Skillful Living

Hola mi Gente,
When I facilitated workshops, I was always looking out for experiential exercises. This, in turn, kept me in a state of constant exploration and learning. So, in a very real sense, my workshop participants were actually my greatest teachers.

Alive

Change your words into truth and then change that truth into love…
 -- Steveland Wonder, As

Ever consciously reflected on the fact that you are alive -- right now? I mean really get into that? Try this, soften your belly and relax your jaw. Feel -- feel don’t think -- feel your heart beating deep inside your body, and feel the rhythm of your heart as it radiates outward, pulsing in your hands, feet, and neck. Feeling your heart in this way, relax and open as in an offering to the world.

While you are at it, take a moment and try to feel how you live your life. How do you spend your life’s moments? What did you or will do today or yesterday? What are your plans for tomorrow? Who do you love and do you love deeply?

The undeniable truth is that no matter what -- no matter how much money you have made, how many Coach Bags you own -- one day you will become numb and your heart will stop, you will stop breathing, and all this will disappear. In some moment just like this one, your life will end.

Period.

Are you ready for death? Are you ready for the death of your children and your loved ones?

Perhaps one day you will be friends and family celebrating, a gentle breeze, the sun caressing your face. Suddenly your heart stops. A final plea… and then fade to black… 

Are you ready? I mean, are you truly ready? Have you loved and lived fully and given of your deepest gifts?

A life well lived is a life faced with an open heart in every moment. You can be wide open, holding nothing back and you will receive in return without pushing away. This is true whether you are living in a penthouse or the Big House (prison). The opening of your heart does not come from an analysis of some kind, it is not dependent on external factors, it does not come from “loving” in the normal sense that we conceptualize love. The opening of your heart comes from a deeply felt sense. You are openness, inseparable from this entire moment. The one truth is that everything comes and goes. Everything must change.

Your child’s smile: precious but temporary and already dissolving.

Your lover’s tender embrace: already disentangling.

Life often resembles the ocean in that, try as we may, we are essentially helpless to stop the waves -- they come and go, no matter how much we rail against them. Yet, while it is true that we cannot stop the waves, we can still learn how to surf. Every moment is a miracle and already disappearing. Every experience is at the same time full and empty -- both.

A life lived merely for the sake of experience is a cheated life full of tension, insecurity, loneliness, and a deep sense of emptiness. Your Coach bag cannot fulfill you because, at some point in time, it will fade. It will break, or get lost, stolen, or worse: it will fall out of fashion. Your experience cannot fulfill you because as soon as it comes, it is already gone. Like the addict’s obsession/ compulsion for a fix, it’s an illusion, just out of reach.

If we stop the grasping, life becomes free and full of light. Surrendering is opening. That’s how you open -- you surrender, opening full and bright, breathing deeply. Offering your heart of hearts, you are reborn in this moment. Believe me, when the end comes the only questions that will matter is whether you loved deeply and lived fully. But do not wait, death gives us the permission to live freely and love openly this very moment.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

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