Wide Awake Living

While getting back to writing again after a long pause, something has been coming up that seems to shed a lot of light on my own and other’s stories of awakening.  The title above reflects what it is all about, and it is being a rich and fascinating exploration for me that I would like invite you to join in with as you read on.

What I notice in relation to my own awakening is that there are many areas where the actual living of the newly awakened perspective has been as easy and natural as water running downhill. But there have been other areas in daily life where earlier stages of development seem to naturally take over and temporarily hijack me into re-identification with familiar patterns of reaction and discomfort.

I had read that, once realization came, all the reactivity and discomfort would be finished. In an absolute way, that statement is totally true—it is all finished (based on the new identification with my always-already-awake Self). And yet at the same time, there still can be moments of disconnect from that awareness and then there is reactivity. Yes, this reactivity and discomfort are seen in the context of being a part of the grand perfection of everything, and yet that doesn’t mean that they are to be ignored as they are transcended.

The discomfort that arises is functioning as an attention-getting device that is part of a constructive process of gradual personal acclimation to that perfection, in order that it may be more fully lived.  

A cognitive framework that allows discomfort and reactivity its place in the perfection of things then becomes important. If our internal thought structures are open enough to allow for anything and everything that shows up to have a legitimate part to play in life, (and we don’t reject some things and disassociate from them) then everything in life becomes a support for awakening.  Life can naturally move towards greater and greater capability of the individual person to fully live in daily life that which we have realized ourselves to be.

I am fascinated to be giving the field of human development an overview, and am especially fascinated to see it correlating with the recent developments in both neuroscience and child development. It seems that we humans are at an amazing transition-point in history because we are now able to see and make sense of our own development over the eons in a clear way that has not been cognitively possible before. As we have developed the capabilities of our neo-cortex (pardon my oversimplification here) this has allowed us new perspectives on who we are and changed the world that we see. 

Along the way, the increasingly complex ways in which we construct thought-based knowledge have also revealed themselves, as have the mechanics of perception. This obviously pertains to the way that we construct the personal self in its entirety. This self-construction process that has occurred in us as individuals is the bedrock that lies under all the rest of our thinking. It serves as a foundation that allows or doesn’t allow whole spectrums of experiences in any particular life.

These new perspectives also bring in a new possibility—that we may be able to allow life to deconstruct parts of our personality structure that are outgrown and no longer helpful. This means that the real Self is now more able than ever before to maintain a personal identity (a small me) that is operationally functional at a high level, in that it is serving the real Self and allowing the One which is awake to live through the personality more freely.

One of the ways that our personal thought structure can potentially hamper us pertains to the way it integrates ideas about spiritual awakening (by any name). It may even go so far as to firmly disbelieve that such a thing could ever happen in our own life, or it may be more subtle than that. Some of our assumptions and beliefs are closed systems with set interpretations of everything and these kinds of closed systems do not allow for the openness or space in which awakening can occur. The uncomfortable moments in life are faithfully offering us clues to ways in which we may be hampering ourselves, interfering with life’s inherent tendency to develop itself through us.
How our personality structure interprets what happens to us is significant in terms of our ability to actually live the realization that becomes available to us. Whether we have pursued realization through one of the great traditions, been outside them, or whether awakening has seemed to pursue us, the outcome (awakening, enlightenment, gnosis, self-actualization, Christ-consciousness, et al) will, at least in terms of our ability have it available back to our daily lives, be dependent on the structure that we use to interpret, understand, know anything in our lives.

For instance, if we operate through a thought-based personality structure that is totally dominated by the need to be right and have others be wrong , then any experiences of non-egoic awareness will be interpreted and contained by those structures. The outcome would almost inevitably be a difficulty in even seeing anything that lies outside those structures. Through our thought we draw meaning from our experiences, and create the world that we experience by a necessary censorship of our sensory input that guards us against overwhelm.

Similarly, if the conceptual structures that build the individual personality have, throughout that person’s lifetime, ostracized the “bad” parts of who they are, then those parts need to be included somehow within the whole in order for the realization to be fully lived. This disowning of parts of ourselves is a major contribution of  psychology to the spiritual seeker’s dilemma. I have recently discovered that new information from the field of psychology describes very well the pattern behind the arising of these disowned parts of my own psyche that I described in the latter parts of my book. Knowing about this cognitively gives me a framework for allowing the reclamation process to proceed with a higher degree of comfort. It lets me relax.

