Like so many others I’ve struggled with relationships my entire life. With my partners I’ve experienced the greatest bliss and the greatest pain. Part of my personal struggle with relationships has been incredible anxiety and attachment. My pattern involved becoming interested and connected with a woman and growing more anxious about losing the connection the closer we got resulting in a fear of intimacy. The anxiety and fear of loss would be so intense at times it would almost reach the level of a panic attack. It felt as if holding onto my lover or partner was a matter of survival. That there was something I desperately needed from them in order to be ok and at peace. And yet I could never seem to get it, I would still feel anxious and upset and eventually the relationship would end and I’d be left devastated only to start the process all over again. This really became a habitual pattern which was incredibly painful because I am a very passionate and loving person and relationship is important to me but I could never seem to make it work to my satisfaction.

My intention in relationship has always been to be free. To be free to be myself and allow my partner to be herself without my needs being projected onto her. In working to realize this intention I began to notice a feeling of lack within me that felt like the core of the anxiety I feel in relationship. In going deeper into this feeling of lack I began to realize that it seemed to represent a disconnection from my own heart which you might call the inner feminine. In working with that I could see that this feeling of lack was being projected outward onto my partners and other women in an attempt to get from them what I was lacking internally. My relationship patterns were being created by me through this process of projection. That was painful to realize but it also felt empowering because my inner process was something I had access to, I could do something about it. But what to do? How to heal this inner wound?

I worked on this in my relationships, in my spiritual process group and in counseling and made incredible progress illuminating more and more layers of this needy, afraid disconnected part of me. My previous partner and I had a similar process with this and we were both conscious enough to work on what was coming up for us in the relationship. We played out the patterns in painful ways at times but we came out of our relationship with much greater clarity as to the nature of the wound and moved an enormous amount of energy related to it. We were able to see it through and remain close friends.

However the real shift for me happened when I began to cultivate a personal relationship with the feminine part of myself, the Divine Feminine or what I refer to as the Goddess. I felt a call from a feminine energy that I could not identify or fully describe. This inner call felt like a subtle pull drawing me into my heart, my feelings and to nature. Slowly I began to make a daily practice out of connecting with this feminine energy and it has gradually been built into an inner relationship with the Goddess which reflects the feminine polarity of the divine. As a man in this patriarchal culture this feminine part of myself has been beaten down and repressed as I tried to step into being the man I thought I was supposed to be. The repression took extreme forms at times especially in my experience in the military where any sort of emotional expression except for anger and lust was violently discouraged.

The more I’ve stepped into my connection with the Divine Feminine the more I have begun to realize that what I was so desperately seeking in women was something I have within me. This opened up the possibility of free relationship for the first time and the potential for unconditional love which is free of grasping and expectations. My relationship with the Goddess is my primary relationship with the feminine and by holding that in my heart always I am free to see women for who they are and not what I need them to be. This process has been cultivated and unfolded for several years now but during the last few months I drew in a connection with a woman which was in a way an initiation into a free flowing expression of the Divine Feminine.

This young lady became of member of my spiritual process group which consists of some of the people I am closest to in my life. We felt a connection to each other right from the first night we met and she seemed to already have the keys to my heart in a powerful way. I felt immediate love and familiarity for this person as well as an incredible attraction. We began connecting and sharing right away and I started to imagine that this person could be an ideal partner for me. However it became clear over time that she was not interested in connecting with me romantically. This brought up a powerful wave of pain and sadness as I saw that I wanted so badly to grasp onto her as the perfect partner. However in creating that inner connection with the feminine and the strong intention to be free of the painful process of attachment to a woman I had another option. I decided I would openly express to her what I was going through but take full responsibility for it and sit with and process my feelings without making her responsible. In doing that I would also continue to engage my connection with her no matter what it brought up, continue to open my heart to her. My friend also happened to be a very wise open-hearted person and she continued to engage a heart based connection with me while standing firm in her truth and boundaries. This elicited incredible respect for her because she held the middle ground, she did not pull away from me and did not enable my projections and needs, she embodied the loving yet powerful Divine Feminine. Slowly I worked through the pain and was able to meet her at the heart and embrace one of the most loving beautiful connections I’ve ever had with a woman. It showed me that love and sex are two different things, I can create deep intimate love with a woman without having a sexual connection. This was powerful for me because I had always linked the two in my relations with women. My friend recently moved away but before she did we spent several days together staying at the same house and sharing another level of deepening love and intimacy after which she reflected to me that she felt seen and respected and loved by me and how powerful that had been in her healing process.

