Alan Watts | Dare Boldly

unnamed Source: Zen Flash

I love to walk barefoot in the mud. To feel earth’s wet, oozy goodness squishing between my toes, sliding across my skin.

I love to dance in the rain. To stand high on the top of a hill feeling the sky washing down against my skin, my hair flattening against my skull, my face soaking in the nourishing waters pouring down.

I love to swim naked in the sea. To slide effortlessly through crystal clear water flowing against my skin. To feel the waters of the universe caressing my body, holding me up, holding me in its embrace.

All of these things I love to do because they remind me how alive I am. How of the universe I am. How limitless my possibilities are in a world of wonder and awe.

All of these things I love to do are part of my path. Just as all the travails and triumphs I have experienced, the hardships and the missteps, the joyful leaps and the stumbling tumbles, they are part of my path that have carried me here, to today, where I have a choice.

Do I stay asleep or do I awaken?

Without all of these things, I would not be me where I am today.

Just as all the things you have experienced, endured, witnessed, fallen in love with, stepped away from, eased slowly into or leapt blindly into, stumbled haltingly through or rushed fearlessly within, all of these thing are part of your path that make up the journey of being you.

They are not who you are. They are your how. The how of how you got here, to this moment where you can choose to fall back to sleep, or awaken.

We humans spend so much time focused on the how. So much effort trying to get through, over, into, out of circumstances, situations, opportunities, we forget it is not the ‘how’ that creates our journey, it is the what we do with what appears on our journey that creates the one we are today.

Immersed in the how of whether or not we step, leap, dance, cavort, we forget we have the power to awaken completely to our divine essence. To our brilliant light, our amazing grace.

And so, we focus on the how, thinking it will make a difference to what happens in our life.

It will not make a difference if we choose to stay asleep to our magnificence.

When I was an infant I crawled. I am an adult now. I can still crawl, but I can also dance, leap, jump, skip, walk…

No matter how I move through the world, how old I am, how rich, poor, slim, fat, tall, short. It doesn’t matter the colour of my skin, the depth of my roots in tribal soils or the wearing of my knees from prostration before the God or gods of my knowing, it is what I choose to do that makes my difference one of awakened bliss or stumbling in the dark guilt for being alive.

Do I choose to wake up or do I choose to stay asleep?

As Alan Watts asks at the end of this short video on waking up, “You put yourself in this situation. So it’s a question fundamental. Do you define yourself as a victim of the world, or as the world?”

It is a funny expression of human thinking — the thought that a new day rises as if there is an ending to one before the next can begin. In reality, each day is a continuation of the last. Time is continuously connected, the last moment merging with the next with no finite beginning and end point.

This thought crossed my mind this morning as I looked out my office window and saw the colour of the pale blue sky tinged with light rose deepening with each moment passing by. “A new day rises,” my mind whispered, and I laughed. Where do old days go? Do they die and disappear into the nothingness of space? How is this possible? Nature abhors a vacuum so how can nothingness exist? How is it possible for a day to disappear into something that didn’t exist, unless of course, ‘the day’ didn’t exist in the first place. It was simply the moment that was and always is a reflection of where I am at. And because I contain all of the universe that I am, and you contain all of the universe that you are, time is connected through all of who we are. We are the time passing, flowing, beginning and ending.

We breathe the same air, stand upon the same earth, move through the same space, connected. When the wave crashes against the shore, all the ocean is in that wave. When a raindrop falls upon the earth, all earth feels its impact. When a stone drops into the water of a pond, all the pond and all the air is moved by its ripple.

When one child is born, all life feels its arrival. And when one man dies, all humankind feels life’s mystery.

When I fear living my song, all of nature resonates with the loss of my voice. When you sing out for joy, all of life rejoices.

We are all one. All connected. All part of and all of the universe, the continuum of life flowing.

Alan Watts says it beautifully, “Everybody is I. You all know you are you. And where so ever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn’t make any difference, you are all of them. And when they come into being, that’s you coming into being.”

Heady thoughts on this beautiful spring morning. The grass is turning green, buds are beginning to appear upon tree branches and tulip heads are starting to poke their way out of the earth. In the grand scheme of things, it is a day like any other. In truth, it is the miracle of life on earth, ever evolving, ever flowing, ever becoming more than I imagine. Yet, in my imaginings, it is all that I dream of, all that I wish for, all that I become.

I awoke this morning and life greeted me with its mystery, its divine essence flowing all around. I awoke this morning and remembered. I am magnificent. So are you.

Namaste.