Take Into Consideration

A Special Thank You to Sophie Egar for hosting me this past weekend. A spiritual rest that has given so many wonderful reverberating gifts long after leaving. May God bless your journey to Indonesia and keep you in good company with new friends in the place of a thousand islands.

Notes from Florida

Even writing this, takes into consideration all the energy that took for this moment to occur. And that through it, we could find something worth pursuing.

So much of our lives are dealt in action or reaction. How is it, that we are to respond? Responsive derives itself from the joining of Latin responsus with the suffix -ivus, which gave English -ive. That suffix changes verbs into adjectives, as in suggestive or corrosive. Responsus is a form of respondēre, which means "to answer" and is the source of English's respond.

Our thoughts are in a way in which we have to see into the possibility of answering the questions of our lives. Could that be a way to live? Wouldn't it mean that all of life is just spent answering questions? Would it lead to monotony and his cousin complacency? More questions, I know. However, the point becomes to not respond. To not engage. To feel much deeper than what our mental impulses have prematurely led us to seize.

The consideration of others as self.

Knowing where to begin anything at all precedes all thought and is shrouded in mystery. Like clouds passing in the periphery behind someones reading of a recently borrowed book. Yes, beginning takes our most least understood concept: time, and usually a certain kind of readiness to hit the 'play' button on the menu options screen. You know the one. Right smack dab in between your indecisiveness and saying to the moment: yes.

In between starting again, we often stare at the other side of the room. Searching. Finding. Nothing at all. And it isn't a catastrophe, quite the contrary. Nothing pervades the moment, with colorful delight. We turn the page and the clouds continue passing. Something has changed. We don't know what. This, to me, is how we have come to discover the phenomenon known as "focus".

One hundred and twenty seconds.

According to Andrew Huberman, it takes one hundred and twenty seconds to reorient our mind and uncover the discipline of focus. Slightly agitated, we'll want to redirect this energy into more exciting states, our mind is apt to wander. It is in the training and renewing of the mind where we begin the practice of mastering our own mind.

To give way to our senses and our every delight can precipitate each place we occupy. A cafe, the beach, our home, the vacation home we go to in the summers, and back where we work. It's completely possible to get lost in our exterior world.

We lose sight of the interior life.

I am writing all of this to say, thanks be to God. The Love Supreme. Is closer now than ever and I am eternally grateful. In these forgettable hours, I am trying to distill this inner feeling of peace. Can be peace be considered categorically as simply, "a feeling"? Feelings come and go, no? No, no this is taking on the qualities of a felt realization. Like prayer that resonates long after the prayer is held. Like the intimate scent of a candle, long after they have burned to their full completion. So it is, I am thankful for God leaving the aroma.

I have been going long stretches without prayer, mass, and writing – All forms of meditation and creative acts in service to God. I had begun to see this self-induced starvation was taking a toll.

And now, when I ask myself for whom do I write for?

We write for ourselves.

Sure, we may have audiences. But seriously, who else will understand this handwriting??

I write for the pleasure and joy of writing. The ink swishing against the paper. Acknowledging the gift of a tree somewhere gave of themselves for the sake of this page.

There is the sacred and the profane.

If we err on the side of humility, we can allow ourselves to embrace all of own humanity while longing for a closer relationship to the divine.