So for those of you that aren't familiar with the band known as Cloud Cult and their singer/songwriter Craig Minowa, this is one of their songs. The title of this post is just a line in their song "No Hell", which is from their album "The Seeker." (Perhaps a good hint as to why I've come to love them.)
Anyways, I first learned about them from this interview by Krista Tippett's OnBeing podcast. You can listen to that if you want to get a nice sense of and introduction to the band (and hear three of their songs if you play the unedited version - it's better, trust me). You may also learn something about me, and perhaps realize why I was so drawn to them. As Craig says, "our supporters are seekers."
There is so much about them, on so many different levels, that make them so meaningful to me. I hope you like this song, the band, Craig, and maybe, see the depth and the hopefulness of their message.
You can also find them on Patreon. They are totally independent of the music industry, and do a great job of staying in touch with their Patreons (in fact, that is how they made it through the pandemic so well; that, and a very dedicated fan base).
May you enjoy their music, philosophy, mysticism, and hopeful message.
Little, in that I'm still here writing this to you 🤗.
Wake-Up, in the sense that we often (always?) take for granted our very existence.
So what, exactly, happened? Well, I was up early in the morning as is my norm, sitting out on the deck of our cottage. Usually doing a sitting meditation, or listening to a dharma talk. Today I was listening to a podcast, and was captivated by the beauty of the morning. I wanted to capture it -- take a picture or a movie (like above) to try to show what I was seeing, and help me remember it.
At one point I decided to walk down to our dock to photograph the early morning fog sweeping along the glassy surface of the pond. We have some funky stairs (tilted on angle) that need to be replaced, and we had just finished 24 hours of pretty hard rain. So the steps, while water-free, were much more slick than they appeared to be, and then Whoosh, my feet slid out from under me.
Have you ever felt time slow down? As I crashed to the ground, I waited to find out where the pain would arrive. Fortunately for me, my butt and shoulder took the brunt of the fall along the edges of the steps (and not my head). I had survived, thanks to nothing but dumb luck.
I could even perceive two alternate futures emerge from that slip. The one that's writing this blog post, and the one that remained unconscious (or worse) on the steps until Carol arose and started to wonder where the heck I was. Wouldn't that have been a different life trajectory?
One moment here, blissfully enjoying the scenery, And then ... Wham ... lights out (for a while or forever).
I'm not trying to be overly dramatic. That's not the point of this story. But just take a moment to realize, we are all one incident away from a life-altering or life-ending trajectory. That is the very nature of our existence.
Now that may sound Bad to most people, but it's really Not. Not good or bad. It just is.
So what should you take away from this story, if that is true? Just this:
Your life is a very precious gift. The odds of You being here right now are extraordinarily slim. Savor that good fortune. Don't waste a minute of your precious life on anger or hatred or self-recrimination. Indeed, Wake Up to the unfathomability of your life just as it is, right here, right now. With all its "apparent"lack of perceived perfection, lack of financial security, lack of fulfillment or meaning.
You're just looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Turn it around and see the magnificence in every ordinary thing around you, and then let yourself blur the apparent boundaries of what you sense, and realize you are very much a part of that as well.
Not you and the other and the 10,000 things. But just this ... right now ... right here. And that includes everything and nothing, or no thing. It's a conundrum only when you view the world as if from the homunculus in your head. Like those magic eye pictures, you don't easily see the 3D image because of how you have been conditioned to look.
Drop your focus and look through the image. Stop trying to analyze everything, control everything, plan everything. Go with the flow sounds pretty trite, but it is also pretty accurate. That is what life is ... the flow of the universe itself. An infinite set of processes continually interacting with each other. And thou art that.
Get out in Nature, as living objects may make this easier to recognize, or re-cognize. But you can do it anywhere. Everything you think of as a thing is more amazing than you can possibly fathom.
Seeing everything with wonder and awe through a fresh set of eyes
If you have a science background, you probably realize that the chair you are sitting on is not as it appears. It is not a solid object, even though it looks and feels that way to your senses. It is 99.9999999% empty space. Trust me on this if you don't know that to be true*.
So just appreciate the unfathomability of life, and try to drop another construct of your mind. You do not have a permanent self. You are really not who ...you ...think you are. Really -- just like that chair. But even more, much more, than that.
