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Days after writing the Champions post, where I said “never lose your muchness”, I awoke to a day when I declared softly: I have lost my muchness.  I forgot my own rule of thumb, never say never.  Never and its cousin, always, rules out another little thing called human-ness.

There I was, feeling alone in the suchness of losing my muchness.  As Emmanuel, once said: “if darkness were my natural home, I would be comfortable there.”  I wasn’t comfortable there and because I am a friend to me, I knew I had to take myself by the hand and find my way back to my light, my muchness.

Some of you may remember Abraham’s reference to having our pencil in the fan.  These days they call it “out of the vortex”.  I still like the pencil in the fan concept.  It’s such a perfect analogy of how I can impede my muchness.  So I developed a plan to turn back toward my muchness.  I call it my Emergency Pencil-in-the-Fan kit:

1.   move about mindfully
2.   whatever negative inner talk is going on, stop and ask what would a friend say to you right now, listen to what that friend has to say
3.   walk with your gaze outward and upward
4.   take 4 deep conscious breaths, up from the toes and exhale back down into the toes, feel yourself grounded to the earth
5.   tell yourself nothing is more important than being in your own corner, a solid friend to you
6.   eat something that had it’s roots in the earth, eat it slowly and mindfully
7.   surround yourself with the structure and support of doing what’s before you to do and doing it mindfully
8.   close your eyes, take one more deep breath, and as you exhale, feel your shoulders drop, drop into the body sense of “I am a friend to me”
9.   remember that whatever you are believing is based on untrue reasoning.  You may not know that now but you will as soon as your pencil is out of the fan.
10. move about mindfully

I made nos. 1 and 10 the same because if I did nothing else on that list, that alone would suffice.  It will ground you in the present moment.  This is what Eckhart Tolle says about the present moment:

“Once you have reached a certain level of consciousness, you are able to decide what kind of relationship you want with the present moment. Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy? The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you want to have with life. Once you have decided you want the present moment to be your friend… Life becomes friendly toward you… One decision changes your entire reality. But that one decision you have to make again and again and again – until it becomes natural to live in such a way.”

A word about mindfulness movement, several words actually!  It means dropping into the body, aware of every movement you make.  While walking feel each part of your foot strike the surface, note texture of the surface you are walking on, the air moving across your body.  Reach to open a cabinet, note the arm extending outwards, fingers touch surface, texture and temperature of surface.  Hand encircles a cup or a plate, feel each tiny movement.  Note the sounds, the textures, the temperature, smells, tastes, movement of the body.  Practice it before you find your pencil in the fan and you will easily be able to fall back into it when you are feeling wonky.  For more information on mindfulness, I recommend reading The Long Road Turns to Joy by Thich Nhat Hanh.

This is what Thich Nhat Hanh says about the importance of mindfulness:

“… consciousness is said to be a field, a plot of land in which every kind of seed has been planted, seeds of suffering, happiness, joy, sorrow, fear, anger, and hope.  The quality of our life depends on which of these seeds we water.  The practice of mindfulness is to recognize each seed as it sprouts, and to water the most wholesome seeds whenever possible.”

Thich Nhat Hanh also recommends repeating a Zen Buddhist poem while walking mindfully:

“I have arrived.
I am home
in the here,
in the now.
I am solid.
I am free.
In the ultimate
I dwell.”

May we all arrive home, solid and free.

Love is a commonly used word, so frequently do we hear it that it’s become both under valued and over valued.  Over valued in it’s fickleness and under valued for the unexamined depth of what it really means.  I’ve sought to discover its true meaning.  It’s been a life long question and the answers change and morph as I do.  At times I’ve found love co-mingling with joy and truth.  A joy that is independent of facts or conditions and truths that remain when all else falls away.

I searched the archives of this blog and it’s over 600 posts many of which are quoting spiritual authors and poets.  Here’s a short collection of what some of them have to say on the subject of love, joy and truth.  Somewhere in there, I’ll slip in my own words.

This isn’t one of those blog posts you’ll want to hurry through and then go about flinging yourself into the day.  No, this is one you’ll want to linger with awhile and let the words melt like warm butter penetrating through the layers of being, softening as it moves deeper within, finally landing in that space that is beyond words.

* * * * *

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken;
inside “love” there is more joy than we know of;
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds;
there are whole rivers of light.

~Kabir~

* * * * *

There will come a time when images have all gone by and you will see you know not what you are.  It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound.  Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is….The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself.  ~ A Course in Miracles

* * * * *

“Abandonment,”
we call it. As in: wild, or perfect.
We abandon ourselves
to love.