This exploration seems to be about how the structure of any individual’s thought-based personality has a role to play in allowing space for awakening and how it can provide a conducive environment for awakening both before, after and during any realization of who we really are. These thought-based capabilities of the “small me” seem to now be offering themselves to be wielded as a tool in the hand of that newly discovered Self and are coming into alignment with the movement of life itself as it animates the individual person.

We live in a monumental time, and the dying of the old ways of operating need not cloud our perception of what is arising in its place.

© 2009 Alice Gardner

It feels like a safe statement to call this time in our history transitional, even though we don’t know exactly what we are transitioning to.

Change is being thrust on us (irrespective of who we currently blame or credit) and our politicians, economists, scientists, etc are just trying to keep up. All the systems we rely on are changing at full speed to keep up with the new requirements.

Change is in the wind, whether we like it or not! For some this is frightening. For others, we may welcome it but we still have to deal somehow with personal losses and with a new uncertainty. Many of us may wish that we could freeze our lives back at some earlier point in history where life was simpler, but we don’t seem to have that choice.
The stress that we feel in times of change can clearly be about getting to know our attachments. Without life staying the same, how are we to know if we are going to be allright? We therefore attach habitually to what has seemed to provide stability in the past. It is a natural search for a way to be sure that we are going to survive. We are programmed for survival, and this is not a bad thing, but it is only one of our capacities, and we either balance it with our other capacities in transitional times, or we feel a lot of stress.

We also have the capacity to turn our attention away from our self-centered survival mechanisms that are hard-wired into us when we see that those mechanisms are no longer helpful.

Stop a moment and see if this is true for you.

I say we are no longer simply reacting to the world in pre-programmed patterns. A major change has occurred quietly. Some would call it meta-cognition maybe? I don’t know. It seems to be an ability to be aware of our thinking, to observe it and change our relationship to it. The same with our emotions.
So we see ourselves reacting to change and uncertainty about the future with fear-based thinking. Yet after we’ve observed this behavior enough times, it doesn’t grip us the same way. We stand apart, noticing the fear, rather than overtaken by it. We see what we are doing. We have reached a tip-over-point. Awareness of fear feels different than blind absorption in it. We are outgrowing our programming and the world opens up wider. We have a spectrum of possible responses to what we have become aware of — not just the fight or flight options we had before.

When we talk to people who lived through the Great Depression, one of the things that we hear is that it was a time when people had so much taken away that a new appreciation of the non-materialistic aspects of life naturally surfaced. One can hear things like this today on the news. When catastrophe hits, people are surprised by how happy they can be just to have each other, or just to see another sunrise. Change and difficulty seem to give us the opportunity to step back, become aware of ourselves in new ways, and return to what is really important to us.

Where does that take you?

I get taken to “That which doesn’t change”, both in me and in the world. The swirl of change in the world takes me to awareness of my conditioning sometimes — that’s fine too. But by welcoming that, I am taken farther. I am taken into a solid and unchanging reality that lies behind the play of light and sound on the surface of life, to the perfect Peace, the vibrantly alive Love, that is completely beyond my comprehension.

If we were to go from being a millionaire to a pauper, or from well to sick, happy to sad, or visa versa, there is something in us that doesn’t change when those things change. Life thrusts us back towards something more essential, something behind the window-dressing of life. This is where we find the deep nourishment that all the outer circumstances and material possessions couldn’t give us. This is what we were looking for all along. And this is where all the troubles of our lives finally manage to bring us (in spite of all our objections).

So I say, if our changing world has brought you stress, then let your troubles be your friends, and see what they are showing you about who YOU, are.

© 2009 Alice Gardner

LIVE WEBCAST on Never Not Here TV with Alice Gardner. You are invited to participate in a conversation about living your awakening in the midst of your everyday life, and how your current circumstances are exactly perfect, just the way they are.

April 12th
1:00 pm Pacific time,
3:00 pm Chicago Time,
4:00 pm Eastern time,
9:00 pm London time,
10:00 pm on the continent.

We would love to hear from you, so check your phone rates to Chicago (the # will be posted on the day) and put this online visit on your calendar for Easter afternoon!
“Who we think we are is only ever a thought. Only by stepping outside the world of thought, can the reality of the one-life be seen. This reality is what everything rests on, what thought rises from and falls back into. It is what is here before birth and after death. It is what we all simply and really are.

