On a recent neighborhood walk I noticed and appreciated what I looked at as though it were an art gallery and that got me thinking about how I can appreciate the details in my awareness in all moments and that got me thinking about the importance of paying attention to what I pay attention to. I continue to pull on the red Kabbalah string and its lessons continue to be comforting and clarifying and inspiring. There is an emphasis on noticing the tendency to unconsciously react and instead choosing to do something different. When I am tempted to feel resentment or behave poorly or indulge a victim story, I can instead pause and feel grateful for the temptation because it gives me the opportunity to respond intentionally, revealing more light in the world. I have become aware of concerns with using the words "masculine" and "feminine" to refer to two modes of existence that correspond to doing and being, giving and receiving, thinking and feeling, and so on. But we need agreed upon terminology so that we can talk about these modes because if we don't talk about them then they are shadow stuff. What other words could we use? Yin and yang? Alpha and omega? Eros and agape? These are a few of the dots I have collected recently. I feel two ways about my often-fragmented attention because it has given me a wide swath of creative interests and magical experiences, but I don't have one Main Thing right now. Something external to me wags its finger and whispers in my ear that I need a Main Thing, but I feel most alive and excited right now by collecting the dots, so I will continue to do that. |
I have been really enjoying loving presence lately. I believe it is an underutilized and underappreciated orientation towards any situation in life, but especially those where there is resistance or discomfort. But what is loving presence? It is simply to be both loving and present with whatever is in front of you. It is not partial presence, distracted by a screen or thoughts of the past or the future. It is not partial love, insisting that someone needs to be different than how they are. If...
A few simple things I've been doing have me feeling amazing this morning. I have been enjoying receiving lessons from Kabbalah. This morning I prayed outside for five minutes. When I speak these prayers, I ask to change myself: "Creator, please help me..." I was up last night reading a book. I noticed that I was in the magical hours where 10pm becomes midnight in the blink of an eye. I put the book down and got in bed before 11pm. Using mouth tape and an eye mask also improves my sleep...
A group of us were chatting after the writing part of Writing Club, and we were really getting into it on different spiritual ideas. Someone asked, "What is the fundamental unit of spirituality?" He explained that with coding, printing a statement like "Hello world." is the fundamental unit of writing software: compiling code and displaying the results. A friend suggested that witness consciousness is the fundamental unit of spirituality. This is the state of noticing thoughts and emotions...