Friends, a lot has been moving in my personal space. Life has been full! From waiting for my body to heal from a flu to accepting the wishes from friends on my birthday to preparing for a critical appointment… life has been full! This just means my posting has been slower. Today I am hosting friends for Friendsgiving at mine—which means practicing surrender…for someone who would rather be secluded. Before the noise starts, I wanted to share something small. Something to mule over.

You know the most obvious, undebatable fact of our entire lives is this: That We Are! It is the Mystery at the center of everything. We do not need a special tradition to point us to it. We do not even need a new practice. We do not need a new conclusion. The most obvious thing in our whole lives is this simple fact.

That is it.We are.We ‘exist’. We are conscious.

What that means, all of the definitions and labels for consciousness and what we are is totally unimportant but the sense feeling of the obviousness of this fact. This knowing does not need a story. It does not need a fresh idea. It is enough to notice the sheer obviousness of this are-ness.

But what’s the consequence of this knowledge? If we stay with it and let attention settle into it, something shifts. Well, at least it becomes so totally obvious how miraculous everything is. In that noticing, everything seems to quiet down. The daily pressures soft. The sense of being a separate person with a problem(or problems) loosens. In that softening there is wonder. In that wonder there is joy.

And I am not referring to the sugar-coated joy that denies pain. It includes pain. It is a quieter type of joy. A joy that lives even when life feels tense or broken.A joy that does not depend on outcomes.

This is what the sages have spoken about again and again, each in their own way. Rumi whispered it when he said, “Look past your thoughts so you can drink the pure wine of silence.” Meister Eckhart pointed to it when he said, “There is something in the soul that is unmovable, a simple stillness that no storm can touch.” Richard Rohr described the same truth when he said, “Everything belongs, even the parts you fear, because all things rest in God(as God)”.

Different voices. One truth. Right here. Right now.

Friends, think about this. Beneath our roles and our thoughts and our worries, something steady holds everything. Something simple. Something without edges. Something without a name. It is there before our next breath. It is there after your next thought. It is not hiding.

Today, mule over it. Don’t even do it with effort. Just notice! Just notice!! Let the Mystery reveal itself in the middle of your day. In the kitchen noise, on the bus, on the barber’s chair, in laughter. Or in the small irritations. Yes, even in that! In the quiet moments when we step aside for a second. Notice this ‘weirdness’. I use weirdness to describe this Unknown! Notice that this, whatever ‘this’ is, was there before we picked up the identity of ‘self’. It is the one thing in our lives that does not move.

And so I extend my wishes to you too, Happy Friendsgiving.I am grateful you read this at all!

Contemplative Currents is a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are, is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity.

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