For a day, for just one day

Build a House for men and birds.

Sit with them and play music.

For a day, for just one day, talk about that 

which disturbs no one and bring some peace, 

my friend, into your beautiful eyes.

Hafez

I wonder if you have noticed how difficult it is to maintain a conversation that is purely joyous, one that doesn’t rely on humour that takes the mickey? One that simply appreciates everything that happens to arise in our awareness? One that celebrates everything about ourselves and others rather than dwelling on each other’s pain and neediness?

Have you noticed how quickly we fall back on some topic about a problem, an undesirable situation, a fault we find within ourselves or someone else? In fact, if we were to give ourselves the job of speaking only of joyous things, of making merry, we would very quickly fall into silence for we will have run out of things to say. We will find that the mind keeps pulling us back to some problem, some defect, some undesirable situation, some uncertain future that we must be concerned about…

Have you noticed?

The Ego is masterful in keeping us distracted from what is real and good. Its modus operandi is both obvious and subtle…apparent acts of service or love or caring that arise from its own neediness to be significant…

The other day, an older friend called me. When I asked how he was doing, he said, ‘Getting there’. Then, he went on to tell me how his right knee was giving him trouble but that he’d been seeing a physiotherapist and it was helping. I then asked how he was spending his days, hours and moments. He said he was reading a lot.

This gentleman has a remarkable history of service, of courageous acts which have cost him dearly. As a prominent member of his community, he has risked ridicule, ‘lost friends’ and ‘gained enemies’ . He has had a faith life that has evolved so deeply that he has been accused of being a ‘sell-out’, someone who has abandoned his religious tradition and, because of his social prominence, has been a significant ‘bad’ influence.

I have enormous respect and love for this man. I have deeply appreciated his life of service but most of all, I appreciate his willingness to learn, to maintain a spirit of inquiry and allow his deeply held beliefs to be challenged and even abandoned. At the age of 86, he continues to have a child-like curiosity around subjects that are raised in conversation. His greatest curiosity, however, is around the nature of reality and how to keep his bodymind peaceful, joyous and healthy.

As we spoke and as he shared some of his thoughts around the book he’s currently reading, he went from palpable joy about what he knows to be his true nature to moderate disappointment that he was not able to catch his ego in action. ‘I realize it after the event’, he said somewhat regretfully.

I shared with him how I find that our world and all our social interactions are dominated by the Ego’s interests and agendas, all of which are ‘designed’ or ‘conditioned’ to keep us from living from our true, joyous, peaceful, radiant and free nature.

‘Yes!’ he responded enthusiastically. ”What is more’, I added, ‘we are so good at looking at the obvious ways in which someone else’s ego is behaving, particularly those of politicians, that we can conveniently forget to look at our own ego at work. I mentioned politicians only because he’d mentioned them. ‘Yes!’ he laughed with even greater agreement.

By the way, Jesus had something to say about this:

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. – Mathew 7:3-5

‘Imagine’, I continued, ‘if all we did was speak from and of the joy and thrall and beauty and grace and genius and majesty and abundance and freedom of our true nature’, what would that be like? He laughed heartilly

Before we finished our conversation, he invited me over to his home for it has been a while since we’d got together. ‘And what shall we talk about?’ I asked. ‘Oh, I know’, I answered my own question, ‘we’ll read poems of love and ecstasy and beauty and joy by Hafez and Rumi and the other mystics to each other!  We finished the call in much joy and great laughter.

So,. I’m wondering, how would you feel about speaking only of joyous things? Noticing every time you were sliding into some kind of judgemental thinking or speaking? Comparing? Blaming? Would you be able to do it for one day? One hour? One minute?

 MENTORING
Let Life express itself intoxicatingly, uniquely, powerfully and limitlessly in, as and through you. Don’t settle, whatever your age. Know your true Self. Follow your Bliss. Live the Life that you know you want to! Contact me here.


MINDFULNESS ONLINE
Join me every week to sit in the presence of your true Self and experience the greatness of Life flowing naturally, effortlessly and powerfully in, as and through you!