Wake Up!

 

Be Aware

“Do you have a body? Don’t sit on the porch!

Go out and walk in the rain!

If you are in love,

Then why are you asleep?

Wake up! Wake up!

You have slept millions and millions of years.

Why not wake up this morning?”

Kabir (as quoted in An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, p.176-177; Harper One, 2009)

            I wrote yesterday about being open to delight in the ordinary. To do that, one must be awake in the spiritual and physical sense. I don’t know about you, but I have spent a good portion of my life bound up in my own thoughts and completely unaware of the world around me. I missed important content of my life because I was so busy analyzing what I thought was going on. I am only now finding out (from my sons) just how much I apparently missed. And, at this stage of life, when most of my years have already come and gone, that makes me sad. So, I’m saying to you what Kabir said in his poem written in the 15^th century: “Wake up!”

          If you are in a human body, you have at least five senses—six if you count intuition. Use all of them every day! To do that, you must inhabit your body and be fully present in the moment. Being awake means you are here now in this moment and not off in your head somewhere while your body sits “on the porch.” If you are an extrovert this will be a challenge, since your idea of awareness is wrapped up in people—in talking, and visiting, and verbally exploring ideas. To be fully present, one must be self-contained enough to listen, and still enough to see more than a glance in passing. “Go out in the rain!” as Kabir says. Feel the grass beneath your feet, the raindrops on you face, hear the wind and rain in the trees, see water running in the street, smell the wet earth, feel your hair and clothes sticking to your skin. In other words, be alive in the moment. The Buddhists would say, “Become one with the rain.”

          Don’t miss half your life because you are stewing around inside your head. Be there, be aware, be present in every moment of it. I promise, you won’t regret it.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane