I can't help but point out the obvious analogy here to our own personal quests to be a human version of a "masterpiece", whatever that may mean to any of us individually in terms of success, intellect, beauty, wealth, spirituality or altruistic qualities. We consistently and doggedly search outward, never quite finding that masterpiece we look for. Perhaps, though, we are looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps, right beneath the surface of our astoundingly complex human exteriors, in the stillness of inner space, our masterpiece waits to be discovered.

Cerca Trova.

Mandalas are considered sacred in Buddhist tradition, representative of the interconnection of all things and the great web of life. The monks who worked on this one were doing so with clearly evident joy and enthusiasm; their smiles were as broad as their fingers were nimble. As time for the closing ceremony drew near, they quietly completed the finishing touches on the mandala without fanfare. By this time quite a crowd had gathered to admire this awe-inspiring and incredible work of art. The moment was brief, however, for the closing ceremony soon began. Ritual blessings were offered and then the mandala, this beautiful, exquisite mandala which had taken two full weeks of work to complete, was swept up into piles and small vials of the multi-colored sand were filled for the attendees. Quietly, reverently, we lined up to take our vials, the receipt of which is considered a great blessing in Buddhist tradition.

The lesson of of the mandala, of course, is the lesson of impermanence. The vast intricacies of our lives are all, like the sands of the mandala, eventually swept away. Nothing is forever; there is no permanence, no enduring thing. All of life is ephemeral, fleeting. To acknowledge this, to really know this truth and take it into your heart deepens you, enriches you, allows you to appreciate the grand web of life, complete with all its joys and its sorrows. This lesson, learned well, connects you in a very profound way with all people and deepens your compassion. When we cling too tightly to life, when we fear death, when we resist change, we struggle and we suffer. The Buddhists call this dukkha. The quality of non-attachment, which flows from the lesson of impermanence, is essential for an enlightened, joyful life, and allows for a vision of life in all its glory and wonder from a far higher vantage point.

 The term “Pollyanna” has entered our language as a description for someone who unfailingly finds the good in life, no matter the circumstances. In today’s fast paced, success-oriented, sophisticated and sometimes jaded world it often takes on a negative connotation, as if finding the good was hopelessly naïve and ignorantly unrealistic. I beg to differ.

 What if we all absolutely insisted on seeing the best in each other? What if we would take each person as they were, each situation as it came without trying to judge? What if we always looked for silver linings and knew, just knew they would be there? What if we took it upon ourselves to always bring good cheer, always lend a hand when needed, and always, without fail, without regard for what was in it for us, love others? Life would be transformed, that’s what, for us and for those around us.

 I aspire to be a card carrying, certified, state of the art Pollyanna. Yes, indeed, that is my new year’s resolution! Anyone else?

Lately, I have been wondering if all our searching to become "enlightened" or "spiritual" isn't quite similar in nature, that is, we are searching for something which has been with us all along. We are what we are, aren't we? We  simply miss that because we use a conceptual framework to describe everything in our content-rich world and what we are, the essence of what we are, by its very nature is not a mental construct, it is non-verbal. There is great peace in the idea of "I am what I am". It is the mind which butts in and get us in trouble wanting to paint a mental picture of what can never be described in words. A wave cannot turn around and examine water because it  is the water, it could not exist apart from the water. Yet, the water does not depend on the wave for its existence.

Of course, this is unsettling. It would mean that everything is right here, right now. There would be no place else to go, nothing more to attain, no dreams, no endless searches for the right person to be with, the right job to have, no quest for happiness which, once attained, always leads to a quest for more happiness. It would be the end of the line. It doesn't mean we would cease acting from conviction- feeding the hungry, tending the sick, loving, seeking peace where turmoil rules. It means, in terms of a personal search for meaning, we would stop wasting the energy. What would that feel like, what would that mean for the world? Do we trust in our essence? Do we, ultimately, have a choice?

The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary describes forgiving as "allowing room for error or weakness". Clearly, my acquaintance was allowing room for her ex-boyfriend to exist, lots of room, as in keep a wide berth, I never want to see you again room. Forgiveness, used in this application, is a concept carefully and sometimes, as in my acquaintance's case, angrily placed on top of judgment. It is the metaphoric equivalent of placing a lamp on the elephant in the room and hoping the pacoderm will pass for a side table. One must, eventually, deal with the elephant.