The construct that needs to be de-constructed is that you are here, reading this post (BTW, congrats that you've made it this far 🥳), and the rest of the world is out there. That's just not how life, the universe, and existence itself work. That may be how they appear to work, but it simply isn't so.
Like the late David Foster Wallace observed in his classic commencement speech**:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
This is all about being open to and aware ofLife, and realizing how little we truly know and how much we are conditioned in this world (by our DNA, our upbringing, society, culture, etc.)
So what I hope for anyone reading this, is that you too have The Wake-Up Call. Hopefully the benevolent kind, but no matter the circumstances, it can be used to re-focus your attention, increase your awareness, and bring wonder and awe into your life.
Or better, let you re-cognize the wonder and awe of being a part of this very existence, right here, right now, nothing special, just this, just this.
Epilog: So you may be familiar with the way we can get somewhat attached, maybe dependent, perhaps even addicted to our portable electronic devices (e.g., smart phones and watches). One might even say that they have come to feel like a bionic extension of one's self.
Well then, I guess I've taken one small step at putting a crack into my conceptual self. Here is the one (and thankfully only) real casualty (beyond some scrapes and bruises) from my wake-up call today, not noticed until well after the event (when I went to check the weather forecast):
Shattered image of myself, er, my Apple Watch
And isn't it interesting that my body will self-repair with only healthy food, gentle movement, and adequate rest, but my watch is now kaput, and destined for Apple's recycling center. That's also an interesting "life" lesson.
Morning Loon Serenade, September 2021, Tucker Pond, NH
I've made a few attempts to capture the back and forth calls of the Loons that sometimes reside at our pond. First you hear them, but by the time I get my camera, they've stopped. Or they are triggered by a large overhead bird (such as a Bald Eagle or an Osprey), and then stop after the threat has passed.
This morning they were pretty close to my dock, so I gave it another chance -- just filming them and seeing what happens. Either I was fortunate, or they perceived me as just another threat, as their tremolo calls started right after the camera was rolling. Sit back and enjoy this 90-second morning serenade. Listen closely, and you can even hear the echoes of their calls off the surrounding hills.
So I've started meditating again, out on the deck of our camp, early in the morning. What an amazing time to be awake and outside. The rest of humanity (at least around the pond) has yet to stir. But the wildlife is buzzing and serenading me. It really helps one get back in touch with nature, with life, with reality.
We had some family friends visiting us for a couple of days, and had some interesting conversations, one of which somehow, in that alchemic way, sparked this poem. It's called "Just the Facts, Ma'am" from that old TV show Dragnet, where the unflappable (and largely unemotional) detective wants the witness to just give the essence of the matter, not irrelevant commentary, like our minds so often do.
So anyways, here's what emerged after one of those meditation sessions.
Just the Facts, Ma’am
This thing called "life" sure is interesting, if nothing else
And there’s always something else
Life is a gift — it’s all of existence
The who-what-when-where-why of it
And yet, Life is nothing of the kind
It’s non-duality … simply the wholeness of being
Life is this moment, and only this moment
Constantly refreshed, nothing is fixed
The stillness of dawn’s light, and
The effervescence of hummingbird wings
Ever humming, flowing, emerging, creating
This impermanent dance of Lila
Sunlight dances across a misty pond
Dewdrops glisten upon Indra’s net
Ripples of consciousness itself
Are but the footfalls of so many water striders
That loon’s mournful morning cry really is
The sound of your original birth
Everything is, just as it is, enfolding and unfolding
What if Reality is that we are living on the edge?The edge of what?