For me this all represents a process of healing the connection between the masculine and feminine within so as to bring it back into balance. I think this is needed on a collective level as well because so many men struggle with the same disconnect from their hearts and their feminine side. This disconnect plays out in many ways including war and violence but especially in relation to the opposite sex resulting in relationships that don’t involve true clear connection because we are in relationship with an object for our needs instead of the actual person. We can only be in true relationship when we accept and see the other person for who they are in this moment without needing to change them. We can only do that when we take responsibility for our feelings and our happiness and realize that we are already complete whole divine beings and we don’t need anyone else to fulfill us. In realizing this wholeness we can then enter into relationship to share the love that already lives in our hearts instead of trying to get it from “out there” which is futile. When we accept people as they are it opens the door to receive incredible gifts which we would otherwise have been blind to. This feels like real freedom to me and I am deeply grateful to the Goddess, the universe, my past partners, women in general and my dear friend for helping me in this healing process.

Episode 1 – A Guided Meditation has been posted and is a brief guided meditation on the practice of presence and breathing meditation. Future episodes will cover various spiritual topics and other related material. You can access the podcast page through this link……….

http://awakeninthenow.podomatic.com/

The clouds gather ominous on the horizon
A buildup of massive waves
Suddenly one crests and crashes down upon the shore of my heart
I’m inundated, overwhelmed, cast open wide

Flooded I sink down below the surface, drowning
Desperately coming up for air only to fall back down once again
And again

My heart is open and from the depths
I cry the tears of a thousand pains, a thousand losses,
A thousand wrongs, a thousand lifetimes
A thousand stories in a tangled web of confusion

The torrent overwhelms me and I become one with it
My heart aches, my head throbs, my eyes swollen
I know nothing else

The world seen through this lens is a cold cruel place
Filled only with pain and sorrow

Then a flash of light appears
Amidst the clouds growing brighter
Only to be dimmed again by another wave
Crashing

Suddenly the clouds part and the sun shines through
And I see the sky and remember
This too shall pass

And the storm passes and all is calm again
Yet I was swept away

Who remains?

I do not know

The sun shines……..

I want to share a great article a friend posted on facebook recently that addresses how men can relate to women in a sacred way and make a personal connection with the Divine Feminine. The article which appears on the Huffington Post is titled – “Why It Is Wise to Worship a Woman” – awesome title. The author shares his experience of making a deep connection with the Divine Feminine and how that has changed how he relates to his partner and women in general.

Like many men I have lived most of my life disconnected from the Divine Feminine. That disconnection has produced incredible suffering as I’ve chased after women in an attempt to reclaim a part of myself. I’ve torn apart relationships bouncing back and forth between the extremes of either trying to dominate women or giving my power away to them and feeling dominated myself. Over the last few years I’ve felt a strong pull to the archetype of the Goddess and this has lead me slowly but surely into cultivating a relationship with the Divine Feminine in my own spiritual practice. That process has lead to some incredible realizations and has begun to transform my relationship with women. I was amazed at first by the incredible resistance I experienced when opening up to the Goddess and her powerful healing presence. I say resistance but what it really felt like was terror, I’ve been afraid of women because it felt like they had a power I could not understand and which could easily destroy me, at least on an emotional level but also a power I very much needed to be whole. This fear and disconnection prevents true relationship because one is only able to relate to a projection. The projection being the feminine part of me that I am separated from projected onto a woman. I am then in relationship with my projection rather than the beautiful being in front of me and the connection becomes about the manipulation of that projection to get what appears to be needed.