“When we realize what else there is beyond our ideas about everything, there is often a gap where we don’t yet have a sense of how to live this–how to bring it into our busy modern lives, our families, our workplaces and our concerns about world issues. We are not immediately able to embody the Truth that we have realized.

“Through exposure to the experience of others in an awakening process, we can relax the old ideas about “enlightenment” being something that can only happen to special people who live in monasteries or caves. We can embrace the existence of our own awakened presence, right in the midst of our everyday lives. Where else could it be? It was right Here all along!”
–A. Gardner from Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice

Never Not Here TV

I hear they are having a good sugaring season in Vermont this year! The sap rises up through the maple trees after being underground all winter with the first warm sunny days of spring. It splashes generously into buckets and pipelines, and then onto breakfast, feeding us sweet-loving humans with the nonchalant grace of nature’s plenty.

The bird-song celebrates each spring morning with unabated joy made into sound. We have mockingbirds in my neighborhood. They stun me each morning with the purity of their joy.

Nature loved winter too. Winter is a season a lot like we’ve been having in our human affairs because of our long-time enslavement to mind’s creations and its seeking after comfort. But nature loves winter too. We need the winter part of the cycle. In nature a lot dies back in the face of the cold. In our human development a lot dies back in our times of discomfort. Our perspectives change. Old models fall. We go back to essentials. We are no longer fooled by trinkets and baubles. We get motivated to find what is real and substantial… what doesn’t change when everything is taken away.

And then spring comes! From our journeys into darkness, at some point the thaw begins. That which was solid becomes liquid. That which was stuck becomes free. Rivers flow again towards the ocean.

In the Christian tradition Easter has a wonderful symbolism that seems to refer directly to what we are talking about here. Jesus is a wonderful example of how even the worst possible thing can happen to you, yet Life/God/Christ is at work in the midst of it, rising again from whatever grave there has been. Jesus’ death, the interval in between and the way Christ rose on Easter all point to a rebirth process that nature is displaying every springtime. Jesus, the human being, had to say “thy will be done” for his true identity, the Living Christ, the awakened One to take over.

The problem I see in the Christian tradition’s use of this story, is that being “The Christ” (or being one with the “Father”)is understood to be something lofty and unattainable for regular people. Same with Buddhism. No monk or minister would dare to utter such words of blasphemy as to say that they were also That! But they are! They are–with no diminution of Jesus’ attainment or Buddha’s, and no illusions as to anyone’s human vehicle being infallible first. In spite of all warts they/we are already that, always have been, and so, dear reader, are you.

Its just that over the past few thousand years we’ve maintained and passed on a load of cultural and familial conditioning that causes us to identify with the imperfect little human story that we’ve been told is what/who we are. And all the time it wasn’t true.

I invite you to open to your inner springtime. Nature is encouraging and encouraging us towards this. Rather than relating to “Christ or to “enlightenment”, lets just call this our “natural self”. This has the same feel as watching how a tree moves in a gentle breeze, a brook running downhill or when listening to a bird on a spring morning. But this is felt when looking at yourself, at who we truly are, behind/before all the thinking. Our entire surroundings everywhere, even and especially in a nasty place that isn’t what we wanted, life is calling to us to notice what we are. It is time.
Poem to Spring Love

Buds breaking, in motion
Towards the lushness of summer leaves
Through the quick celebration of flowering,
Life paints itself
With a delicate paintbrush
On the hills
In a thousand shades of green,
As I drive between them
In awe and gratitude.
Yesterday my wonder was full and complete
In Love with the world;
Overflowing…
Today is new again; remade through your touch.
There is the ecstatic arch of my spine
Alive in the bedrock
Deep under the swell of the hills
Rising and falling, riding the greater breath.
Your touch is in the penetration of air
into unfurling leaf.
Your eyes awaken remembered green
Touching the hills with springtime.
Your voice celebrates in birdsong,
The joy of being alive.
Thus do you enrich the ground of this day.
I split like a seed.
The roots stretch
Into the mysterious dark for nourishment,
Feeding the unfurling bud
In it’s journey toward the sun.

© 2008 Alice Gardner

If you wish to explore these subjects further you may wish to consider purchasing my book at Amazon.

Life has a way of bringing us exactly the experiences that are needed to awaken us (even if they are not the ones we might choose) and we can notice the same process in our collective experiences as participants in our governments and economies.

