerstone of Acceptance.

Acceptance extends, as does Humility, as does compassion, as does peace, indefinitely, infinitely.

Gratitude for these infinite sufficiencies!

~ Love is present E v e r yN o w

⚪ Meditations on Awarenesses of Acceptance and Sufficiency 🟢

Sufficient to life is the living

🟢 Meditations on Awarenesses of Acceptance and Sufficiency ⚪

I see much value in the practice of Acceptance.

Acceptance smoothly paves solid ground over my treacherous impulse to blunder and bluff. Such responses stem from my self-regard blinkered from, perhaps fearful of and wilfully blind to the life I share with people around me.

Acceptance is tearing away my blinkers of self-regard.

Acceptance is me choosing to reduce my true size relative to “where I’m at”, and so I am released!

Acceptance releases me from confrontation, spite, doubt, confusion. Above all, I am released from the need to hide from others.

Acceptance of who I am, without precondition, with no judgement, opens me to self-love. Self-love may be timid, shy, inclined to spend time waiting. Self-love welcomed, accepted, is an invincible ally. Self-love will glory in reminding me of the mutually shared love story between my heart and me.

Acceptance is an unwavering loyal friend, as I walk hand in hand with my other awareness – Sufficiency.

Sufficiency is the time from the outside to the still-point centre of anything at all.

Sufficiency is the end contained in the beginning.

There can be no outside of ‘Sufficiency’.

Sufficiency is Love’s second gift. The first is immeasurable presence.

When there is no longer a fear of death, the THISNESS of bliss is understood as Sufficiency in itself.

Sufficient is a living beating newborn heart, a rust encrusted pencil sharpener, the fractal three of clover, the pale Blue Dot seen through Saturn’s rings.

When Sufficiency arrives with a soundless extreme implosion of perfection, I am surprised it’s completely enough not to know, not to have been present, never to have loved, never to be more than merely somewhat…

It is my awareness of Sufficiency which links me directly to the sum of all joys.

Any joy of any sort piercing the living moment is sufficient.

For example, I may be kissed. At that instant, all the breaths I have ever breathed are contained in that kiss.

I do not think, “This is a kiss”.

A kiss which knows itself to be a kiss will instantly self-destruct and disappear as completely as if it had never been.

The treasure awaiting my discovery in any experience is made suddenly visible by my inborn ability to allow its inherent quality of Sufficiency to overtake both it and me.

Every such wholly-lived experience – no matter if it feels bad or good – is so naturally powerful for the simple reason that it arrives in my life carrying its own tiny share of the cosmic Big Bang.

For me, that presumed Singularity is where time, space, matter, co-exist with love. This is where we came from and where we will return.

Sufficiency is the end contained in the beginning.

Sufficiency is without form, because it allows for all potential outcomes from void.

The naked flesh of humility is clothed by Sufficiency.

Awareness of Sufficiency has more gravity than its own mass! It is the cornerstone of Acceptance.

Acceptance extends, as does Humility, as does compassion, as does peace, indefinitely, infinitely.

Gratitude for these infinite sufficiencies!

~ Love is present E v e r yN o w

Meditation on Awarenesses

Fisherman’s Walk Park Southbourne-on-Sea

⏳ Awarenesses 💧

There are awarenesses, resources of great value, that I am unlocking more and more on my Journey.

In seeking to embrace these, I am inspired by the example of my friend, whose startling quality of compassion in action and word has made me strive to understand its source, the better to assimilate and emulate this living spirit of compassion.

I see value in the observation of Acceptance in action. Acceptance requires no reasons, demands no constructs and it can be seen in the healthy balanced operation of every living organism.

I tap into vast reserves of value from the practice of Acceptance.
Acceptance smoothly paves over the crevasses of treacherous impulse to blunder and bluff.

I am in confrontation every day.

These are great stirrings, as in coming upon a selfish owner who is letting a dog “worry” swans. Or these may be small, such as a person whose mere approach rouses an aggressive response in me. My negative response stems from my self regard blinkered from and blind to the life I share with people around me.

Acceptance is my confronted self choosing to reach up to a panoramic viewpoint, and consciously remaining where I am, while I offer to the eyes of my eyes the gift of the widest possible perspective at my location.

Once I arrive – and I can arrive in a flash – I am at once reduced to my true size relative to “where I am at”, and I am released to soar up to great peaks of lightness of being and down to lush fertile places of human comfort, warmth and joy.

Acceptance is my loyal friend when I walk hand in hand with my other awareness: Sufficiency.

Whenever I allow myself to come into closest connection with some external event, it can show me clearly and directly a total, utter and complete satisfaction. It is “Sufficiency”.