In opening up to the Goddess and creating an inner relationship to the Divine Feminine I am now seeing more of the sacredness and wisdom that women reflect. A new type of relationship with women has become possible where I can worship and adore them as manifestations of the Goddess while simultaneously seeing that as a reflection of the feminine within me. The balance of seeing it both internally and externally is essential because if I see it as separate then I give my power away and dysfunctional connection results. This allows true relationship and unconditional love because I am no longer projecting the feminine within me externally, instead I simply see women as reflecting it and so when I serve and honor them I’m serving and honoring myself at the same time. Without the projection I also see each woman more as who she is rather than what I need from her so true relationship becomes possible. Coming into relationship from this place of wholeness or with masculine and feminine energies in balance in the space of the Divine allows a deep level of relating which the author of this article refers to as entering the gates of the temple, the temple being the Divine Feminine.

For men, women can embody the mystery of the Divine Feminine and can initiate us into its experience if we honor them and open our hearts to receive this amazing gift. I think particularly in this time this is a healing journey that is open to men and essential if we wish to heal our part in creating the brutal imbalance of the patriarchal paradigm. In the article the author suggests two ways of practicing this which I very much agree with, one being a personal spiritual practice with the Goddess and the other being adoring and serving women. I feel this is one of my primary purposes in life. The women in my life have been my greatest teachers and I feel we need more female teachers and role models in our society so as to bring the energies back into balance for the collective. We as men also need to cultivate and strengthen our embodiment of the God or Divine Masculine which can only come to its true power when grounded in the Feminine. We can only truly honor and serve women if we are secure in the Masculine because dis-empowered service is not true service.

Over the last few years struggle, chaos and upheaval have permeated all aspects of my life. It has been very difficult and even terrifying at times. I’ve lost my job, my living space, relationships, many aspects of my identity and most of my material possessions. However I created this experience with the simple but powerful intention to be free, truly free at all levels. All this difficultly came about as I confronted my doubts, fears and attachments and learned often the hard way to let go of all that is not my essence. I have no regrets, I embrace the pain with the pleasure, the bad with the good. When you take away the dualistic labels everything is an expression of the divine and from that perspective one can experience true equanimity, accepting and embracing what is in each moment. Flowing freely with life. Co-creating your world with the full creative force of the universe behind you.

I’ve begun to realize that I really am complete in this moment as I am. My home is the eternal NOW so I am always at home no matter where I am. All living beings are my brothers and sisters so I am always with my family, never alone.

I no longer believe my beliefs because they are just thoughts with no inherent reality. I don’t need to believe what I think. I can just honor my thoughts as I honor the passing weather and honor the thoughts of others without being threatened by them. When you don’t identify with your thoughts as who you are or as an absolute truth you become free of the prison of your mind. The mind can then become a more fluid tool to use to interact with the world of form and create within it.

There is no need to fear, to worry or to suffer. There is no need to figure anything out. Life can be quite effortless if we can let go of trying to control it and live from a higher level of consciousness which is our true nature. Flow with life rather than resisting it. Co-create with the divine. See the dream as a dream and realize yourself as the dreamer. This isn’t something to think about. Its not something to believe or another interesting philosophy. Its not something to know or to attain in the future. It is and always has been right here right now, it is what you already are. You are free, you are divine, right now.

Will you choose to step into that? I hope so, I sure am.

