Awakening and Opening

Be interested in yourself beyond all experience, be with yourself, love yourself; the ultimate security is found only in self-knowledge. Be honest with yourself and nothing will betray you.
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj

This afternoon I grabbed my walker and did a tour of the condominium complex. We're starting a warming-up period here in Minneapolis, today being 42 degrees and sunny. It was a bit blustery, however, so I did not linger or stop to sit in the sun. Usually my body directs my gaze downward, but today I stopped to examine the trees for buds. Sure enough, the first tiny bud-bulges are everywhere. I smiled, glad to see proof that Nature goes on, despite the chaos human beings are causing in the world.

Inside again, I reflected on the awful, still-remembered, Good Friday experiences of my childhood. Raised in a fundamentalist Lutheran church, it was a given that one must attend a service from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Three hours in a darkened church hearing long dirge-like hymns interspersed with words of pain and agony.

I am glad to be the adult here and now, rather than the child there and then.

For too many years, well into adulthood, I lived in a world where every thought, feeling and behavior was instantly recognizable as "black" or "white". "Black" predominated.

In my current life of mindfulness and gratitude, almost everything is "gray". And Truth exists within myself, in the moment, an integral part of the Universe.