"Mornings have become my table."
I love this metaphor. It vividly paints daily rituals as a platform and a resource.
"I ask to be guided through the day with the memory of this sacred time, this prayer... I pick up the role Creator has asked me to play in this reality..."
Beautiful. Sometimes in meditation, I ask God to show me my path in life. I feel deeply called to bring forth my very best in the world. What that looks like is still mostly a mystery to me. My best efforts so far have been through dedicated practice and learning skills. Sometimes I neglect asking this question for stretches of time, then I remember. Wagamese clearly has worked to keep that prayer alive as he walks through life. This makes me optimistic :). "To be guided through the day with the memory of this sacred time..."
"I am not my talk. I am not my actions. I am my silence. I am the consciousness that perceives all these things."
I am awareness itself. In my best and most connected state, I see myself in everything and I see a part of everything in me. It's cool that he describes that as silence. I think I agree, but I see it as stillness instead of silence.
"I am a dreamer... Meditation is not an isolated act... It's connecting to the dream... It's leaving my body and my mind and becoming spirit again, whole and perfect and shining."
I love his imagery of how we should hold onto silence, dreaming, and innocence. There are so many layers in our minds, so many ways of seeing and processing that we lose touch with after childhood or hardship. On the question of "leaving my body and mind and becoming spirit again" - I feel like becoming all spirit is romantic and maybe what's waiting for us all after death, however I'm quite fond of the wholeness and beauty and messiness of having a mind and body working together in this physical plane :)
"If you travel with your heart and your quiet, you'll find your way to spiritual."
Really important reminder. In moments of stillness and being deeply tuned in, things can become more clear and bring insight.
"Nothing in the universe ever grew from the outside in."
The universe itself is unfolding from the inside out, constantly expanding from the singularity that came before the big bang. Flowers unfurl from the potential held implicit in their seeds. And so do human beings; We take in nutrients, stimulation, inputs from the outside, and we engage in the deep work of digestion, processing, action. Only through a conscious choice to engage can we really use the inputs from the world to grow from the inside out. One night back in November, I was doing some yoga-type movements and moving my shoulder blades all around. I had a strange experience of looking up at the nearest plant in our living room and feeling acutely aware of what it meant to be distant cousins with that plant. I felt a profound parallel, an alignment between our lives. All living beings, and all of Being itself, all of us are striving, rebelling against entropy, unfolding into something greater.
"Being and becoming have their confluence in these moments of touching your essence."
Immaculate. Beautiful. Being and Becoming... something that deserves deep contemplation.
"All my relations... it's our saving grace in the end... We live because everything else does."
It seems to me like all spiritual schools agree on interconnectedness. We're all attracted to one another by gravity and breathe the same air. All the species on Earth evolved in deeply connected webs, they weren't smashed together from separateness like lego. The real world isn't a machine with separate parts forced together, but a complex system that's developing all as one. And I still find meaning in calling that 'Creation'.
"I surrender my gift to Creator and ask that it be directed, channelled through me, every word, phrase, sentence guided by Her intention."
I have heard many musicians express the same thing and felt this myself, that creative gifts are our responsibility to cultivate and steward to humanity. The dedication and practice is all ours to own, but the seed of the gift itself is something bestowed on us. It's a miracle, and a responsibility. Sometimes I feel like I've neglected my calling in music, and at least once a month I have a spontaneous vision of re-dedicating my life to music. But I want to avoid at all costs the chronic pain, fatigue, and nervous system breakdown that I ended up in before. Music is my everything, just not at all times.
"I want to touch you deeply, beneath the surface, where our real stories lie... This is how I want to touch and be touched--through beingness--so that someday I might discover that even the skin remembers."
Intimacy is so much more than skin deep. I spent years chasing casual encounters, and they were fun but not always intimate. I've had first dances with some people that felt more connected than the first time having sex with others. The way people move together, attend to one another, show care, express genuine interest in eachother's minds; these qualities are the food of life, water in the desert for lost souls in need of connection.
"The greater, grander plan is not mine to create or know. If I am in ceremony and prayer for the right reasons, I leave all that up to Creator. When I surrender outcome, all things good and pure and peaceful come to me. My job is to choose what appears. Easy to say but hard to do, to get out of the way enough to allow the energy to flow."
Pasted the entire paragraph because it's so profound. I feel there's a lot to learn from this that I stand to grow from in my life. Focusing on WHY I'm doing what I'm doing, how I'm orienting myself to the world and others, and surrendering outcome. As I sit here imagining detaching from outcomes in life and cultivating an intrinsic motivation that is authentic and always burning bright... that really attracts me. After eight months of travel, I felt aimless. I'm very growth-oriented and I felt lost, I couldn't explain my reasons for being out there anymore. I wonder whether being in touch with my deeper motivations could have helped me re-orient sooner.
"My life has been changed by the use of a single word--'yes.'"
I appreciate this sentiment, that it's powerful to lean into change and embrace new things with our whole being. I have to be careful what I say yes to, because whatever I turn my attention on becomes my whole world if I'm not careful. Whatever I'm engaged in, I want to get right to the core of it. I can get obsessive over hobbies and interests, so I have to use a higher judgement to direct my passion on what really matters.
"I can find Creator in a blues run, a dance sequence, a conversation, a baby's laugh, the sound of the wind in the trees and the immaculate silence of an empty room in the stillnes of dawn."
Beautiful. Being spiritual is about paying attention, being open to perceiving the divine.
"Remember to remember."
There can be a lot in this depending on the reader. Wagamese was talking about returning to ceremony, to innocence. For me I it's remembering our divine worth, our dynamic connection with Being, the value of the present.
"I want awe to be the greatest ongoing relationship in my life."
Awe is a powerful signal of encountering what's most real. When the hairs stand up on your neck and you're covered in goosebumps, your whole being is screaming to explore deeper.
"To be a creator you need to connect with Creator."
Love this! This to me, is what it means to be made in the image of God. There is a creative force at work in Being itself, the process of Being unfolded until we emerged as part of it, and we are called to do our part in furthering it.
"Don't focus on your dream, or it will always remain a dream. Instead, focus on the first action you can take to bring that dream a little closer."
A great lesson I could learn over and over. My imagination runs wild, at times edging into pointless fantasy, when I already know deep down what I aspire to and should be out doing it in the world.
"To raise the sacred pipe of my being to Creator and Creation each morning is to bring myself into the full realization of my size and place. I belong."
Something I'm practicing these days is the feeling that no matter where I am in the world, I belong. No matter what room I'm in or who I'm surrounded by, I belong. A big source of charisma and pro-social energy :) I had this feeling once and it's out of reach right now. I think cultivating this feeling helps me connect with others and leave self-consciousness behind.
"When your prayers are about gratitude for what is already here, Creator and the universe ALWAYS send more. Always."
Love this. When you practice gratitude, you get more RIGHT THERE from the experience you're having. And the woo-woo angle he spins at the end about the universe sending more, that part too ;)
"The miracle is that we are here at all. Life itself is our greatest wonder. To simply BE is awe-inspiring."
Amen :)