As I’ve walked my spiritual path I’ve engaged in many practices, some more effective than others. I’ve found that the simplest techniques are usually the most effective because in my view the aim of the spiritual path is very simple and immediate. That aim is to realize our true nature, to return to wakefulness, to awaken from the dream of separate/dualistic life. On the path, we can get distracted by looking for the truth somewhere “out there” but I think the truth is right under our noses. Its right here, right now in this moment and it is life itself. It cannot really be spoken of but it can be lived. No special knowledge, talent or preparation is needed because it involves being what you already are at the deepest level. All that’s needed is to remember and to clear away anything that obscures what we truly are, that is, anything that distracts one from this moment. We just have to be interested in this process of awakening so that we are wiling to give it our full attention. The five steps I describe below are a tool I have used lately to help me return to my true nature when I forget.

Step 1 – Become Present

For me this is the core spiritual practice and it is analogous to living an awakened life. We cannot avoid pain or hold on to pleasure as each is but a transitory state, change is a universal law. Although as human beings we will experience pain and lose that which brings us pleasure, the suffering we most often experience along with it is optional. Suffering arises when we perceive reality through the thought forms of the mind and mistake those thought forms for reality. We create thoughts and weave them into stories about how things should be and when life doesn’t conform to these stories we suffer. The mind stories most of us create are usually centered either in the past or the future, both of which exist only as thoughts in our minds. We live in our memories of the past and feel guilt, regret, sadness and anger about how things may have unfolded. We live in our imagination of the future hoping for things to be better or fearing what might happen to us. We even begin to identify with our stories to the point where we fear letting them go because we can’t imagine life without them, they become familiar and there is a kind of comfort in the known. In all of this we miss the reality of the present moment.

Step 1 is letting go of the past and the future and entering the Now, which is all that really exists, it is stepping outside of time, the realm of suffering. Step 1 is bringing our attention from the mind and its stories to the body and the feeling sense and feeling our connection to what is happening right now right here. The Now is where life is and when we bring our attention fully to the Now something magical happens. We connect to the power of life and the “source” of our being. To make this connection with the moment however we must surrender and accept what is. If we don’t like what is happening we will resist the moment and imagine into the future for a time when we will like what’s happening more. This cuts us off from life and from our true power and causes us to again live in a mind created fantasy. If we look at the present moment as a reflection of the Divine then whatever is happening is an expression of it even if its painful or unpleasant. Surrendering to what is, is something that happens in the moment and does not mean we condone negative events or experiences and it does not mean we are passive about changing things but it does mean before we work for change we pause and surrender and accept what is so we can work for change with the power of life behind us.

Step 2 – Go Back to Step 1

Step 1 is the key and there can be a great deal of resistance at first to really entering the Now because it can involve feeling unpleasant emotions or confronting painful stories. When you are really present and aware in the Now you begin to see how you create your suffering with your mind. Many of us are not used to practicing “being” and the tendency can be to jump right into action without first grounding. However without our connection to the present we will get lost in the mind and our action will not have much power or meaning behind it because it doesn’t originate from a very deep level. This grounding connection to “source” is the key to an awakened life and the practice is to make our home in the Now.

Step 3 – Take Action from Presence

When we are ok with what is and grounded in the present we can take the most appropriate action for any given situation usually without needing to figure anything out. Our natural wisdom is available in the Now which is a level of consciousness where we can experience absolute clarity. The direction of our life as well as what we should do are already clear at this level, we need only be quiet enough to listen to this inner wisdom. The more experience we have “being” in a state of presence the easier it will be to “trust” the power of our true nature and begin to rely on it for our peace of mind, our guidance and our safety and security. If we can find these things within we will be less dependent on our outer world being a certain way. Ironically when we are already in touch with peace and joy within the outer world will more readily reflect them back because the outer is a reflection of the inner.

Step 4 – Receive

To live a life in the power of presence means to first ground in the moment and only then take action. Living in the moment requires us to live in a very open way because we cannot tap into abundance if we are closed to the limitless possibilities that the present moment offers. It involves embracing the unknown which is what many of us fear most because living in the unknown means living with limitless possibility. Trusting the unknown comes from seeing things clearly in the moment and flowing with life without resistance.

