What if each of us already is what we couldn’t even dare to dream we could become? What if there is reality that is free of conflict, free of the suffering, of trying so hard to be the person we are conditioned to believe we are supposed to be? And what if all we have to do is to learn to clear away the obstacles preventing us from living the truth that we already are?
I first heard of pickleball about 15 years ago from my neighbor Mark, who was an avid player. He would make the trek from the West Village to Stuytown regularly to play on what were probably the only courts in town at the time. He described the game and invited me to join but I couldn’t get past the name “pickleball.”
Many of the older adults who come through Greenwich House’s Older Adult Centers are navigating some kind of loss. A spouse or partner may have passed away. Friends they’ve known for decades may have died, one by one. Their children may have grown up and moved away, and the calls and visits may have become less frequent. Over time, those losses can shrink a person’s world in ways that aren’t always immediately visible.
I did my first cleanse at an ashram in the ‘80s, where I learned about internal hygiene and other wellness practices used in Ayurveda to keep the immune system strong. It stopped my acute neuralgic pain. I intended to do another cleanse, but the time was never right. In 2018, I was retired with chronic health problems ─ and forgetting words and keys. It was time.
Back during the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, to get a knock at your door from the Department of Health could mean life or death.
Recently, I experienced the loss of my 18-year-old dog, Rosie. For nearly two decades, she was woven into the rhythm of my daily life — present through ordinary days, major milestones, moments of joy, and periods of hardship.
The Covid-19 pandemic had a traumatic medical, political, and economic effect on the world with a 1-2% mortality rate. But there are diseases around the world right now, and potential diseases in the future, which could be much more deadly. Here are just a few.
Though we might not recognize it, in these and many other moments in daily life we relax into our true nature and are freed from the exhausting job of defending or promoting our conditioned self. One might even call this falling effortlessly into the reality of one expansive mind a form of “everyday enlightenment.”
If you are going through a difficult time, you, like many may find the part of what is called The Serenity Prayer helpful: Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can: and the Wisdom to know the difference.
For reasons too complex to describe here, the childhood message to me was that I didn’t have a heart. So perhaps that is why I was so shocked when I noticed the sweetest feeling arising. I laughed with joy and relief when I realized that, at last, I was falling in love with my own heart. It was an unequivocal enjoyment of what was here in this moment and a complete ease in the depth of my being.