If you have looked deeply into this for yourself, or if you happen to have read my book Life Beyond Belief you are quite familiar with how the circumstances of our everyday lives support awakening out of our ideas, and into the reality of what is happening beyond our thoughts about it.

One of the collective experiences of our time is in the political arena, whether it be between different political parties or different countries. In politics in America for instance, although we of course remain individuals, many of us classify ourselves as being Republicans or Democrats. This is one more label (not so unlike calling ourselves Israelis or Palestinians) with which we categorize our thinking. Whichever particular category we choose represents particular sets of ideas about how things like governments and economies work. In the present climate of economic downturn, bank failure and unemployment, the outstanding characteristics of these categories are differing ideas about what we should do to set things right.

If we look into both sets of ideas, we can notice that although these categories of thinking are different one from another and go on to discount each others points of view, they also have something in common. Both political categories are the same in that they each consist of ideas only (or call them ideologies) and people who internally categorize themselves in this way are constructing their own mentally derived realities based on those ideas. They are seeing the world through an ideological filter.

So here we are. The economy is messed up and it continues to go in an uncomfortable direction. Its easy to see that we could become fearful over this and polarize further into our ideological corners. That is one invitation life makes–and perhaps we need to further explore our fears before we are ready for another option. If we have looked into it deeply however, we know better than to act out of our fears. We know where that takes us. We know the end result. We see it in all the wars going on in the world. We see it in the ideological gridlock on Capital Hill. Life is showing us something here.

Here in the 21st century, we have somehow now developed a capacity to respond to life in a different way–a way that is not an externalization of our fears, such as war, hatred and self-righteousness have been in the past. We find that there is another possible response now. We no longer are tied into being a Democrat who resists Republicans or visa versa. We are becoming aware of who we are (before thought arises) and are moving beyond this old ideological narrowness into a deeper and more satisfying human experience.

We can begin to see a third optional response to our circumstances being demonstrated by the world around us, in nature and in whatever particular circumstances we find ourselves in. Of course I write this without knowing what is happening in the life of each reader, but I write it nonetheless out of a trust in how life works. Life gives us each exactly what we are ready to see in each moment. I look around and I see morning coming. I see the morning light meeting the darkness without hatred or resistance. I see the pull of gravity pressing downward on the upward growth of my houseplants and the trees outside my window without rancor. I notice the ideas passing through my mind, flowing like water, doing what they do, going where they go, without having to be either right or wrong; without needing to make others right or wrong.

Without categorizing, ideas flow with grace and openness. Life is at ease with itself. Difficulty and opportunity, dark and light, gravity and growth are two sides of the same coin. Discomfort simply guides the attention to what we need to notice in each moment. All is well each moment, and yet action is unhampered. In fact action is freed. The freedom from inner categories, the embracing of seeming opposites in ourselves, seems to imbue our actions with an impact beyond what was previously possible. We fulfill our parts in the collective experience with the vitality of life flowing through us, moving us in unique and perhaps unexpected ways.

by Alice Gardner, author of “Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice” available at amazon.com.

Barack Obama won the US election on a platform of change. Many of us may be hoping that he single-handedly can change how things are going in America and in the world. I would say that this is an unrealistic expectation if such hoping means that all the rest of us have to do is to watch and wait for things to get better. If, however, this moment in the history of the world can be seen as an opportunity for every one of us to take part in this change, then yes, yes we can.

Every single one of us is an amazingly unique individual and each one of us has a different part to play. This has always been true. It is nothing new. Each of us has been playing our part all along, getting us to this moment, this situation, this opportunity.

Each of us is looking at what is happening around us with fresh eyes every moment, even though our minds may still be making a lot of noise that is covering up that direct perception. In spite of the mind’s noisiness concerning survival, money, war or other troubles, we can begin to notice what lies behind it. We can get a glimpse of what this moment in history is offering us in particular. What feedback life is giving us personally and collectively. What direction is open for us to move in and what moves are possible.

For some of us, the only movement that is possible at this moment, may be inner. Perhaps the only thing we can do is to come to terms with our financial or other concerns inside ourselves–to confront our personal demons. I want to say that this is important work too. Each individual who finds a way to come to peace internally with themselves in each moment adds to the peace that is possible in the world. Ghandi told us to “be the change that we want to see in the world” and his advice stands. If we aren’t situated to be able to stop the Israeli/Palestine conflict outwardly, we can do our part by coming to peace with the inner counterpart: the part of us that would still want retribution and revenge on someone somewhere who has wronged us.

