The Best Thing About Hope

The best thing about hope is the person and the people who have it –Bryan Maynard

How Healing Happens

True healing does not happen when we try to change (I’ve never had much success with that); true healing happens when we make the unconscious conscious.

Rinpoche on the Art of Happiness

Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower,

But is already there in relaxation and letting go.

 

Don’t strain yourself.

There is nothing to do…

Let the game happen on its own, springing up and falling back….without changing anything

And all will vanish and reappear, without end…

 

Waiting to grasp the ungraspable, you exhaust yourself in vain

As soon as you relax this grasping, space is there, open inviting and comfortable.

 

So make use of it. All is yours already. Don’t search any further.

Don’t go into the inextricable jungle, looking for the elephant who is already quietly at home.

 

Nothing to do

Nothing to force

Nothing to want

And everything happens by itself.

 

Gendun Rinpoche

Never Take A Shirt from a Naked Man

This African proverb captures a lifetime of wisdom in one simple summary.

It means,

Never take advice from a friend who has not done his own deeper work.

And, like any good proverb, nothing else need be said (or written). In fact, the proverb is actually not meant for writing or reading; proverbs are meant to be heard, to be spoken as they are the means of moral education in oral cultures and traditions.

So, for fun, it might be nice to say out loud (even whisper, if required) and to sense the powerful truth of this proverb as you hear the words,

Never take a shirt from a naked man

Try it. And let the light and the wisdom come in. I dare you.

🙂

 

One Thing To Do

We must never deny our impulse to live from our inherent capacity for delight. To NOT do so is a great injustice both to ourselves and to our world.

Denial of Delight: The Greatest Injustice

Whatever form injustice takes, it always has the same impact: the de-grading of a thing or a person away from purest essence. And, while mindfulness allows for these types of degradations in the holding space of universal being, there is a flow “inside” all things that longs for the freedom to be unhindered by such degradations.

If I had a gun to my head and someone asked me, “What is injustice, and what, if there is such a thing, is the greatest injustice of all?” I would have to say that it has much to do with the denial of the impulse or the flow of all things toward the freedom of delight and enjoyment. As the late poet Jack Gilbert observes, even the women at the water streams in Calcutta are talking and laughing with each other.

There is a flow that makes things right and just, it seems to me. And that flow is the impulse toward the delight of enjoyment. The impulse toward delight and pleasure is apparently built into the nature of things.

It’s like we come from joy, we are made of the stuff of joy, and we are somehow always going toward joy. Whatever might be said about injustice, it certainly tries to take that impulse and that flow away from us and away from all things.

We are never served by fear as much as we are served by our flow toward delight and en-joyment. Even though nothing can fully crush or deny the impulse toward joy, where there is prolonged exposure to fear, there will always be a suppression of the impulse to go from joy toward joy.

And, this is the greatest injustice of all. It makes things un-right.

It is justice-making in the world to develop a deep, sustained capacity to contact joy as a way of being in this world. It is right-making whenever we do this.

May you be filled with joy,

May you be formed by joy,

May you be made well by joy,

May you be received by joy

🙂

–bryan

Playing in 10,000 Places

Consciousness plays in 10,000 places,

In stardust and mud, in all of the spaces.

Alive and aware, seeing herself in all faces,

Her gift to herself is awakening graces.

 

In the spirit of playful awareness of consciousness of being, I wrote this in response to a quote from John Muir, as posted by one of my followers of this blog (Hi, Tobi!).

Enjoy!

Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

” – JOHN MUIR

That healing that gives strength to the body and the soul is the playful energy arising from the graces of consciousness herself. And nature is one of our best teachers of how to contact the energy of aliveness in all things. Wow, everything is alive as pure being itself. Touching this becomes grace upon grace.

 

Peace,

Bryan

My Suffering Friends and Space Travel

In the past week, I’ve received news regarding two friends that made my heart sink. One is entering his final days with cancer and the other is valiantly searching and doing all he can to face mental illness. Both are good men and the light within them is the light that shines into my own heart.

My thoughts as I watch them live and breathe their way through these painful realities flow along these lines:

1. I no longer see suffering, whether cancer or mental illness or childhood abuse or whatever, as something ‘out there’ or as something ‘happening to that person.’ For me, awareness has lifted my sense of being alive to the level of absolute solidarity with all beings, at all levels of existence. My body is mostly space that does not end or begin with what my mind knows as the boundaries of ‘me,’ or ‘self.’ There is no “I” any longer. “We” have cancer. “We” have mental illness.
2. This quote was shared by my friend who is battling cancer. It is from one of his quarterly newsletter pieces. He really believes the stuff he writes and so do I. He writes the following,

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement . . . get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted.  Everything is phenomenal . . . .  To be spiritual is to be amazed.”  from Abraham Heschel.

All of reality is connected. When one has cancer, all have cancer. Life includes every part of human and extra-human substance and experience and not one inch of it is separate from all the rest.

I am grateful for my friends and for the truth that not even death can separate any part of what is from any part of what is.

Rumi’s Tip on Higher Consciousness

“Let the beauty we love be what we (are) do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” ― Rumi

Perhaps Love Might Be the Source of Consciousness

I came across Rick Hanson’s newsletter in a quick glance this morning. He makes special comment about watching Mr. Rogers’ acceptance speech at the Emmy’s. Mr. Rogers was a gentle man who seemed to BE peace.

In his speech, he gave thanks to many who helped him along the way and, with one phrase, he captured an insight and a thought that I hope to be true regarding the nature of consciousness as the Source of all things. He said,

I want to thank those who have loved us into being

Perhaps love really is there at the Source of all consciousness. Perhaps love is here as consciousness itself.

Peace to you,

bryan