Don’t try to see through the distances.

That’s not for human beings. Move within,

but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

~Rumi~

Recently, I found out that, during her years spent living and teaching in Puerto Rico, she self-published a collection of original, Spanish-language poetry. We are not a Spanish-speaking household: my mother descends from two Eastern European Jews; I descend from a Jewish girl from the Bronx and a Puerto Rican man who spent most of my time with him (under my tutelage) perfecting his English.

As legend has it, my mother taught herself Spanish by reading El Diario, attending Sunday services with her Puerto Rican friends and listening to Spanish radio stations in New York City. The poetry she shares with me sounds hardly like news or advertisements, but awakens my Boricua spirit (and reminds me that Spanish was actually my first language) like only Salsa music has.

Here are two of my favorites. They remind me of the moments when, in life, illusions succumb to reality.

Poca gente saben el valor de un sueño.

Aunque aprendieron el precio del despertar.

——

Mi sueño terminó con un grito.

No sé si por el sueño o por el despertar.

~ Beatrice Laureano ~

“Though in the morning we may have radiant health, in the evening we may be white ashes.” – Taitetsu Unno

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,

What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

~  David Whyte  ~

…Courtesy of the Power to the Peoples Project…

Alive & Direct is thriving and I have been doing what it takes to help it flourish. Exciting moments on our timeline!

I took my first-ever writing class, at the California Institute of Integral Studies, taught by Rick Tarnas, author of Passion of the Western Mind (which I recommend as a must-read) and Cosmos and Psyche (which is on my “going to read soon” list), that helped me shift my creative process and my approach to writing. Amazing. More on that, down the road. Quick shares: I have been reading, welcoming Spirit and refining, refining, refining. So, yield feels slower, but higher quality, the past few weeks.

That said, I remain busy and committed:

I continue to explore resources for transformation and live experiences in contact with visionaries. Already recorded are quick interviews with conscious, small business owners in the Bay Area – including All Edibles, James and the Giant Cupcake, Table Nectar and North Oakland Donation-Based Yoga. I even connected with a Toyota Prius specialist, recently, and learned a lot about Toyota’s commitment to our environment. Sadly, I did not receive a free Prius, in exchange for my interest in Toyota’s consciousness. Wah wah.

On my calendar are conversations and collaboration with more visionaries, light workers and agents of transformation that work to pave the way for our collective consciousness and provide guidance along our path of spiritual and cultural evolution. Marin. Oakland. Northern California. Peru. Hawaii. Seattle. I’ll get as close to touching them as I can and will share what unfolds, with you.

Today, I woke up feeling shifted. Not much of a surprise – I celebrated my 31st birthday yesterday. What an anniversary, what a fun day and night. Many thanks to my friends and family, reading this, for your light, your love, your blessings and your gifts. I love you and appreciate you.

Blessings,

Dan

And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Courtesy of Google Images

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.

-Rumi

The very generous woman, named Gayle, who I met that morning, nut-shelled Jodo Shinshu as an “everyday, practical Buddhism that meets people where they are in life.” Whoa. My mind relaxed immediately while my heart swooned. I have been told by people I’ve met along my path that my viewpoints on life, my mindset while self-healing and my articulations about living remind them of Buddhist tenets and philosophies. Each time I’ve poked my nose into Buddhism, though, I’ve struggled to feel comfortable integrating it into my lifestyle, into my everyday walk. So, when Gayle used these words to describe Jodo Shinshu, my delight was uncontrollable. What a magical day this is! What a gift this moment is!

I hardly ever invite books into my life. I’m not as voracious a reader as I judge that I should be, so I prefer to speak with people, experience the information contained in a book and enjoy the dance of engagement with teacher, channel, subject matter and story. As I integrate my work as Alive & Direct into my daily practices of mindfulness and creation, though, I have been inviting into my routine reading and research. A weaker, unfamiliar muscle for me, this addition to my day challenges, frightens and humbles me as much as it delights, empowers and informs me.

So, when I could hear my heart beating and my intuition making my scalp tingle, I stepped out a little further onto my personal edge: I asked Gayle to recommend to me a book that I could use as resource to learn more about Jodo Shinshu. I swallowed hard – perhaps to wash down my fear, self-judgment and discomfort in my new muscle – immediately after the words left my mouth. But Gayle is a great ambassador for Jodo Shinshu and model of the Buddhist practice. She generously shared with me two books – one more conversational in tone than the other.

I chose the more conversational of the two, called The Buddha’s Wish for the World, by Monshu Koshin Ohtani, to begin my exploration with. It felt good in my hands that day and continues to feel good in my hands now. I’ve spent the past few days with it, noticing my connection to its accessible, practically-minded messages.

Today, I connected with something in this book that invited me to sit down at my laptop and begin sharing these words with you. My resonance with it stems from my recent integration of a shift in my viewpoint of work, my work and my impact on the global community. As Alive & Direct, I’m inviting more conscious communities and businesses into my life and personal business model, with intention to help them develop sustainable habits and practices within themselves and their organizations to communicate effectively, passionately and with impact. I am in love with this moment of my life and energized about it. I would do it for free, but I cannot afford to.

The passages I read today in The Buddha’s Wish for the World helped me feel seen and supported on my mission, by whatever it is that continues to lure me to the right page, in the right book, in the right spot on in the sunshine on my stoop.

My decision to answer my heart’s call for integration of my longing into my lifestyle and profession yields, along with the unrelenting support of The Invisible, enlivened footsteps in the direction of my mission and embodiment of a quiet, expectation of everything I need, occasions of remarkable challenge, stiffening fear and significant self-doubt. I welcome all of it and embrace it as my work to do in order to live my answer to this call.

This passage I am about to share with you helped ground me in the bliss of what I do, as I geared up to spend the rest of today tweaking how I support myself doing what I love to do. Perhaps it will help ground you in some part of your process or speak to you as you takes steps along your own path.

The Buddha’s work is to rescue those who are suffering. However, the Buddha does not think, “This is something I must do.” It is rather a form of enjoyable recreation for the Buddha, with his heart already immersed in the work this requires. Thus, the Buddha is described as literally waltzing through his work carefree; nothing could be more pleasant.

Blessings,
Dan