Step 5 – Go Back to Step 1

The point here is that there is a need to keep returning to presence over and over again. We recognize that we are lost in the mind either because we feel upset or we feel confused. In that moment of recognition a choice becomes possible and we can, with intention and gentleness, return to the present moment. Over time we live in presence more and more until there is no more suffering and imprisonment in the mind, we are free.

This post is dedicated to my friend Hymo who recently left this plane of existence. Although he has moved on he is not lost and will always be a part of those of us who knew him.

He was a man with a big loving heart who was not afraid to offer that love to his friends and to strangers or whoever he encountered on his journey. In fact Hymo was all about love and connection and it was almost impossible not to be touched by this big kid from NY. He was a free spirit who although in his final years struggled intensely, the light and love of his true being never ceased to shine. Hymo was a deep thinker and a deep feeler and he was always ready to trip out on just about any subject, well especially music and psychedelics He channeled the message and spirit of the Grateful Dead as if the spirit of Jerry had become a part of him. He was also a spiritual person who seemed to identify most with Love as a Divine expression. I feel incredibly fortunate to have received some of Hymos transmission, to have known him and shared the dream with him. For me Hymo embodied the most beautiful qualities of the 60s, he was a true hippie. He was a true lover and a true friend.

You’ve touched my heart my friend and I will never forget you. I hope we meet again soon wherever that may be…………sending you love and light always brother……

Grateful Dead: Box of Rain

As I’ve walked my spiritual path over the last few years I’ve let go of many aspects of my identity and the ways I had habitually defined myself. The question - Who am I? - is a key spiritual question which can be a conduit for accessing our true nature which is beyond all labels. My core spiritual practice is cultivating presence/awareness and in that space introducing the question Who am I which is an inquiry into the nature of the self. In letting go of many of my labels including ones associated with spiritual beliefs, career and relationship I’ve found that I’ve become much more free to respond to situations in the moment in surprising ways. Surprising because my responses are so spontaneous and don’t necessarily fit into my ideas about how I behave. Without such a rigid definition of who I am I can more easily step into roles, activities and ways of relating to people which would not have been possible before because my beliefs about who I am would limit the possibilities. This has opened a new world of unlimited adventure and experience and while it is often scary not to have the familiar backdrop of the old identity I feel far more alive than ever before.

As I’ve gone through this process lately I’ve paid particular attention to my relationships both old and new. There are some really powerful roles and labels associated with relationships and its interesting to see just how much we depend on them to relate to others. Am I your friend, colleague, lover, partner, boyfriend, or acquaintance? Am I straight, queer, polyamorous or something else? These roles and labels for me anyway have tended to define the way I relate to people, what is appropriate in the connection and to some degree what I can expect from the other person.

However I’ve noticed my relationships refusing to conform to these roles and labels anymore and it has produced a good deal of anxiety and confusion. It feels like I am learning how to be in relationship all over again in a totally new way. This new way of relating is an in the moment heart based experience of connection that is incredibly fluid. I now try not to apply a label to a new connection and instead just explore it to see where it leads, what it brings up and what kind of relationship channel is possible with a particular person. I also find that I continually have to notice and remove labels from existing relationships as they change over time. If we don’t apply labels we have no set of behaviors we can turn to in order to know how to relate to someone. The powerful aspect of this is that it opens up a new realm of relationship which is based purely on present moment experience. You meet someone in the present moment and respond according to what is felt and shared right then and there. This requires the ability to focus your attention on your present experience, to have an open heart and to trust that the relationship connection can unfold in a natural way without the need to limit or control it. It also requires open communication so that in the moment each persons boundaries are on the table.

There is incredible freedom and openness in relating this way and it tends to prevent the usual tendencies of having an agenda with someone based on the label that is applied to the relationship. I find this allows me to see the other person much more clearly, to see them for who they are rather than what I might like them to be. When we can see each other in this way without the need to change or control the other person a deep level of intimacy becomes possible. Two people truly seeing each other and sharing their common experience while simultaneously holding the differences as mysteries to be revealed in the relationship. When we don’t apply labels and create expectations, the unknown aspect of the connection becomes a mystery to be explored and revealed. For many people this can feel unstable and unsafe but it challenges us to find that stability and safety within rather than in another person.

