Loose watercolour ocean wave — Image by the author
In the here, in the now…?
“Have you had a good day?”
A friend texted that question to me a few evenings ago.
I hesitated before replying.
Do I talk about the tears? The aching? The longing for some tangible message or meeting with Michael as I sit in a quiet cemetery wishing for Home?
No.
Instead, I wash through my day, sending love to all those moments of loss. All in my imagining… Dissolving my tears in an ocean of joy, I sit, while life breathes on through me.
I can’t feel it yet, that ocean of joy, but that’s ok.
Simply intending it is enough.
Now, in the stillness of this moment, I find Home. Right here, inside me.
Have you arrived? Are you Home?
I come Home so much faster these days. It’s taken months of misery to make me practise. Practise enough to get better each day. Practise enough to find joy come what may…
It’s a practice I think they call mindfulness. I’ve not been trained, so I don’t know for sure. But it’s what Thich Nhat Hanh describes in his beautiful “No Death, No Fear”.
“If you want to know where God, the Buddhas and all the great beings live, I can tell you,” he says, “Here is their address:
In the here and now.
“It has everything you need [to find them] including the zip code.”
I keep coming back to this one, core teaching:
Be here. Now.
It’s what my husband showed me, time after time, after time… in those hospital days, living in the shadow of horrors ahead…
I’ve written it before. I’ll write it again. I need to revisit it often.
“Stop.
Breathe.”
That’s it. That’s all it takes. I’ve witnessed the shift from hell to heaven. As he held my hand. That darling husband of mine. As I teetered on the edge of the unbearable… As his focus on joy brought me back…
Michael stubbornly refused to move on in the day until we’d found our way Home in the now.
When I tipped into stressing about practicalities…
He’d hold my hand and say, ‘Stop.’
‘Stop. Breathe.’
It was simple. Cancer? What is cancer? There is only here. Now. And our togetherness… That’s what he’d beam to me though his words would not come.
It was simple.
There was only one moment, followed by another. And how we chose to spend them.
While he could still speak, I asked him, “How do you recover so quickly?” He moved so fast from pain to enjoyment...
“I haven’t got time to waste,” he said, “Tick-tock, M-F!” — a Sam Jackson quote from a fabulous movie…
Michael wasn’t going to spend one more moment than necessary dwelling on the darkness and pain.
No. Here. Now. He was enjoying life fully. And he knew he was heading for heaven… He’d seen it after all. Over and over he said, while he still could, ‘It’s beautiful! BEAUTIFUL!’
In the here, in the now…
Hanh gives us these words, a poem from an unknown source.
So powerful, this small stanza.
“I have arrived, I am home,
In the here, in the now.
I am solid, I am free.
In the ultimate, I dwell.”
Play with the practice.
Reach for the joy of these few, simple words, calling you Home.
As you breathe in, find relief in the first little phrase,
I have arrived…
I am home, — relax, breathe out…
In the here — breathe in…
In the now — and out…
I am solid — in…
I am free — out…
In the ultimate — in…
I dwell — out…
Nhat Hanh suggests if we wish, swap the word ‘ultimate’ for whatever word or phrase you find most soothing.
For me, it is the word ‘infinite’.
What is it about ‘infinite’?
Infinite, for me, is gazing out to sea. The endless horizon, vision beyond all imagining... No limits, no endings… free… Expanding eternally — the boundless ocean of love.
Definitely a sea-creature, me!
Which is why I also adore Nhat Hanh’s words around the wave and the ocean, such a beautiful metaphor for the mystery of life.
We are the wave and the ocean. No separation is possible.
“Water is free from the birth and death of a wave. Water is free from high and low, more beautiful and less beautiful. You can talk in terms of more beautiful or less beautiful, high or low, only in terms of waves. As far as water is concerned all these concepts are invalid.”
The wave is distinct, has a linear lifetime, a time of ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’.
But the wave truly never ceases to be.
The wave may be hiding in the bosom of the infinite. Or it may be pouring itself into the form of another. We may see it clearly or simply sense its origins.
But this wave remains always…
A part of you, a part of me.
One with all that is.
One with the clouds calling forth a new form…
One with the rain, the snow and the hail…
One with the blade of grass it brings into life…
One with the cattle that graze…
Absolute connection. What a notion… As I breathe you in and you breathe me out, what wondrous inter-being this is!
More from the master:
“If someone who is very close to you has passed away and you define him or her as non-existing, you are mistaken…
If you look deeply, you can touch his or her presence in other forms of manifestation.”
“In the morning… you may recognise his (/her) manifestation as a flower, as a drop of water, as a bird song or as a child playing in the grass. We have to be very careful not to miss these things.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear
Have you had a good day?
It’s a great barometer, this question.
In my low moments it begs me unleash a tsunami. I ache to pour misery on the unsuspecting asker. I could fair drown them in my deluge of despair.
When I am one with the ocean again how different that question becomes! Then I am sharing my lemon-scented roses and the four fluffy sparrows in the bird bath before me…
The answer to the question is always “Yes!” and not just a good day, but the very BEST of days… because that day is here, now…
If it doesn’t feel like a “Yes,” then I’ve work to do before replying… back to the practice. It always brings me Home.
I wash through my day, sending love... All in my imagining…
Dissolving my tears in an ocean of joy, I sit, while life breathes on through me.
I can’t feel it yet, that ocean of joy, but that’s ok.
Simply intending it is enough.
Now, in the stillness of this moment, I find Home.
Right here, inside me.
This work is worth doing. The Homecoming is beautiful. Every. Single. Time.
How about you Dear One?
Have You Arrived? Are You Home —
In the here, in the now…?
Have you had a good day?
If you struggle to find joy here, now, get in touch.
Sometimes a steadying hand is all we need to bring us into balance. We are all in this together, for sure.