Photo by Jeremy Pegg

 

If there is to be any peace, it will be through being, not having.

Henry Miller

The idea that peace is conditional, depending on certain needs being met - being loved and appreciated, financially secure, well rested, having good work - is eventually replaced by the realization that the moment you’re experiencing right now is the only one, and it can’t be changed.
- Joan Borysenko

Joy, peace, love. Everything we want and can feel can be felt right now, enjoyed right now. The present is all there is. Don’t put off your joy.

Have a delicious day,
Ephraim

I was struck the other day when I received this email - starting with a dose of everyday ecstasy and then flowing into a series of intriguing questions:

“I sat outside today and watched the cottonwood seeds flow throughout the sky - backlit by the sun. Amazing. It was like watching a deep ocean current, but up, enhanced by birds flowing though, and sometimes, dive-bombed as well. I could hear the thwack of the wings as they changed flight directions.Balance - in life and in yin and yang…sitting, walking up four flights of stairs, all of  it, balanced. How do you measure balance in your life? If helping others is one of the most important things we do in life, how can we accomplish this if we sit behind a desk all day long? Is it saying thank you? Is it doing the little things that we say we should do, and do them freely and cheerfully, without comment or issue?

How does balance interweave with gratitude? Do we say thank you to life by just being there and being ready to step up when an opportunity occurs, not having judgment, and being in the moment?

And finally community…. I guess this is where it intersects…Ying and yang, it’s where the rubber meets the road. expansion or contraction happens, where do we stand when the change occurs… Happy or sad, judging or accepting. Gratitude for just breathing…. in and out, evenly, balance, that’s seems to be it, balance, the dance of equilibrium.

Gratitude, acceptance, graciousness, love - the bottom line of it all.”

 

I loved the questions most. They seemed to flow out of the cottonwood seeds, a comfortable conversation that took its joy from simply asking, submerging in those currents of air and emerging with arm loads of enigmas to ponder.

How often do we get stuck in the need for conclusion? For an answer? And how much do we miss by searching so hard that the ecstasy of the question is lost? Sometimes, it is much more fulfilling to simply explore the possibilities.

I realize that the writer did come to a “bottom line” - gratitude, acceptance, graciousness, love. But for me, that still felt like the question, held and breathed and pondered and relished. Right there, in that moment. An emailed whirlwind of musings that left me wondering what love and gratitude and acceptance mean to me.

A few days later, she sent me a quote from Rilke:

“i beg you…to  have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually , without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…”

I thought it was perfect.

Have a delicious day,
Ephraim

You’re doing it anyway. Every day. Every hour. Every second. You see the colors, the movement. You hear voices, footsteps, wind. You feel the texture of your clothes or the air on your skin. Taste your saliva, the lingering flavors of your last meal. Smell flowers, food.

Your senses are active all the time, flooding you with information that is most often ignored. And sometimes, it needs to be. You need to filter those things out to allow your mind to focus. Maybe. Even as I’m writing, I notice the pads of my hands resting on the keyboard, the clack of the keys. It’s like accompaniment to the experience of writing, of being in this moment.

But for an hour every day, imagine that accompaniment as the foreground of your life. An entire hour of deep sensual experience. Perhaps do it during lunch, noticing the flavors of every morsel, the speed of your bites, the textures of voices, the temperature of your silverware.

Perhaps try it the next time you make love. Indulge in the sensations in your hands and arms and legs and feet, see the color of your lover’s eyes. Or try it on a long walk, taking everything in through the senses, letting the thoughts that usually distract you fade in favor of feeling your weight shift on your foot as you step. 

And, as you get better, try noticing in times not so obviously sensual. Like at work, or the grocery store, or watching TV. Yet, even those things, once you think about it, are filled with input from all your senses.

Simply notice. Even for 15 minutes to start. Remember: You don’t have to do anything different. This doesn’t have to take any extra time from your day. Just shift the way you perceive things for a few minutes - or an hour. And after awhile, you’ll also notice how your perception broadens, how your curiosity sharpens, how delicious every moment can be.