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"Are you in your skin?"

Californian Susan Herrera spent two years in northern Cameroon in what might be described as the classic Peace Corps assignment: teaching school in a remote African village. 'Jam bah doo nah?' ('Are you in your skin?') her neighbors ask her by way of greeting, and the response means, 'Yes, I am alive, fully present and experiencing the moment.' It is a good question. If you stop and check enough to be able to say, Yes, it can be its own blessing and body prayer.

I wanna do a video and report my way through body prayer, where one is suspended within the pull of Heaven and the anchoring of Earth, and perceive the Whole container of life that holds our Being: our Skin. All of one's living flesh and mind and bone is contained in this singular organ that holds its wet treasure. It is a Peripheral Vision kind of experiencing. A soft focus that quiets the Think Think Think to perceive this greater Whole that we are, or might be. This chamber of Mind and Body and Spirit is my/our personal Pod, and it is an Expression of a Bigger Life. Infinitely expressing now, as Physics. And Love. And Light. And each one of us. A God Pod if you will. Enclosing us as and in our skin.

I love to hear someone else pray

No one else is the same. Even the same words I have heard before are new in another's heartfelt devotion.

And so often it is SO different from my own lines of communication with the Most High God -- that is, the way a praying person perceives their relationship with God is somewhat revealed, often very different from my own relationship with God. Shaky or strong, i find their attempt to address pure Excellence so full and wholesome, and often very different from my own. I am inspired in their prayers and way of addressing God,  I see new possibilities of vigor for myself, new veins of  understanding God by hearing their voice speak to Him who they have come to know and love and depend upon.

Lauren sent me this

This is an excellent spiritual contemplation for our time. It could be available in a quiet prayer area in a church. In it we survey the vast known cosmos maps our whole as we can know it. [Spoiler Alert:] Can it surprise that it concludes in the Sacred Complex of 40?

Pitzer adds a major in Secularism

Here we are at the moment that the momentum and perhaps even a tipping point is cascading to a world view completely devoid of Sacred Ground.

It is so funny because I am filled with the vision of Physics buildings fueled by experiential Christians and Jews working in mathematics, biophysics, and engineering.

Glass DNA sculpture– Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe, Valencia, Spain

Isaiah to the Heart Sutra and back

Can't explain the journey now, but want to get down this link (updated 04/22/2020) and it's ending question and response. I was searching for original material about the perfect mantra song (because it aims rightly).

Anyway, thanks to Emma I had just come from mulling Isaiah's "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee," and so when I read the following paragraph I say, "Yes!" Perfectly aimed! And yet, hmmm, not able to perceive that Fundamental Mind is a Paradox of infinite power and intimate presence, almighty and yet alert to you?

 

Question: Could say a little more about the Bodhisattva mind?

Sojun: Bodhisattva mind is the mind which is always turned toward practice, which means it is always fundamentally grounded in emptiness and is expressed through our activity. Bodhisattva mind is the mind which is always giving up self-centeredness in order to see into the truth. So we always keep returning to that mind. It’s like sitting zazen, we have all this activity going on and thoughts are coming up and desires keep arising. So in daily life, when some question comes up, you return your mind to the Fundamental, in order to come to a decision. How does my decision accord with this non self-centered view? If you keep doing that, then you’re continuously practicing. If you’re just getting carried away by your feelings, thoughts and emotions and start to follow all these tracks, it’s easy to get lost. But if you keep coming back to base your decisions on this Fundamental Mind, then you don’t get lost and you know how to practice. You may get lost, but you know how to get back. You always know what to come back to. We’re constantly coming back. That’s zazen: constantly coming back to our undivided Fundamental Mind. That’s Bodhisattva practice and the mantra of our life.

Reprinted from the Berkeley Zen Center Newsletter

It's right there. This man is right there. If he melted just a little, he might sense the pure love and light of a personal godMind. I think the Christians I am meeting are on to something Big. 

Holy Expectancy

I have been feeding myself sumptiously with "Celebration of Discipline" by the Quaker minister, Richard Foster, ever since my hand sought it out at the prayer retreat cabin last month. I borrowed pastor Greg's copy to study the three quarters of the book I had left, and it has continued to enlighten my heart and my practice.

It's funny because it plants seeds and you forget they are even in there, like "holy expectancy". The phrase caught me when I read it at the cabin, but surprised and re-asserted itself on me at church this Sunday, during prayer time. I knew I must proclaim the phrase in that sanctuary, as if I were a ringing bell.

But what I had to say there is not why I write about it now. It is that the return to his passage on this is continuing to work on me, and I had an insight today that, when I shared it with Lou, he said I ought to get it written down. OK, here it is.

I realized in the shower today that ONE THING our old New Thought practices created was an attitude of Holy Expectancy. It may be the Truest thing about their practice is that it generates that quality of Mind in you. And it is Real and Good and Wholesome. Not conjured. (It may be misaimed somewhat, as it is dependent on what you think you really, really want right now, which might be wildly self-centered and is not necessarily the Highest Good, but it is an activated Faith in spiritual relationship nonetheless).

That's a very Good Thing. And I am glad to have resurrected that and appreciate it by having the Quaker words to call it out. I have been only down and apart from the Good of that church lately, for all the reasons I have. Thank you, Lord, for helping me reweave the Good and see anew.