It is my awareness of sufficiency which links me directly to the sum of all joys.

Any joy piercing the living moment is sufficient.

I can choose to go out and about with a pocketful of forethought, so that, when I encounter a delight, I need not let it enter me only to pass me by. For example, I may be kissed, and as I stop taking breath, all the breaths I have ever breathed are contained in that kiss.

The treasure awaiting my discovery in any experience is made visible by my inborn ability to allow its inherent quality of sufficiency to overtake both it and me.

Sufficiency is the end contained in the beginning.

If I can only stop trying to dream, I can awake to find I am being dreamed by my dream.

The flesh of humility is clothed by the modest completion of Sufficiency.

Gratitude for this infinite store of sufficiencies!

We are children

The elixir

My inner child, playmate, best friend

May I remember all of my growth. Growth physical and growth in heart’s love.

I want to remain alive to my heart’s ability to grow in heart love.

May I find the courage to draw on the power with which loving with loving kindness regenerates my heart’s expansion into love’s swaying flower fields and forests of kindness.

Every day let my fearful forward-fixed gaze give me a rest, so I pause and take stock.

Every day I will remember when I open my eyes awake, to let my heart take me by the hand, its own little child, wide-eyed in wonder, and lead me to learn new expanding abilities of loving to live.

At night, let me review this amazing journey of breath and blood, tears and sweat, so I remember why my heart is so rightly full of gratitude.

My heart and I have accepted challenges, made discoveries, assimilated life lessons, received and been blessed by growth.

The ebb and flow of heart’s luminosity assists and stands guard over growth and healing in my body.

In this inevitable plurality of beings, my heart drives me to connect. 

My own growth towards recognition, understanding and peaceful acceptance of who I am comes from unconditional, non-judgemental relationships.

Deep maternal love, which is one form of non-attached friendship, released my tiny child into the grassy flower-meadows of my very first summers.

Later on, my heart, strengthened and emboldened by the unmistakable benevolence of the Big Green, began to receive and to give non-judgemental friendship.

Stagnation dissolves and energetic growth returns when my inner child makes itself known to me again. It may be from hints, signs, clues to my senses, to my awareness, that my inner child’s presence peers past the curtains of my darkness, always dancing, always smiling, always beckoning me out to play and to laugh!

It may be my indirect sensation of its presence through my perception of its absence and the terrible pain of that lonely emptiness.
Mercifully, this pain is pure illusion.

My inner child wants to be found, it never hides! And so, with a little concentration, I can come to my inner child, playmate, best friend.

Then my inner child holds my hand once more, I am filled up, my heart is filled and my being is refreshed with the giggles of childhood.

My original child’s state of grace, let me remember it!

Let me know it again.
You and I are still filled up to the tip-top with the very same innocence and automatic acceptance of our natural and original condition, which is pure love, seen or not, felt or not, understood or misunderstood.

This acceptance is the elixir!

With this we can live in the perfumed fields of happiness exactly as it was, as it always was and will be, for us and for all sentient life to the end of all things

~ Love is present E v e r yN o w

Meaningful choice

What choice is there in the geometric single point?

Only refer

Choice is always predicated on a point of reference. Reduce reference points to zero (not that this can be done) and choice virtually disappears. Here we are operating at the level of micro-organisms.

Meaningful choice involved with interactions initiates from a point of reference. With no point of reference, no meaning can be apparent, and visible colour and the inspiration to initiate are at their perigee.

If I am at peace in my most sacred space, if my relation to the me I call myself is all compassion and respect for the integrity of my identity, I can act from a position of trust.

This is the trust to which I am beholden because it allows me to deploy from my innate centre of power. This place is blind to action, yet all-seeing. This place is stillness of unimaginable breadth and depth, yet it remains sensitive to the tiniest movements of sentience in the web of life.

My power revealed is my self returned to the womb.

If I am able to access the ataraxia of my original self, the place where who I am is far less of a motivator than to whom I am beholden for my connectivity, then I can act with security to make choices which accord and harmonise with the source of boundless love from which I came, and to which I am to return.

~ Love is present EveryNow

A friend’s tears

§ On hearing of a friend’s tears §

There never is any preparation for the fact of death. When the shock of it affects our loved ones, family, friends, friends of friends or acquaintances, or those with whose names and influences we have grown up, death immediately shakes us to our very molecules.

In a strange way, because death is so extreme, so absolute, death can be trusted. This is a certainty to be grateful for.

Death never hides. It never pretends or is ambiguous. It is subject to no interpretation or comprehension other than by reference to itself alone.

That is what sets the fact of death apart from regular human business. There are no arguments, no halfway compromises. There is nothing else to do but to meet the fact of death with compassion and acceptance.

