Happy Sunday Morning all.

Freedom is a living blessing.  It may take some time and effort to arrive there, but I am nearly lost for words trying to describe how fabulous it feels.

So, I’m at work yesterday, cooking away.  The chef I work with has some–well, bad habits.  He doesn’t clean as he goes.  He uses a big pot for whatever he’s preparing and when he’s done he doesn’t rinse or prewash, he just sets it aside.  For me, more often than not.

He has other less productive habits.  But I like and care about him and he’s a good chef, creative and knowledgeable.

Here’s what I know.  Yesterday, I was perturbed about certain workplace trends–mainly about how I was having to do a bunch more work than I ought to be doing–mostly due to my partner’s less productive work habits.

He noticed that I was quieter than usual.  Finally he said something.  I joined him outside for a break and we talked.

Therein lies the dilemma.

You can talk till you are blue in the face but you won’t get through.  Allow me to clarify.

My partner’s mind, like most persons, is so cluttered and obfuscated and keeps him so trapped inside his head that he is truly incapable of allowing almost anything in from the “outside” world.  In other words, his experience of personal selfhood is so powerful and overwhelming that he literally cannot see beyond the prison bars of his mental and physical selfhood to actually listen to another human being.  Much less is he prepared to suffer any kind of criticism–no matter how diplomatically presented. He cannot see, hear or speak for being overwhelmed by so much mental and emotional energy.  Thoughts, emotions are moving rapidly.  The body is clenched, in a constant state of tension.  Oxygen is trapped in breathing patterns that are alternately too short and too long and then clenched and held by the stress that has accumulated in his stomach and particularly, the diaphragm.

He is in great pain.  That is the saddest thing of all, is it not?  That is what is so tragic–to see another person’s pain at the mercy of his/her own mind/body.

What is freedom if not the liberty to live in a world where mental and physical tension has so decreased that it becomes impossible NOT to live fully and entirely in the living Present, the Sacred NOW.

When the temple of your body/mind is free from nearly constant states of storm warning activity, when you discover the sensation of peace that can be experienced in the eye of the storm, then you will–like me–praise whatever Grace may be for this extraordinary gift.

You can be free.  It requires discipline, devotion and effective practices.  It won’t take forever, I promise you.  If you donate 10% of your 24 hour day to meditation and yoga, if you practice effective breathing patterns throughout your day, if you chant whenever you are able to help disperse the established habits of mental activity that continue to imprison you, you will find peace.  Not quickly, but not ten years down the road, either.

The single most important practice that you can perform–along with the above disciplines–is to walk in the world and recognize that everything that you see and experience, “inside” or “outside” of your limited self, is your own body.  The trees, leaves, grass–this is your body.  The thoughts in another person’s head?  Your body. All is energy.  Brooks and streams and rivers of energy.  See through the trees of vibrant energy to perceive the forest that is your true self- a self not contained within a head or a body at all.  A self that is coextensive and coinclusive with the living Universe that is our true body, mind and Self.