My Reason for Existence..

Last night I finally watched the new Twilight movie, Eclipse. I read all 4 books a few years ago.. nothing but the Harry Potter series has gripped me quite like these book, I devoured all four books in less than a month, reading each of the 700 page books in just a few days.. it was a total escape from my life.. so romantic, exciting, delicious.. I thought it was so funny that i was totally loving reading a book series that my 10 yr old niece and my best friends 10 yr old son were both reading..

There is a scene toward the end of the movie where Edward is talking to Jake and he calls Bella "his reason for existence".. I paused the movie and took a breathe and let that line wash over me..

imagine another person (who was not insane or crazy co-dependent) saying "you" were the "reason for their existence" ... it is the ultimate romantic fantasy..

In the last few years I have had some amazing experiences with love.. I have been delivered into the arms of the most exquisite unconditional love I've ever found... simply by breathing with another person and surrendering to the energy. I have blown the ceiling off again and again of the heights of sexual ecstasy again letting the energy have "me" completely. I have danced in ecstatic dance and contact improv dance and had full body energetic orgasms in a room full of people dancing.. once again there is a letting go, the energy takes me... similar to the ocean taking you when you swim in it.. the immensity the seems to swallow up the sense of small separate self (a notion in the mind) and in the ceasing of that.. there is this deep relaxation into the allness that you truly are..

When this ceasing, relaxing, letting go, melting into ecstasy & unity... happens and I am engaged with another person (yes it sometimes happens sitting in satsang) there is often a sense of mental attachment to the other. "I think" that it's somehow about them, they are opening me, like a key that opens a door. This is followed by a stream of thoughts (later when the moment has long passed) that "I" want that bliss back and I need to be in contact with that person again to get it. If I ask myself in inquiry "is that true?" do i really need that person? that experience? am I in lack? missing something? or is that love, bliss, relaxation, peace, radiance... is it available now? it is in me? or outside?

There is a deep realization that this love is what I AM. It is like gravity, it is always here, always available. Sometimes it is subtle, quiet and still, other times it is like a great storm, raging and demolishing everything in it's course. But the essence is the same, the love is always here, the bliss is always available, whether i am dancing, making love, doing yoga, washing dishes, soaking in a jacuzzi, running on the beach, or playing with my kids.. it is the ground of being, it is found in deep surrender, in the calm that comes when we stop, when awareness drops out of the mind, into the body, into the ground, into the fullness, out of form an into the emptiness.

Yes of course it takes many forms and I personally prefer the ones where I am moaning, writhing, screaming, being danced, and laughing ... feeling so light that I may float to the top of the ceiling, so expanded that what I am fills all space, liberated beyond the mind, to that place where all is exceedingly well..

So that's just what the mind does, it attaches to an idea, an experience, a person, a drug... and it says this is IT! This is what I want.. and there is a narrowing ... feels like this immensity that you are squeezes into a little box.. the ocean identifies with being a wave, the branch thinks that it exists separate from the tree, that it is growing the fruit, it is the source...

When that drug of choice (food, person, experience, whatever) is not available or quits working for you.. then the inquiry begins.. when you want it (that release from the bondage of self) so bad, you'll do anything.. simply sit and ask... is this that I am looking for not already here?

Maybe our "reason for existence" is to realize that we are it, not the little idea of what we are, a personality, an object, a body... but what we really are, our essence... what we really want is to directly experience what we actually are..

St Francis says "What you are looking for.... is what is looking".

Love to hear from you...

Can you feel your Ocean ness?

In the game of life it often seems that we play the game of thinking that we are waves and forgetting we are truly the ocean itself. I spent the day today up in Ojai at our new home. It is a lush paradise of eucalyptus trees, bamboo and green all around with waterfalls, coy pond and birds singing their songs..

Deep relaxation is easy here, i actually took a nap in the hammock by the pool. Sitting in the garden listening to the water flowing I breathed deeply remembering the ocean of being that I truly am.

Much of the suffering of the separate self is identifying and absorption in form, believing that i am a wave, staring at the shore and forgetting that the wave is merely an expression of the whole, forgetting that the wave is really the ocean itself. Deep relaxation is the practice of remembering, the glancing backward at source.. ocean rather than only at the shore of expression.

The day was full of celebration... early morning run taking in the beauty of the landscape, drumming circle at midday and watching the kids play in the fountain and hula hooping in the park. I watched my 7 yr old beat his dad 2 games of horseshoes, clearly delighted. We ate a beautiful dinner in community and soaked in the jacuzzi under the night sky watching a shower of shooting stars.

As darkness descends all around, the crickets are singing, the waterfall is flowing and I am feeling the ocean, the source of all of life, in the trees, the waterfall, the silence.. breathing in all that moves and all that is still.