At a much deeper level, forgiveness can effortlessly arise when we are brutally honest about our participation in a relationship gone wrong, when a true understanding of contributing human frailities and the dynamics of human exchange give rise to compassion for the human condition. At this level of depth, forgiveness serves to dissipate the original judgement entirely and can literally transform life.

The intention itself, amazingly, manifested within months, and it was no small intention and required a lot of events to occur to come to fruition. Still, my skeptic's mind (the scientist in me) says it all could be simply a coincidence. There is an ever expanding part of my mind, however, the part that has been taking copious notes of my human experience since I was a child, that observes these coincidences occur with stunning  regularity and frequency. The Skeptic and the Witness co-exist peacefully within my mind and it is not lost on me that the reason for this is simple: while the Skeptic questions all, the Witness allows and accepts all. I like my Witness better, feel more at home with her, but keep my Skeptic around to keep things balanced, since my interest, more than anything, is in knowing the Truth.

The truth is that I have seen, time and time again, thoughts manifesting things, manifesting events, manifesting peoples' behaviour and ways of moving in the world. It makes me so very mindful of the thoughts I am having, of how they may effect my life, the people around me, and this beautiful planet we all live on. It also makes me a bit scared. I mean, who am I to decide what should happen in any given situation? We all think we know what is good and what is bad, what is in our best interests and what is not, how people should behave and how they should not behave. But isn't there a lot of gray area? Aren't there many times in our lives when we have judged a situation or a person in a certain way only to find out later that we had it all wrong? Do we really know enough to be creating the world and everything in it? Sadly, all we have to do is look at the state of the world to see that while we have done some pretty amazing things, we probably have not passed our Manifesting 101 final exam yet.

All this serves to make me very cautious in my intentions. When I do offer up an intention to the universe I feel so very humble, like a devotee at a Master's knee, offering my ideas but always deferring to a greater intelligence. In knowing my limitations while I wear this human suit, I strive to always make sure, when I offer those ideas up, they come from the deepest, wisest place of me I am able to access. More importantly, I do my best to let go of attachment to outcome, and make the allowing and accepting enclave of my Witness into my soul's natural home.

But there is something else that keeps me trudging to the gym and dancing my little heart out four days a week, and that is my fellow dancers. They range in age from their early twenties to their seventies and eighties. They are all shapes and sizes and colors and temperaments. I have danced alongside teachers, real estate agents, housewives,accountants, flight attendants, clerks, students, lawyers, an opera singer, a county judge, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, a free lance writer, a local city councilwoman and a television news reporter. They are from all walks of life, span all spectrums of society. They are moms, wives, widows, kids, and grandparents. Some have immigrated from other countries or moved here from other areas of the country. But on the gym floor we are all, simply, dancers. Some dance with a high amount of energy, some keep it slow and smooth, some are dancing to the beat and others are, well, a bit more rhythm challenged.  Some of us, myself included, are gradually slowing down as we get older. There is a beautiful woman in her eighties who has been coming to class for many, many years. She  now moves gingerly, carefully, as she graciously accommodates the body changes that have come with age. She returned to class just one week after her husband of sixty years passed away and continues to dance as life changes in ways that sometimes send the rest of us scurrying to the sidelines; she is truly an inspiration and it is a blessing to know her.

At Jazzercise, each and every woman has her story, her history, her way of being in the world. Each one has her own distinctly beautiful attributes. Each one brings different dreams to the floor, her own unique outlook and perspective. Jazzercise class, to me, is a fascinating microcosm of this wondrous world we live in-- with all its wide ranging diversity and disparate cultures and peoples. Just as in class, we are all dancers on the same floor, so to speak, all inhabitants of this beautiful, precious planet, and it is our duty, our obligation, our honor to dance together joyfully to the music of life.

Over the years I have found that two things are important in a meditation practice: intention and showing up. The intention to meditate is important because it reverently allocates some of our life energy to the meditation practice; without deep intention any attempts to meditate will be less likely to take hold and blossom into a true practice. The only remaining requirement, then, is to show up for our meditation. Beyond that it is important, in my experience, to let go of everything else, and that applies especially to our thoughts about what meditation is or should be.