Right on the edge of an epic cliff, the pinnacle of a mythic mountain, Or perhaps the mysterious precipice of the Here and Now Looking over the edge, we cannot even see the bottom It’s occluded by the clouded thinking of our minds
Can you sense that, in your body?Yeah, I'm feeling a little vertigo, a little bit woozy Exactly.That’s what I’m talking about.You’re tuning into it. Your body knows something that your mind has chosen to ignore Or is simply unwilling to recognize or acknowledge or process And this is difficult to capture in words -- you have to feel your way
Indeed, language is both a pathway and a boundary between us. Say what? Life is always about the whole of it … the totality and nothing … that is, No Thing So that’s a little taste of Living on the Edge … a reframing of you ... if you will It requires a bit of a shift from your rational mind toward your intuitive sense But try not to get lost in the language; words can only be a pointer, they’re not the point
Tell me, when did Creation occur?Uhh, I don’t know … about 14 billion years ago? That’s just the Big Bang; I’m asking about Creation itself Isn’t Creation happening this very moment?Indeed, only in this moment? In fact, isn't that knife-edge precipice the very place where Life lives us? The exhilaration of birthing this very universe, in the eternal Now
You are both an insignificant speck of stardust and a magical note in this universal symphony Without you, this world would not exist … think about that … or rather, feel that and be that Look deeply enough at anything in Nature and you will see it shimmer with Life’s creative energy You are that very same creative energy … that inexhaustible, infinite potential It’s coursing through your veins and thriving in the trillions of cells that constitute your body-mind
That creative energy is pumping every heartbeat, which races faster as you inch closer to that edge Don’t worry!You cannot fall from this edge, but you can leap, and if you’re willing, soar Above the clouds of us vs. them, of right and wrong, of judgment and even preference itself Every present moment of awareness opens up new pathways into fresh insights Loosening the grip of old habits and patterned reactivity, while healing inner wounds
Isn’t this the place you’d want to live, every day, every moment?Yeah, I think so Trust me, thinking won’t get you there … indeed, simply let the mind quiet into stillness and peace Sit with me, won’t you?Right Here, Right Now.Sure, why not ... I'd love to Let us weave ourselves together into the emerging tapestry of this very moment
Words are not required. Let’s just feel our hearts beating together, as one. Can you feel that? Oh Yes!
This morning I was sitting at my desk, listening to the multitude of birds that begin their singing at the crack of dawn. I'm not complaining ;-) They all have different songs, and songs within songs, even discordant clicks and cackles, perhaps warning of this human illuminating their space so early.
One of the birds we are blessed with is the White-Rumped Shama, a local visitor that we've coaxed into singing, and a virtuoso performance I observed while hiking elsewhere on Oahu. These formerly Asian song birds were brought here to be caged in local gardens. Eventually released into the wild in the late 1930s, they now bless us daily with their melodic songs as they seem to celebrate their freedom. Anyways, something about the immersion in this avian chorus, and the glistening dew that emerged after sunrise, brought me into another way of being. Bubbling up in my head were the words "it seems as if" and the recognition that how we usually perceive the world is not "reality," which became "but it is not."
And in this case, on this morning, that led to the emergence of these words. I hope they are as interesting for you to read and perhaps ponder, as they were for me to write (and edit and tweak and tweak some more) until they captured the essence of the unfolding flow.
Oh, and about the photo above, which I picked from my photo library based on my first draft of these words. This was from a trip with an "insider" to the Honolulu Museum of Art, and while my wife and our friend were roaming through the art displays, I was roaming far and wide with my camera. And I stumbled upon a location where various pieces of art had been collected together and covered with plastic (perhaps it was "out with the old, in with the new"). Anyways, when I saw this photo, the words "seeing through the veil" came too me as this Buddha is meditating with his iPhone behind plastic, or so it appears. Haha, somehow, it seemed appropriate, and prompted yet more revisions ;-)
Seeing Through the Veil
(It Seems As If … But It Is Not)
It seems as if …
You were born into this world
To learn and to love and to live your life
With various struggles and occasional triumphs
With the only guaranteed certainty of life, being death
… But it is not
It seems as if …
You are a unique individual, with a name, and a face
And tell-tale characteristics, as different from me as from
The White-Rumped Shama's melodic birdsong at dawn
And this morning’s coolglistening dew just after sunrise
… But it is not
It seems as if …
You find comfort and control in categorizing and dividing up the world
Preferring, labeling, judging, or prejudicing your "sense"
Of friend or foe, right or wrong, saint or sinner
And good or bad (or maybe even evil)
… But it is not
It seems as if …
You are searching for that great insight; that "aha" moment
On a path, perhaps, to find some spiritual truth, or at least some inner-resonance
Seeking God or Nirvana or Enlightenment, or maybe just a respite from your own mind
To bring you inner peace, compassion and joy
… But it is not
But what if …
You and your life were much simpler than all of that?
What if ... you already areenough, exactly as you are now, and always have been?
What if ... you and me and everything, including that melodic birdsong, are simply one?
One what, you may ask ... onething? No. No thing. Nothing.
