Ebb And Flow

Real wisdom won’t let you hang onto it or shape it into something portable you can carry around in your pocket and reel out parrot fashion on call. Real wisdom is fluid, it moves, it breathes, it’s alive. Real wisdom changes its face from moment to moment and if you try to cling to it, it vanishes like sand from your hand. Sometimes your mind will be filled with it. Other times it won’t. And part of it consists in allowing that ebb and flow without gloating too much when it’s with you or protesting too much when it’s not. Another part of it consists in understanding the inevitable alternation of yin and yang (emptiness and fullness) inherent in all phenomena, including your on-off relationship with wisdom, so that when you’re most deeply confused, rather than berate yourself or life for your benighted state, you give thanks and celebrate because you know that this is the precise moment your clarity will start returning.

It all comes down to relaxing with what is, not just in your mind but in your body also. Indeed by relaxing your body, your mind follows more efficiently than the other way round. Start with the crown of your head and work progressively downwards all the way to your fingers and toes, taking in every muscle and sinew between as you go and command each section to relax.

Couple this with breathing slowly and allowing the exhalation to reinforce the sense of letting go of tension as you go and you exponentially multiply the effect.

Watch it all from the centre of your brain, with a subtle smile in your eyes and a sensation of softness in your chest and you’ll instantly experience your own Buddha nature.

In this state, contemplate the areas of your existence that have been giving you gip lately and visualise an outcome for each that suits you better, for as you see it, so it shall be.

Finally remind yourself that absolutely everyone in your life, without exception, is also a Buddha (in disguise), this no matter how convincing the apparent ugliness or distortion of their disguise and tune into the invisible field of cosmic love that connects us all at the Buddha level: the field of infinite possibilities, the Tao.

And if I’m not mistaken we (for I am doing this with you) will experience a day and night remarkable for its intense beauty and magnificence.

So be it.

Love, Barefoot