As great as all this might sound it isn’t very easy to achieve at first because the conditioning of roles and labels is so entrenched and habitual but I am finding it is a natural expression of the spiritual path, at least for me, because the spiritual path can reveal the unreality and limitations of labels and roles as well as the limitless potential of the present moment. To be this open has required two things for me and it is very much still a work in progress. The first thing is to own, acknowledge and integrate the painful feelings that come up in relationship. If I begin to connect with a woman and find myself really wanting her to be a romantic partner and therefore notice an emerging desire to control the experience to create a certain outcome I can simply notice that and allow myself to feel what it brings up. I then don’t need to act on it or play it out the same way and the connection can remain free. If the person does become a romantic partner then I can flow into that knowing it is the natural unfolding of the connection.When we force a connection to move in a certain direction to meet a need, even if the other person accommodates our need it usually ends up falling apart because it is based on a false projection rather than a true seeing of the connection for what it is.

The second thing I’ve needed to cultivate to create truly open relationship is my connection with the Divine and in terms of my connection with women my connection with the Divine Feminine. If I enter relationship without this grounding in spirit then I tend to be in relationship to get my deeper needs met and the relationship takes on a need based quality which is not very open and free flowing. No other person can meet my deepest needs for wholeness, completeness and safety if I have not addressed them in myself first. If instead I cultivate a connection to the Divine within I can enter relationship a whole person not needing anything from my partner but bring a great deal to share, unconditional love. My more practical needs then get met without effort because I’ve already set the stage for that within. In romantic relationship, if I cultivate a connection with the Divine Feminine I see women as a reflection of a part of me rather than something I need to possess to be complete. Since we all have both masculine and feminine aspects, we can integrate these two polarities in order to enter relationship with the opposite sex in an empowered balanced way.

In my view, open fluid in the moment relationship is a gift that is available to each of us and represents a new paradigm of relationship which is more in tune with spirit and reflects a level of consciousness which I see society moving into, right now.

In the last couple of years I’ve moved around a great deal living in half a dozen living situations. In the process I’ve been looking at how I create security, stability and a feeling a safety in my life. During this time I had very few of the usual things most people associate with security and stability, things like a house, a car, a job, a long term relationship or money. I’ve had all of these things in the past but in my process of transformation had to temporarily let them go one by one. My intention in letting them go for a while was not because they are negative or problematic but rather to look at my attachment to them and my motivations in having them in my life. You see, all of these so called sources of security have also been sources of suffering for me. They have caused suffering because they are unreliable, temporary and fail to meet my expectations. One thing we can say for certain about external sources of security is that they are temporary, they do not last forever and they change, often in ways we don’t like.

In letting these things go for a time and moving around so much while unraveling my identity (who I took myself to be) it became more and more clear to me that the only way I could find lasting security, stability and peace of mind was to look inward. However when you initially look inward you find the same problem as with the outward sources of security. Thoughts, emotions, beliefs and states of mind are as temporary and unreliable as money, jobs and relationships. If your stability, your grounding is based on thoughts and emotions you are in no better shape. I found this out the hard way but having exhausted these possibilities I began to look deeper.

At a deeper level I started to get in touch with something I could not describe very well with words. It is something many spiritual teachers call the witness or the watcher. In some forms of meditation the instruction is to simply watch or notice what is happening, both internally and externally. You hear a sound you notice it, you feel an emotion you notice that, you start thinking and you notice that. That’s it, you simply notice everything. In this process you naturally get distracted and start fantasizing, when you realize this you simple return to noticing without any kind of judgment on yourself. This seems really simplistic at first and often difficult because its not so easy to just notice without getting caught up in thoughts, feelings, fantasies or external events. But that process of noticing opens up a deeper level of consciousness, awareness.