Perhaps life has positioned us in some way so that we do have obvious outer work to do in this time of change. Perhaps life has gifted us with certain skills, abilities or potentials that position us to do something outwardly, big or small. No need to push ourselves outwardly. We only need to listen inwardly (again, listening behind the noisemaker mind that thinks it knows so much) to see what we already know about this, to find out how life wants to move us. If there is work for us to do, the energy for it will appear and the direction will open up for us. And we will know, just in the moment that it is needed, exactly what to do.

Because this seems to be change on a collective level, it may be a part of it to stay in touch with what others are doing, including meeting informally in our local communities. Invite some friends over, leave egos at the door as best you can, and have a conversation about what is going on and see what wants to happen through you. See if there is energy there for you… see if it feels right. If it does, follow it and see where it goes.

Here are a couple websites for inspiration that I know about. I’m sure there are lots of other things you know about too. Send things to me and I’ll collect them together on a new page on wideawakeliving.com.

Obama’s website: change.gov
Alliance for a New Humanity: something Deepak Chopra started

The fact that change is in the wind is in no way a contradiction to the perfection of the present moment. The current circumstances of our lives are indeed perfect just as they are, and so is the movement of change that occurs out of those exact circumstances. Life is motion as well as stillness and both are perfect. You can see it in the waterfall photo.

There has been a lot of interesting leadership material coming out of the business community over the last decades. I will do a gross summation by saying that as organizations have realized their most valuable assets to be the creativity and loyalty of empowered employees, the art of business management has deepened from the mechanics of correct administration to the art of individual empowerment, fulfillment and the fascinating question of what is involved in transformational leadership.

Tranformational leadership can be said to be the ability to allow organizations to move in quantum leaps as the changing world demands, rather than in incremental and survival-based steps.

Companies that have floundered in survival and greed seem to be falling all around us at the moment and proving once again the need for a new way of doing business with each other. How interesting that insight is coming out of a business community currently demonstrating the collective repercussions of following ego’s ambitions and fears.

Yet embracing the business community’s learning about transformational leadership in the political arena at this time could well offer new ways of understanding our national challenges and help restore a sense of collective possibility. The stage is set for a transformational leap on a national scale by the collapse of the reigning ideology and the subsequent don’t-know-mind that such an event opens.

Could it be that the rule of the mind-made self is coming to its end in exactly these times? As our incredibly interconnected world presses on each person’s sensibilities day after day, year after year, can we feel a natural relaxing of the firm boundaries of the ego which would draw a circle around itself making all else “other” and dangerous? Can we notice a larger identity already present? Can we relax our preconceived notions about how life works and what is going on long enough to see with new eyes? Perhaps the possibilities for our lives are something far greater than we had thought!

A notable quote from Barack Obama: “The true test of the American ideal is whether we’re able to recognize our failings and then rise together to meet the challenges of our time.” Our mind-made-selves and their fear and greed are failing us. This rising together Obama talks about is one way of expressing what is possible now. In order to allow this rising to occur, we each do our part when we internally relax or just turn our attention away from our stale thinking, our outworn survival mechanisms and petty divisions and make room for transformation to occur in each of our individual lives. This is simply life giving us a chance to move beyond old perspectives and see the world freshly. Then we will know to take action or not, each within our capacity, not just for our own personal advantage or that of the causes we believe in, but for the collective well-being of all life. Then leadership will be coming from within, and our collective energies will power a rising beyond anything our new President could imagine.

© 2008 Alice Gardner

This week my father sent me an article that likened the world political and economic scene at the present time to “playing frisbee on a precipice”! What an image, especially for the mother of children who love to play frisbee. Certainly it is an image that underscores the need to be careful about what we are paying attention to while we play.

Most of us are not the individuals who have to make hard decisions that turn the tide of world events one way or another. Of course we do that with our votes to some extent, and we do pay attention to how the power of our votes may affect things and vote accordingly, but we are also able to pay attention in other ways that can affect our world.

We can affect our world by paying attention to what is going on inside of us as all the outer changes happen, particularly when we notice fear. Many of us have studied the work of Abraham Maslow in school and are familiar with his hierarchy of needs. The bottom rung of his hierarchy, if you remember, is survival, and whatever is left of our survival level fear becomes evident in situations like this current one. We are being invited to explore this deep area of our human-ness and I want to affirm that this is possible to do while staying aware of the fullness and the unchanging still center of who we really are.

