The Glorious Both/And

One of my favorite spiritual practices now, portals to presence and wonder actually involves tuning into the past! looking back to experience the now more deeply, in the light of Beings' journey of  becoming, (be)coming all the way to THIS nowness and right hereness  😱 the ground of Being has a past, and a quite extraordinarily EPIC one at that! S hining a light on it reveals the splendor of this moment it has become... can bring you to feeling astonished and deeply moved by the present... looking back to the beginning of the universe, feeling into, visualizing what it ONCE WAS, those early days of the ground of Being beginning its' journey of becoming... becoming cells, atoms, molecules, water and earth, chickens and eggs, mountains and lakes, becoming....HUMAN...becoming ME...my god, the o ne becoming MANY to see what it has become, what it is right NOW, a dimly lit room, dancing and drumming, strangers drawn together to celebrate the staggering mystery of our coinciding li...

"We can keep our dignity even within our imperfections and failures by having a high regard for our own struggle . When we develop this attitude, we begin to experience other people in an entirely new way. Our life and their lives intersect and touch in the most intimate way. We become more human." - Jason Shulman Having a high regard for our struggle is not self-pity, clinging to victimhood or obsessing over what's wrong. It is something very different. It is self-compassion. And most importantly, it is not abandoning ourselves in our suffering. It is turning towards our pain, whatever it may be made of, and whatever it's source is. Resistance, guilt, shame, agony, depression, you name it. It is practicing not always resorting to turning way, to rising above, to illusorizing, to going stoic with a radical attitude of neutrality and zooming out into an overly detached witnessing so as to look at it, but be unphased. It is no longer resorting to only mechanizing our ...

separateness and oneness uni dual not non dual and uni viduality the one and the many the one is the many - a oneness of multiplicity the One as two "Unless the many are seen as holy as the one, then we never arrive at the great secret: that the many and the one are a single thing." the absolute and the relative They do not exist apart from one another they're intertwined like lovers “No relative only, no absolute only. We don’t need those traps. They are not opposed but benefit from each other, the way sound and silence dance, making music.”- Jason Shulman unity and diversity unity  of diversity = diversity without division being and becoming Being is becoming The ground of Being  blooming! the Shadow and the light the light can illuminate , without needing to negate the darkness they have one another joy and sorrow intertwined suffering and freedom not freedom from, freedom to  (be fully human) heartache and love the heart broken  open the personal and the unive...

This now that feels timeless This present moment Is Billions of years old! It’s the leading edge, this present With an unfathomably epic past Savoring the paradox: This feeling of timelessness is at least 140,000,000 centuries old! Which means that right now the universe is savoring the wondrous mystery of itself, AS ME And the experience of simplicity owes it's nature to an unfathomably complex process that began eons ago These are precious gifts Evolution has given us Everything this moment is, Was once the size of an ACORN Recalling the NOW's past Instantly makes it riveting immerses me more deeply in it in the poignance of ALL OF THIS that the past has led to, That I am now thrillingly, enigmatically, part of. Even small talk is significant When it has the depth of 14 billion years within it A poem I wrote inspired by the awe-inducing view in which which evolution has been the process of Being becoming, and now emerging into a conscious relationship with itself, as human :...