The only preparation we can offer to ourselves is to explore our innate compassion, to undertake the lengthy process of cultivation of self-love, leading to the humility of Acceptance.

Long years of making a friend of Acceptance may lessen the chaos of the shock when death visits. We can bring to our awareness over time what our natural compassionate impulses mean to us, and we can examine with care and attentiveness the sources, the origins of compassion.

It may seem of practical help to reflect on how the origins of compassion derive both their beginning and ending in death. There is a continuous cyclic flow of energy conservation, whose non-competitive, symbiotic motive forces span the axes of death and living compassion.

Respect is due in equal measure to death’s inevitability and to our ability to deepen our acceptance of death with compassion

~ Love is present E v e r yN o w

From Breath to Love

From Breath to Love – A guided meditation

TUESDAY 25th SEPTEMBER was the monthly Breathwork session “From Breath to Love – Conscious Breathing Circle” held by Karolina Mikulicz here in our home town.

When I arrived, I was the only one attending! So we agreed to have a 1-2-1 session.

After what happened to me in the last fortnight, I was in a state of high sensitivity and receptivity. I may share in another piece of writing, when I feel to gather the story together. It’s enough to say I had begun to make preparations in the last few days in the light of reasonable cause to believe the days of my life were numbered. It transpires that I am in no such danger. This is relief that I compare to being hit by a ton of bricks.
Karolina is, to me, wise far beyond her young years. Knowing how she has assimilated the healthy therapeutic effects of her own daily Breathwork practice over many years, I have come to have complete confidence in her skills as guide and facilitator. We always reach deep when we work together.
So, to be brief, (a tricky skill for me!) an obscuring chunk of cliff face fell away… almost all resistance due to fear melted away as if under high intensity radiation.
In the course of this evening’s guided Breathwork I found my core being, I call it: my unchanging awareness. I found my unfractionated identity, I see it as a white transparency with no material substance yet having the form of a swan’s body and whose being is available in maximal energy to enfold with arms, protect without limit or condition, to imbue me with life-power while not at all concealing or covering me.
In 1977, I had come face-to-face with this core essence of my being with the common descriptor being a white-hot kernel. The image of a light concentrated into white heat had arrived then. During my awakening in 2013, and ever since, up till today, the vision of awareness of my own heart has been of an orange-gold glow in my heart space.
In summer 1977, I entered a period of pain and incomprehension, and an involuntary process began. One by one, layers of self identity fell away from me. I felt with great alarm that I was soon to lose my sanity. At length all that was left of this 31 year old man, of his certainty and his received assumptions about himself was reduced to a white-hot molten pool resting immobile at the bottom of a huge immovable crucible.
Today’s “Real”isation arrived as a direct effect of having been able to release all vestiges of fear of trying and seeking by walking in the bravery of trust and innocent belief in the total support of the earth under me and the clean oxygen I fill my lungs with.
Something changed tonight.
There was no upheaval and certainly no pain. Pain comes only as an equal and opposite reaction to resistance. Abandon of resistance and its replacement with the gentleness of compassion and a childlike humility is what characterised the session this time. Karolina threw at me unanswerable questions. She stayed, guided and was by my side. I responded from my truth.
Later, at the end, we talked. This is how I tried to make clear what had changed inside during the latter part of our working session. A sacred chant that I remember I had sung before, and whose Sanskrit words I had learned, had been playing in the background. I was not the listener with this music in my ears. The music was playing me and my hearing was the music playing. The music was playing in me. I was conscious of not being the listener. I had no involvement in the joining of the music with my hearing.
A blending took place that I was fully aware of as it happened. I have entered a fusion between my core original self and the sensory experience of the material World around me.
Here I can not go all the way with words to describe this. I was totally receptive to the music while not needing to make any conscious effort at distinguishing it as musical sounds to which I was paying attention. The effect was of music happening in the way my blood happens to circulate in my body. The music was involuntarily musical in me. This utterly new experience was welcome and most lovely. I felt with all my senses and all my awareness the freshness of it.
With this clearing, whatever happens next, my lack of fear of my own death has received a big boost.
Karolina suggested I write up about this session. My thanks to Karolina takes the form of this short description.

Glory to your glory

Glory to your glory, Morning Glory

Your silence is music of the highest order.
I listen and I see your face is turned to love those whose love for you
is single-pointed as the light that reaches from a star.
You beckon with serious urgency, but not to me.
Your face awakes in me compassion for your journey today, for those winged workers who will instantly adore you, and who will be nourished by you.
Compassion for your little life,
and for mine.
~ Love is present EveryNow