Steps on a Journey of Waking Up, Gradually
Author: George Pór Issue: 2024-06-05
Steps on a Journey of Waking Up, Gradually
Evolving questions for the focus of my contemplative meditation in the morning, 1970 to 2024
by George Pór
Who am I?
What God wants me to be, today?
How can I love myself better, today, if the self includes All My Relations?
How to live in the beyond, where there is no self, today?
How to relax into, observe, and enjoy the dance of the expanded self and no-self?
The last question is my current one. Holding it lightly throughout the day helps me learn remarkable dance moves. Someday, I may open a dance school…
Condensation
I can put a lid on the omelet to prevent the top from remaining uncooked, which helps cook it more evenly and quickly. However, the steam taking off from the surface gets condensed under the lid, and the droplets fall back into the omelet, making it watery, which I don’t like.
In the “beyond” dimension, the self dissolves in the formless steam. The condensation turns it back into form, into this body, this consciousness. With the last out-breath, I will keep the lid off.
The body is the garden
From its Christian beginning through the many New Age-y self-development courses to today’s pop psychology the “body is my temple” mantra had its day under the sun, at least for me. I’ve been reciting it for decades, even taught it, but with a certain guilt because I never really lived up to its implications.
Thanks to my wife's loving care, we have a beautiful garden attached to our house. In it, we have a Medicine Wheel, a little pond where frogs live, birds, squirrels, and the occasional fox come to drink. There are also many fragrant and medicinal plants, strawberry and other berry bushes, and pear, apple, and cherry trees. Near the pond, there’s a bench, where our meditation can be nurtured by the scent of the honeysuckle on the trellis.
Before we moved into this house 8 years ago, the terrain was abandoned and covered with thick overgrowth. We are planning to move to another town, and I am having a hard time saying goodbye to this garden. Then I realize it is not our garden; it doesn’t belong to us; we were merely caretakers of this piece of land and we hope that the next one will take as good care of it as we did.
The condensation that appears to be my body is the form that the formless steam inhabits temporarily. When I’ll move on, the formless will release its hold on the world of forms, just as we might leave our beloved garden for someone else to tend.
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