A week ago, friends came over to play board games. A couple who had never been to my house before were here. One of them said, “I feel like this is Alice in Wonderland.” Someone else “corrected” them and said, “No, Angela in Wonderland.”
By love alone
First Set of Random Thoughts
I have been experiencing so much lately that it might be difficult for me to corral my thoughts into any kind of order – this might be a post of herding grinning cats in Wonderland. Here are some random, maybe-they’ll-connect, maybe-they-won’t thoughts.
I am re-reading again The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski. The first two invitations are “don’t wait” and “welcome everything and push away nothing.” Ostaseski quotes the Buddha while discussing the first invitation and its relationship to resentment, anger, and forgiveness.
According to the Buddha, “Hatred can never cease hatred in this world; by love alone does hatred cease.” Ostaseski writes that forgiving allows us to tap into our heart’s compassion and that forgiveness benefits us and teaches us to love more fully, more deeply. If we wait to work our way through hatred to forgiveness, we might lose the chance to ever do so, and we definitely cause ourselves and others more suffering because we have kept ourselves out of our own hearts.
In the second invitation, Ostaseski offers love as the way to welcome everything and push away nothing. Love allows us, gives us the space, to feel the sorrow, the pain, the shame, the joy, the comfort, and the compassion. This unlimited love is not attachment to anything, anyone, or any outcome. It allows everything in and lets us accept what is.
He sends his love to you.
Through effortless effort
Second Set of Random Thoughts
I need more practice of being, not doing. Part of my purpose as a human is to be the connection between heaven and earth. This purpose requires effortless effort, which makes my brain go wonky trying to figure that out.
I cannot exactly articulate "effortless effort," but I can sort of illustrate it. For example, athletes put a lot of effort into training and practicing. These trainings and practices require powerful energy, yet when athletes actually play the game, if they aren’t putting effort into it, if they aren’t “in their heads,” they play in “the zone” and everything they do at that point is effortless. While this explains that effortless effort can be achieved, it does not show me how to apply it to being, not doing.
My “being” also calls for me to be one, whole. In other words, I should not be “othering” anyone or anything. If I am “being,” I am not judging others, not separating others from myself. This is so difficult. How do I stop saying, “They do this. They are like that” making them different from me when all that is in them is also in me?
If I don’t acknowledge that what I see is a reflection of me, I cannot just be. The actions I take – because I cannot just sit on this couch for the rest of my life not doing anything – must come from this state of being that takes effortless effort and allows for the space necessary to hold all of life’s experiences, feelings and thoughts. This spacious being comes from, and acts on the behalf of, unlimited love.
Happy birthday!
Through stillness
Third Set of Random Thoughts
Being comes from stillness – stillness that abides no matter the external circumstances. If I breathe into being, I sense stillness. I can always breathe into stillness no matter the chaos that surrounds me in this outer world of destruction, war, hate, divisiveness – all that goes on, yet from destruction comes birth.
The outer world also offers kindness, generosity, compassion, love. In all of that “outerness,” I can still be still in stillness and shine truth, light and love if I allow myself to be awareness, presence – just be.
I have been Wonderhunting again in the newest course: Autumn Pilgrimage. Wonderhunting always brings me to presence through awe, love, awareness, laughter, peace, acceptance. So, I ask, “What will I be today?” and my hope is onenesself, a place that allows for “being” as a whole with actions coming from love, a place that encourages effortless effort in its simplest form, stripped down to the basics of breathing into my peaceful, joyful Angela in Wonderland.
By escaping
Fourth Set of Random Thoughts
Still, I am afraid.
Oh. Wow! Look at the time. Maybe we’ll continue this discussion next year ...
Another person then said to the group, “I bet there’s no beige in this house.”
As I now embrace being Angela in Wonderland, I realize "wonderland" is both my external, physical home that has no beige and my internal, metaphysical home that has all the colors and space I require to live in loving awareness.