EXERCISE: START HERE

 (BEGINNING)

What he thought last. That's what it was.

Whatever he thought, it was.

A dark Jeep whirred past at a clip as they were trying to turn, it was too fast.

He thought. It was a nice ride around Gilligan Lake again this evening with the skies opening briefly to pour out the golden light at the end of another week that had passed by as a day, as a thought.

Skiing, he thought, would be fun, so he thought ahead of all of the provisions necessary for a nice treak.

Then he decided otherwise given how much time it was going to take him to find his skiis in his basement where he would have to tiptoe quietly as not to wake his nephew who was sleeping on the couch. There would be no filling his thermos with coffee and preparing a sandwich and putting them into his backpack and layering up sweatshirts and coveralls to be ready for highs in the teens so he sat on the couch and kept drinking his coffee already poured.

His morning meditation was seamless. He did not know anything else that he needed upon finishing, allowing the tone of the chime on his phone to resonate and finally taper off as a feather at its tip.

Being would require nothing of him. Feeling the touch of inhaling gently through his nose, the in and out sensation, receiving life and offering back, all in a beautiful circle that forms, a sense of being held at a level just beyond thought.

From this place I am often invited to simply fall into whatever river I should flow through.

Splashing into the cold water, running through water, jolting myself forward, the icy waters pouring through my gills… Trees reflected back to themselves at the surface, the pale orange of late evening through the woods at the surface with all the stones well down beneath running at their odd cursive's, punctuated by dead branches for months before these fresh and silver skinned came to dart inward on away up toward the beavers dam.

How he got from simply being to swimming was the great mystery of course.

But at some level. Things have already been explained.

What it was, he thought. That is to say, every thought had the potential to become real in the world but it was entirely up to him. All he had to do was stop and become empty so that the thoughts could fall through him to become what they would become.

When he started to realize this connection he was startled at first.

Goodness, he thought. What could this become. How can I possibly take responsibility for the things I'm thinking. I mean they just come into my head and what if it accidentally gets out of my head and I bring it into reality somehow. I mean most people are pretty happy to have a very strict and careful differentiation between the things they think and the things they do, right?

Somebody pulls out in front of us and we quickly imagine strangling the shoot out of them. Only to find out later as you pass them again in town, they go to your church and then you're smiling of course and thank goodness you were only thinking of strangling them.


I once had a thought of running away to Mexico with a friend of mine and we'd need to rob a bank or hold up a few grocery stores to make it happen maybe, but after that, beyond the border I thought of nothing but tequila on the beach and fajitas and squirting lines of lime juice onto canvases that became paintings of the continents that were going to be newly formed through the endeavors of my brushstrokes. See all the beautiful people dancing. See how they dance? Listen to your heart where the music is… And maybe I will write for you again soon.