When we feel angry if we can notice that we are angry and maintain a small degree of awareness, that awareness is the part of us that is not caught up in the anger. If we were fully in our anger, taken over by it, we could not notice it. The witness requires separating ourselves in a way from our experience. We can see it as a temporary passing state of mind and we then have the choice of not reacting from it, instead we can just feel the anger and let it pass through us. With practice awareness becomes something we can draw on for security and stability because it is always available no matter what is happening externally or what our state of mind is internally. Turning our attention to awareness has an effect of dissolving our problems because when we take our attention away from a problem and focus on awareness we no longer create the problematic story. We simply see things are they are from a calm peaceful state of mind so we can accept or we can see what needs to be done and do it without struggle. This is not a passive way of being but it asks us to pause and get in touch with awareness so that if we do take action in response to a situation the action is not a re-action but rather a conscious in the moment response to what is needed. This tends to produce a very different result compared to reacting to a situation.

Attention may be the most powerful tool we have to shape our experience. Most of our experience is a direct result of where we put our attention, where we don’t put it as well as the quality of that attention. If a friend of mine is supposed to meet me for coffee and she doesn’t show up and my mind goes into a story that she blew me off to hang out with another guy my attention is now going into creating a problem and the suffering that goes along with it. If instead I choose to put my attention on the raw experience of the moment I may find that I’m perfectly ok without her showing up, I’m drinking my coffee and enjoying the moment. My friend may have blown me off but much more likely something came up for her. It is interesting to look at your problems and what makes you suffer and see how your attention plays into that, how much drama is your mind creating and how many of your unpleasant emotions emerge from that drama?

In an even deeper sense, awareness is a direct connection to life or source. In awareness we are in touch with our true divine being. When one is fully present in the moment with attention focused on awareness miracles happen. Life is spacious and free and the natural abundance that we are all a part of can flow in and out of our life. There are no problems here, only challenges. There is no struggle here, effort is expended freely and flows with circumstances producing just what is needed. We all have the capability to experience this awakened state if we practice with awareness and directing our attention consciously. We are already free if we can just re-learn to live in that freedom……..

A man was walking in the forest and came upon a monk sitting under a tree.
The man asked the monk, who are you sir?
The monk replied, I am.
I see said the man and how is it you look so happy and joyful?
I have discovered a treasure said the monk.
Well sir, I am a poor man and am distraught with my life, won’t you share this treasure with me?
The monk said, of course my dear fellow, please sit down here next to me.
The man sat down and the monk continued to sit looking peaceful and serene, smiling.
Finally growing impatient the man said, sir, when will you share this treasure with me?
The monk said, I share it with you now, will you not accept it?
I mean no disrespect but you have only sat here next to me, I have seen no treasure.
Ah said the monk, first you must put down your burden.
But sir, I have nothing, I carry no burden.
Perhaps you have carried it so long you have forgotten said the monk.
Well then, what must I do said the man?
Suddenly the monk slapped the man in the face.
Ouch! cried the man, why did you do that?
I was trying to get your attention said the monk.
Well you did, that hurt.
My apologies, do you hear that soothing sound in the background asked the monk?
Yes, it is the stream at the edge of the forest.
Indeed, and do you smell that sweet fragrance in the air?
Oh yes, the blossoms of the tree have just opened said the man.
Lovely and do you feel the warmth of the sun on your face?
Yes, it is quite a pleasant day at that.
Would you like some of these grapes asked the monk?
Thank you sir, they are quite delicious.
The monk bowed then got up and began to make his way down the road.
The man asked, sir, where are you going?
Now that you have laid down your burden and accepted the treasure I am going back to my hut to take my afternoon nap said the monk.
But sir, what shall I do now?
Leave your burden and enjoy the treasure and joy will never leave you no matter what happens……….