I have come to think of my practice as exactly that, practice. When we turn on a radio and search for a particular station we sometimes run across a lot of static and encounter other stations which may come in loud and clear but which are not exactly the station we are looking for. Sometimes there is something interesting playing on those other stations and we linger there for a while, listening. The frequency we are looking for in meditation is very subtle because it is absolutely silent yet incredibly full of wordless content. It is easy for us to miss, accustomed as we are to words and noise and mind stimulation. I've found the closer one gets to that subtle frequency, however, the higher the quality of the frequencies surrounding it, and the content of those close frequencies has the impetus to nudge us closer to the deep silent peace we seek. The content there is richer, qualitative. These are the frequencies in which one finds inner guidance in a familiar framework, a framework our minds can utilize. It takes a lot of practice to be able to recognize when one is getting close, it takes a lot of showing up for our meditation practice. Then, sometimes from these close frequencies, by an act of grace, one slips into the exquisite realm of silence. To me, being in that silence feels like being home in the deepest sense of the word.

Suddenly I see that my sister's very pure and humble and loving heart brings insecurity to her meditation because she reveres the concept of the spiritual practice of meditation and places it outside and above herself in terms of worth, thus the illusion that she is "not doing it right". The practice itself, however, already lives perfectly within her and is eagerly waiting to welcome her home.

Now, usually when I start a giant project I make a big deal of it, make advance plans. "Saturday we are cleaning out the garage!" I will state emphatically to my disappointed husband on Tuesday, "Make sure we have plenty of garbage bags and pick up some of those plastic storage boxes at Home Depot this week, will you?" Yesterday's spur of the moment decision to clean out the roll top, therefore, came as a complete surprise even to me. It shouldn't take too long, I reasoned; it is, after all, just a desk. As it turned out, many hours later I realized this particular piece of furniture was not just a desk, it was a repository of memories and dreams, and a quirky and disconcertingly sketchy history of the day to day life of our family over the last 25 years. I won't bore you with all the details, but there was an amazing array of random items which caused me to call into question my legendary (in my own mind) organizational skills. Some of those antique "to do" lists still had items that could not yet be crossed off.  Somehow this desk had become a free zone in my otherwise well ordered world.

The right hand bottom drawer, however, gave me pause. In this drawer, along with maps and travel brochures and AAA Tour Books, were clippings, lots of clippings. For many years, every time I saw an article in the newspaper or a magazine for a place I'd like to go, an event I'd like to attend, great vacation ideas or the like I would cut it out and place it in the bottom drawer, thinking it one day to be inspiration for an actual day trip, excursion or vacation. Sadly, I reviewed one clipping after another and realized that precious few of them had ever been anything other than drawer stuffing. Almost immediately my head started spinning a sad story.   I could almost hear the violins in the background. Coming up next, the "Poor Little Me" show. This week's episode: "Broken Dreams, Wasted Years and Lost Opportunities". This mental indulgence lasted all of about five minutes until I started laughing out loud at the absurdity. Our minds try to make every little thing mean something but the truth of a situation is always so simple. We didn't do any of the newspaper clipping stuff. We did other stuff. Period.

It felt cathartic and liberating to toss all those clippings in the trash.

I have always known I am not and never will be a prolific writer. I labor too much over my words, trying to coax a certain feel out of them and most times I have to settle for close but not quite. Generally when I feel real inspiration, an inspiration that, truthfully, seems as though it is coming from somewhere beyond the part of my head I currently know as "me", I can't get to the keyboard fast enough, can't type fast enough to capture the fleeting images and feelings before they are gone. My muse is, apparently, a world class sprinter. She also has a tendency to be inconsiderate, showing up at the most ridiculous times, like when I'm in the shower or deliciously cozy in bed. Her absence of late is making me wonder what she's up to, making me suspicious and wary. Is she gone for good? Is she training to be a long distance runner? Is she cheating on me with someone else? What?

So, here I am, letting you know what's going on, which is nothing. Apparently I am on a sabbatical I don't remember applying for. I may as well have a writer's block party. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go to the kitchen for some refreshments.