Turns out…

…it’s an invitation. “Répondez s’il vous plaît.”

The other day I was reflecting and meditating upon a talk Ram Dass gave—there, he repeats a mantra that I’ve worked at incorporating into my own practice of human being.

Great word, that: Incorporate

From Latin:

In = into

Corpus = body

“To turn into or bring into the body.”

To incorporate is perhaps the most intimate form of relationship—we experience this every day of our lives. Know how?

Through our act of eating. Everything we eat is incorporated and turned into our body. When considering the myriad forms of relationships we have in our world, you cannot get any closer to anything else than that.

To incorporate something, you turn it into you! Consider: everything you allow into your body, from the food you eat, the fluids you drink, the things you inhale, the things you watch on TV or any blue screen, the books you read, the music you listen to, the environment you pause in, everything, everything you allow into your body gets turned into you.

And everything includes hatred, fear, anger, worry, partisanship, gratefulness, kindness, joy, and love. Especially love. (That’s why I always cook using Love as a main ingredient.)

Which brings me to the invitation.

Back in July of 2022, just a couple of weeks after Dad joined us in our home, I posted the two-part blog post below:

Wherever you look…

…you see what you are looking for.

“Wherever you look, you see what you are looking for.” EVERYWHERE you look, you see what you are looking for.

Writing that, at that time, was a reminder (prayer?) for me to look at all things Dad with the right eyes—the particular kind of eyes I was training to see Dad through, given the knowledge that things were likely to become very difficult in his daily (and nightly) care. I wanted to always see compassion and kindness (his certainly; mine as an always aspiration); I always wanted to see love. Even at, especially at, 2am when he called for help to use the toilet; or through his incontinence, he needed his clothing changed and body cleaned. If I saw those things, or anything he wanted, needed, or demanded, as a burden or inconvenience of any kind, causes for frustration, then that was indeed what I saw. And I will admit there were times I looked at Dad with those eyes, and that is what I saw: bother, frustration, burden, and inconvenience.

And that was just me being human. Not moments of pride…, just moments of human.

Ram Dass’ mantra has become a vital component of my practice life. I’ve used it so much now, as the invitation it is, that I’m starting to realize, in our world, there is no such thing as “good or bad.” The concept of good/bad, opposites of the same coin, is a human creation—that concept exists ONLY in our human minds. And when you remember one of the primary functions of our brains, via our thinking and reactive mind, is to keep our body safe, you realize our tendency to create judgments like good and bad is an evolutionary artifact meant to prolong our species. But it’s all an illusion. No other animal judges in “good or bad” terms. Only the human animal does so. To our detriment.

A second mantra I’ve paired with this is “The things in life don’t happen to me, they happen for me.” With the right eyes, when I remember I can ALWAYS look for it, anything that happens to me, no matter what it is, even the death of my 84 year old father, can be to my benefit—even if, at the time, the lessons to be found there are not yet clear. But this, I’ve discovered, is one of the Universe’s ultimate Truths. And because it IS a Truth, it can be trusted. One of the many lessons Dad gave to me, through the living of his dying and death, is precisely this: I didn’t need hope; I don’t need hope in my life (i.e. “I hope he has a good death,” “I hope there won’t be pain, his or ours.” “I hope we’ll do it right.”) No, no hope needed, ever. Only faith.

Faith in the trustworthiness of the Universe. Faith, unlike hope, implies “a knowing.” A knowing implies “a seeing.” “Everywhere you look, you see what you are looking for. When you look for God, everywhere you look, you see God. When you look for love, you see love.”

And it’s always an invitation. It’s an open invitation. From the Universe. Available to each of us, all the time. Confirm this for yourself: every emotion and feeling that surfaces in your life is your evidence of what you looked for, of how you saw things—it is actually evidence of what you found. Because you looked for it. No one “makes” you feel any certain way. Only YOU can do that—through the interpretations you impose upon the moment. For how you saw the moment. But most don’t realize this.

Children say things like this all the time, mainly because they’ve learned it from all the rest of us: “YOU make me so mad!” “YOU hurt my feelings.” YOU frustrate me so much!” “They made me do it.” Even “You make me so happy.” Yes, even that.