The economic and political tumult of this past month has been an opportunity for many of us to check out what is happening down there in the basement of our psyches and let in some fresh air. We are suddenly in a world where NOBODY knows what is going to happen next and there’s no way to know if we are going to be all-right. All the economic models of how things are supposed to work are in shambles, and we are on new ground where we just don’t know any more, even Alan Greenspan!!

Life is giving us a real-time readout on how deeply we have accepted the unknown quality of life beyond the mind, and how much we are still relying on our idea-based future predictions and models to confine life to a narrow spectrum of possibilities that make us feel safe. Life is so much bigger than all of our ideas about it and it is telling us so in no-nonsense terms!

This world situation is an invitation into a deeper acceptance of life as it is, which includes the truism that we just really don’t know, and really never did. No matter how sophisticated, our mental conceptualizations can never contain the fullness of life-as-it-is.

Life just doesn’t confine itself to our ideas about things and thank goodness! Otherwise how could we have ever thought up things like Yosemite Valley at sunset? No–life is doing its own thing, and our thoughts and ideas keep needing expanding and updating as they try to limit and confine it. Sure, its not always fun. Getting in touch with fear of survival isn’t my idea of a good time either, but seen in a larger context, it may be exactly what needs to happen. I don’t know.

Is the mess on the world stage an opportunity or a catastrophe? I don’t know, my best guess is its probably both, but I’m cool with just doing whatever life wants of me as best I can in each moment, and seeing what happens next all the time. There is something peaceful about having let go of the need to know, and even the demand, however deeply instinctual, that we somehow live through it. However much we each have gotten to know our own fear of survival– that is how much we are now free from having to act on our fears. We slowly can step away from needing to find enemies to blame things on, and begin to find peace in ourselves, becoming clearer vehicles for just plain knowing what to do in each moment. This is where a peaceful world begins–not with a lack of outer change, but with accepting life as an opportunity to explore and discover who we truly are.

Yes LAUGHTER!

Somehow a point has been passed where now everything going on in this wild world of ours just makes me want to laugh heartily at the extremity of it all.

What else is there to do?

I know that is not a reasonable argument to make for laughter, but seriously, what are our alternatives? Shall we rush out and stabilize the economy? Shall we all send our cars to the junkyard to stop global warming? Are you laughing yet?

We are not talking about nervous laughter here, based on fear of catastrophe. We are talking about the possibility of right-from-the-belly enjoyment of our predicament, our inability to make things “right” and the break-up of all of our pat answers and predicable outcomes.

Are you objecting that perhaps we could make some headway on things such as the loss of the glaciers or the rate of extinctions if we got deadly serious and tried harder? A good argument can be made that we really must take more of the right actions to set things right in the world, if we can just figure out what they are.

It is worth noticing however, that even when we are laughing, we can still do those things that are within our power to accomplish. Can’t we? The most arduous tasks are lightened by laughter and playfulness. Enjoyment of our predicament in no way hampers our ability to take appropriate action when we do see what our own contribution can be.

The bottom line: are we all going to die? Yup. There is truly no escaping it. We all end up there sooner or later anyway, so lets take the journey in good spirits and enjoy the ride. What a ride it is!! People just love to go to scary movies or maybe to go to the amusement park and ride the roller coaster. This is just the real-life variety! Enjoy it fully–we are on the ride of our lives!

Sunlight touching treetops,
Birds awakening…
Morning rises after night
With a constancy and grace.

While politics swirl
Conflicts rage, economies teeter,
Hurricanes roar,
Morning dawns over all
Without apology or praise
But with simple welcoming
Of all that is lit
By its presence.

What kind of love
Embraces this wild world
With such a welcome?
What love is this, that
Contains such
Darkness and strife
When the world
Refuses to conform
To our demands for
Outer peace,
And then wraps us
In such wonder
And grace?

Fear, war, starvation,
And so much else
Are included in the
Grace of morning light
On a darkened world.

In the light’s first
Touch of a leaf
There is something that
Embraces all of what we are
And includes us
In the full circle
Of life as it is.

We see that we are
Something whole
And seamless,
And perfect.

The heart of each morning
Offers with outstretched hands,
An expansion, a release
Out off our self-made prisons
Into a world ruled by a love
That excludes nothing,
A love we can trust,
A love at peace
With all things.

Even this, and this, and
Especially and
Whole-heartedly
This.

by Alice Gardner © 2008