The Wayshower

I truly love how Nature doesn't mess with Its nature. You don't ever see a tree trying to be a shrub or a duck trying to be a squirrel or a worm trying (excepting in children's books, perhaps) to sprout wings and fly. This alone accounts for the great power of Nature, it seems to me.

Touch, simply touch an early sprout in spring as I did this morning. Hold it for a bit as you would a baby's fingers or toes, say, and step back from thinking. Listen, that is to say, with your touch, and you will "hear" it. You will experience all the life of the earth burgeoning forth in that sprout. You will apprehend a pure and complete intention taking form: this branch will produce maple seeds and maple leaves. It's a staggering power, really, and it is the very same power that gives rise to you and to me.

Why, unlike the duck, the worm, and the tree and all the rest, we try at times to contort ourselves into disharmonious, "untrue" shapes and ways of being I do not know. I do know that we pay a price for it. But even that unpleasantness--illness or disease, say--is another of Nature's genero-
sities. You are off track, dear. Come around, come around, She all but speaks.

Nature will always lead us to true being--to our essence, our so-called Buddha Nature. She offers an infinite and endless array of wayshowers that remind us of that. It is my immense privilege to witness and remember from them.

Let Us Pray

"Let Love have Its way," I say. "Love knows Its way: let It have it!" I say. Yet "Nature unaided fails." So stated Madame Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine.

And it's true. Although it is a piano's nature to make music, and a computer search engine's nature to search and deliver results, they cannot act alone. The search engine needs parameters to search. Without a player, the piano makes no sound.

It is beautiful to watch Life express (at the impress of countless seen or unseen triggers) on Its own terms, unhindered. It is equally beautiful to sculpt It, to pour Substance into the mold of our choosing. Life provides limitless Substance for this, an undifferentiated Substance that is dumb in the way that the search engine is dumb, in the way that the piano is dumb. If we want a C, we must strike the key of C. A piano will and can only play the note of the key we strike (whether the right or wrong key)--in tune if we have maintained the instrument, out of tune if we have not.

And so it is with prayer, and those who pray faithfully will say their prayers are always answered. They are always answered. Because to pray on something is to focus the mind--not a mind but the mind, which is to say all mind: Mind. Prayer works the way intention works, acting upon the dumb Substance, enlisting helpers to move things along.

It feels as though intention draws what we intend to us, and it does: by putting Mind into action. Intention wakes Mind up out of standby mode. I could say it puts mind inside and mind outside into action, but there is no inside and outside. There is only Mind and where it is focused. Where it is focused is the object of intent, whether or not that object is desirable to us. Maintain this focus sufficiently and the thought gives birth to itself in form. This is what has come to be called manifestation. Our thought, by way of prayer or intent, manifests in form. It pours undifferentiated Substance into the mold of our choosing, and... voila!

This process holds true for any sustained focus. It is a universal principal--a law--which, as I've explained, works impartially and impersonally. So the undercurrent of nagging fear of...whatever one is fearful of gives rise to that which one fears. The constantly critical eye yields more and more to criticize. Thoughts of lack bring more lack. The focus on wealth draws wealth. Worry breeds more to worry about. Looking for the good in people turns up...surprise surprise: lots of good people!

It is not magic, it is law, and it takes no special powers to set this law in motion. In fact, we are all using it all the time. Every minute of every day. This is why I--and Carolyn Myss and who knows how many others--say that every thought is a prayer.

So, what are you praying for today?

The Prayer of the Wild Things

Graffiti I Can Live With

I second that emotion!

There's No Mistaking Summer

...when it comes, no matter when it comes. This year, it came in March. So after Reiki, I pointed the car to Wollaston. For walking. And beachcombing, as it turned out. Yes, I found treasures, walked barefooted along the edge of the icy ocean, sniffed fried clams, and snapped snap snap the perennial joy that is children running over sand.

There are no uncertain terms here. No matter when it comes, a beach day is always welcome.

Heart to Heart

No,
there is
no saving them.
These petals must
fall.

A Little Spring

Morning glory
in bloom
on the bathroom sill.
How far will it go?
I'd wondered

November 26
when I found it sprouting
in the pot of
jade that had
summered outdoors.


As far as January
as far as delight
apparently--at least
as far as delight.