Each morning at dawn, before I do anything else, I step onto the balcony looking to the East.

The air is always fresh and quiet, having drifted down overnight from the flanks of Black Combe that rises behind our home. Since it’s early and I’ve just woken up, I haven’t yet started remembering much about who I am or what I’m supposed to be doing. I feel how good the air is. The air and the first light and Black Combe are just happening there — here — all at once — and I’m simply happening with them;

“naturally just so“.

Having completed my exercise routine, I go to the kitchen and start my coffee ritual. I take it to the West side of the house and look at the sea, and I begin the process of remembering who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing.

Thoughts and feelings glide through my mind. As they do, I notice the familiarity of the interiority of me beginning to form once again. A kind of Déjà vu in an echo chamber, usually, but not always; friendly, but it is definitely a sort of attitude of mind, an attitude that now is beginning to thinks it knows something.

Sipping on my morning coffee I wonder about that. For when I stepped outside just a little earlier I didn’t know anything. I was just happening, simultaneously happening with the fresh air, the sky, Black Combe and the light. I realise now how much I love those moments of pure happening, of not-knowing anything, of just being-with. 

I’m making this sound like it’s a new discovery, but of course it’s not. The oscillation of self-less and self-full experience has been with me for as long as I can remember. Stepping outside of my room and then re-entering is an interesting metaphor for that wave-form in my life. Of course, the oscillation doesn’t just happen with the stepping out and stepping in — it happens throughout my days, in little moments again and again. 

What is it that keeps calling me to open that door? Beauty? Joy? What is it? One might call it a “self-less experience,” but that name only goes so far. There’s something else, something so vivid and alive to me, that’s sensed in those moments when my “I” isn’t asserting itself, when it’s not thinking it knows something, when I’m simply happening simultaneously with everything else that’s happening. Whatever it is, that’s what’s calling me.

These special moments of 

“trembling of aliveness”

are not easy to describe, for the moment itself reaches out, pours forth, right at the very point of the moment.

The only way to sense what I’m attempting to describe is to experience it yourself, and fortunately, it’s not very difficult. It can be experienced right now, even as you read this.

Simply pause for a moment, stop breathing, and come into the present you — just for a few seconds. Let yourself forget everything — forget who you are, where you are, whatever’s on your mind — for those few seconds.

“Just don’t bother to remember.”

You might imagine that you’re coming up for air, into the air of simple presence, free for a moment of all your identities and duties. It’s just you present, without the “I, me, mine.”

You may notice that whatever you’re looking at during those few seconds, along with your body’s entire sensory field, has a kind of vibrancy happening that’s simultaneous with your perception.  This is what I just called “a trembling of aliveness,” a silence in the very moment of just being.

I believe that hint of vibrancy we feel when we stop breathing for a few seconds and come up for air into our simple presence, when I step out of my bedroom and simply happen with what’s happening, is the aliveness of now. It’s always here and it’s what hums us alive each moment. It’s generous. It’s joyous in its generosity.

It is love and it is alive. 

At least that is how it feels like to me, when I step out and meet the first light of dawn and all that happens right there in that moment of love’s trembling.

To be alive

simply be kind

Kindness

is the message of the heart