It is often difficult to see what Now is about unless something dramatic catches our attention. This is an open invitation for the voice of Ego to speak up and make itself useful once again by deciding for us what we should or shouldn’t be doing right now.

Let’s look at some ways to improve and stabilize our free Awareness.

The first step is to fully relax into a state of presence, and take in all you see, hear, smell, touch and feel. This allows us to fully inhabit an otherwise ordinary moment, which begins to make it feel expansive. The spider web at the kitchen window looks magical. There is an explicable feeling of concern for a grocery clerk. We hear a subtle tone of voice in a phone conversation that alerts us that the caller is annoyed.

Next, notice whether your awareness feels fluid, moving with ease. Be mindful lest the always-trying-to- be-helpful Ego tries to slip in a command that you leave the flow and do its bidding. It screeches, "It’s been three - days and you haven’t called Marilyn back!" while Now is about watching a family of quails descend on the bird feeder. Ego thinks it can slip this past Awareness, because at our house, quails are referred to as Dan and Marilyn.

A heart check is always in order. Are our hearts open? Is it leading us through the day? With an open heart, we experience everything with wonder and appreciation, valuing all the experiences we are passing through because they all feel fresh and new even when they are painful or challenging.

Now, to the more elusive part. What to do right now? Ego, of course, wants to cram our day full of "productive activities," multi-tasking for extra points. But let’s relax and wait until we feel moved from within. What catches our attention and moves us toward engaging it? Is t &Mac182;here a feeling of interest in engaging the activity? If cleaning out a desk drawer attracted immediate attention, notice how there is a natural movement afterward to write that article that is due on Tuesday, the opposite of Ego’s priorities. And notice the feeling of being congruent with what’s going on in the flow. Opening the drawer and finding what we need right away is a small pleasure, and the article practically wrote itself.

Finally, let’s try to recognize those moments when Awareness wants to simply be at rest. A sense of oneness with everything leaves us with an incredible sense of well-being, and a sense of wonder at what it is to be alive.

For the past several months,' I was going to write,...

Until the moment of architectural surprise.

A space high upon the trunk:
Unseen from rivers bank
Suddenly no branch in kind
Just naked slender trunk
Sturdy yet slippery wild and
Indifferent rock and river.
Arm reaches for it’s hold
and finds none
Feet slip millimeters
Sideways unsure
Alone and foolish
Glancing round
Retreat the choice of choice.

But I cannot go back.

Perhaps an unknown answer
Is waiting where this space
Is more than space
Where wilding Water Fall -
Now in swirling vertigo -
will support my echoing air.
That space
slight leap on the ground
And miles in the air
A space of faltering fear
Beckons to be made
Challenge answers to come forth.

I sat to hold my bridge

Could I cross it like a snake
Feel it’s bark - close to skin
Stretch me limb to limb
To reach the safer place?
Face to tree
Scent and breath
Embrace eyes closed
Strive to zip my body
Notch to notch
And make the nearest grip
Body long
not long enough
Serpent stretched and twanged
nothing in my reach
Feet with empty brace
Slipping shoes
Smooth past worn

Gasp to ragged stop.

I knew it then
What you had said
Familiar place between the worlds
Indecision’s grasp
Frozen years spent on a limb
Reaching towards desire
hoping to ascend
But willing, wriggling down
a hundred thousand times
Forgo the change
shy the leap
Repress the elemental pull
Metamorphosis denied.
Comfort in the strain
And there remain
Till sun would fall
In darkness drop to water cold.

In breath there must be choice.


For to chance upon this stream
This water
This way
This opportunity
And then petrify -
Fossilize in senseless fear
Deny this possibility in time
Refuse the love that entreats change
One step from life
One step from freedom –
That would rob all trees of green
Drain the sky,
Upend the mountains and
Unhinge the Water
Down to atoms old.
A universe reversed.

So I write to tell you this:
I pulled off my shoes
Shaking and sure
I pulled them off
Sent them far
The other bank
Tossed to mud
And body rising
Out of snake
feet like Mowgli
Primate moving forward
An evolutionary play
In final act
High, arched and steady
Monkey woman moving sure
A short spare distance
And with new found freedom.
Found the other side

I write that the river was old
And new
That the tree was high
And low
And now
If you look
I am no longer a frozen constellation in the green
I see the space, the distance
And am not afraid
I will walk across
Naked feet, sure and fearless
To meet you with these words
Unknown upon the other side.