And none of it is true. As I grew into my understanding of what it truly meant to be a teacher, every time I heard a student of mine say words like that, I helped them reframe their language in a way that they could start to own their own feelings. (eg “I’m feeling so angry right now.” “I’m making the choice to be frustrated right now.”) In that, there is tremendous empowerment—but also a stark and humble responsibility. We have no one else to thank or blame for the way we feel—that is ours and only ours to acknowledge and own. Owning those kinds of “knee-jerk” reactions, over time, allows us to realize we have the power to respond differently. We can choose to respond in ways that are not harmful or violent, in word or deed, to others or ourselves. We can create a different world we live in.

Try it for yourself.

“The Things of this life don’t happen to you, they happen for you.”

This understanding and way of Being leads us to the profound realization that WE create the world WE live in. It’s the Alchemy we are engaged in when we take all the ingredients that present themselves to us, all the good and not so good, and turn them into our lives.

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

~ Wayne Dyer

Pause to think about the Truth of this: YOU live in a world you have created yourself. Full stop. So, what kind of world is it? Only you can describe it even as it is sometimes all too evident for others to see because of your behaviors and actions. Is it a world filled with fear; one that you are scared to inhabit? Or love? Are the people in your world scary and out to get you? Are you their victim? Or are they fellow soulmates struggling to find meaning—just like you? What choice have you made for your world? We should know this. After all, we have a stake in your answer: the rest of us live in it.

And it’s never, ever, too late to begin to change the world you live in.

In an awesome commencement address a few years ago, the actor/comic Jim Carrey reminded us: “Your eyes are not just viewers; they are projectors.” They project into your surroundings the world you actually inhabit. This cannot be denied even as we try everything in our power to abdicate this responsibility. “Everywhere you look, you see what you are looking for.” Which means YOU have created that reality. And that reality is unique to you. We can be standing right next to each other (since we are imagining, let’s make it beautiful: say we are standing right next to each other on the beach just south of Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, Oregon, at sunset, after a gloriously warm summer day*), and we can both experience that moment in almost diametrically opposed ways. If you see and feel the beautiful and warm hues of the reds, and oranges, and yellows in the glorious sky as the sun melts into the horizon; and you hear the waves on the shore amidst the songs of the gulls, THAT would be your world at that moment. If I saw and felt the graying skies of dusk, and the approaching storm in the distance, and the cold mist of the surf dampening my clothes causing chills; and I felt the abrasive and annoying sand between my toes and against my sunburn, wishing I could be in my hotel room under the comforter with a hot cocoa watching Ted Lasso, THAT would be my world at that moment.

Same setting, different worlds. Different creations.

“There’s so many different worlds, so many different suns. And we have just one world, but we live in different ones.”

~ Mark Knopfler (songwriter of these lyrics in Dire Straits’ “Brothers In Arms.”)

And then, soon, if you are mindful and intuitive, and IF you don’t deny it (it’s always available to us even when we don’t want to look in these ways), when we look around and it’s all we see, soon enough, its also what we become. To look in this way, to accept the invitation, means it’s also what we do. It’s never pollyanna-ish, never naive. It’s something more profound.

It becomes incorporated into us!

Living this invitation is a noble way to BE in our world. What world of possibility are you willing, now, to create for yourself? It is always your own unique responsibility.

Remember, I have a stake in your answer: I inhabit your world even as I create my own. And always, you inhabit mine.

Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.

Today, like every other day, 
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.

Today, like every other day, 
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t start reading.

Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.

Today, like every other day, 
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t start reading.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
There are thousands of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. 

~ Rumi (as translated by Coleman Barks)

May you find kindness and love everywhere you look. But look for them first. Then…

…may you always live in a beautiful world. Yours.

THAT’s your invitation from the Universe. Let that be what you do.

Please RSVP your acceptance, at your discretion.

🌎

Always and Ubuntu,

~ kert

🙏🏼

*PS: BTW: when I’m on the beach just south of Haystack rock at sunset, I ALWAYS see the beautiful. It is only after the sun is fully down that the hot cocoa, comforter, and Ted Lasso’s call, and are answered.

Cannon Beach as our distant sun sets on the horizon of the Pacific ocean; my photo circa Feb. 17, 2017. I’m always trying to create this world for myself.