~Kate Knapp Johnson~

* * * * *

This Union you want with the earth and sky
This Union we all need with love

Stay here quivering like a drop of mercury

(combined words of Rumi & Hafiz)

* * * * *

The real presence slips past our demand for spectacle. it slips past our despair. Not just like a child – sometimes it is a child. She walks down the blistered steps to where you kneel and says the simplest things. She is entertained by butterflies. She has opinions about unicorns. She does not seem to care that you are ruined and lost. She does not even seem to notice. Find an earthworm in the neglected loam and she will make you feel for a moment that your life has not been wasted. Name a flower and she will make you feel that you have begun to learn to speak. ~Tim Farrington

* * * * *

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name….

~Jane Kenyon~

* * * * *

…you must be willing to set fear aside and trust your knowing self,
the truth which lies deep within, that tells you what to do, from a
place of truth and deep connection with all that is. This truth is
beyond fear.

Quado through Carrie Hart

* * * * *

Never mind pleasure.  Search out joy.  Pleasure is
its shadow.  But joy is real, a secret splendor
running through all creation.

Like gold, it doesn’t lie about the streets waiting
to be picked up.  It has to be dug for, with diligence
and passion.  It’s in people, to be found through
the practice of love.  It’s in work, in the rigorous
exercise of powers of mind or body or spirit.  It’s a
gift the created world is perpetually offering; the
price of it is untiring attention to the present
moment.  …

Hunt it down, pursue it, track it to its lair where
it dwells.  Not in pleasures and pastimes, distractions,
piled-up satisfactions, and busyness.  It dwells in truth,
and nowhere else.

That’s why it matters.  It will show you moment by
moment where truth is for you.  And when you know that,
cleave to it, turn not aside, be given up to that.  That,
if you will will, is a way of life worth living.

~Fae Malania~

* * * * *

If you deny what is your nature
you become deeply attached to that denial.
When you accept what is there, in its truth,
then you are released.
One does not release through rejection.
One releases through love.

Emmanuel’s Book I: A manual for living comfortably in the cosmos

* * * * *

Your choice is between illusion and truth.
There is no particular formula for choosing.
There is only your intent.  Will that be enough?
It will be enough to start you on your way.

Keep asking yourselves, “Am I here now?”
Just that question
will make enormous changes in your lives.
If you ask it experientially
rather than philosophically,
you will find that it becomes a mantra
that will bring you back,
breath by breath, to this time, to this place,
for in truth there is no other.

As you set yourself free from your histories,
you will wear your costumes more lightly;
you will smile much more than usual,
and you will release your hearts
to the point where you begin to trust them.
You will, in short,
let yourselves out of prison, bar by bar.

Fear is a habit.
As you recognize it,
you will be able to loosen the viselike grip –
not that fear has upon you –
but that you have upon fear.

Fear will go away
once you give it permission
to leave.

Emmanuel Book III: What Is an Angel Doing Here?

* * * * *

I want to linger inside the silence
void of sound and distraction

long enough to see for myself that love’s only obstacle
fear, really is just a paper dragon

I want to let every barrier to love fall away

I want to liberate what sleeps within me

and awake resplendent in all that remains:
your pure and perfect love

~Bethie~

* * * * *

“In this,” she says (this vision or, as she always calls it, shewing)–”In this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my understanding it was as round as any ball. I looked thereupon and thought: ‘What may this be?’ And I was answered in a general way, thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ I marvelled how it could last, for methought it might fall suddenly to naught for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasts and ever shall last because God loves it, and so hath all-thing its being through the love of God.”  -Fae Malania, The Quantity of a Hazelnut

* * * * *

And now finally and ultimately we come to the end of describing something that really is beyond description.  Though it can be experienced, it is formless and cannot be held nor heard nor seen.  With a twist of paradox, I leave you with this from Suzanne Vega:

I won’t use words again …

They’re just the crust of the meaning
With realms underneath
Never touched
Never stirred
Never even moved through

If language were liquid
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever be

* * * * *

Image props in order posted:

1. artstyleonline.com
2. freefoto.com
3. worldphotographicarts.com
4. digitalcribs.net
5. flickr.com
6. kids-fun-and-games.com

There comes a turning point when you look
around and say, “I really might be all right.”

At that moment
the doors open
and life moves in.

Emmanuel’s Book II: The Choice for Love
Compiled by Pat Rodegast and Judith Stanton

Yet, as the longing and the pain increased,
I began to turn,
just as you have done,
to seek the Light,
knowing that if I felt pain because of lack of Light
then there must be Light.
If darkness were my natural home
I would be comfortable there.

So I turned,
as you have done,
and climbed mountains and forded streams
and prayed in mosques and temples and churches
and followed teachers and stumbled and walked again
until I came to the time of evolution
when I could say truly and completely,
“I am one with God.”

Emmanuel’s Book I-A Manual for living comfortably in the cosmos

~Emmanuel excerpted from Book III-What is An Angel Doing Here?~

Emmanuel