Are You Aware? Yes, You Are!

Awareness is our true self; it's what we are. So we don't have to try to develop awareness; we simply need to notice how we block awareness with our thoughts, our fantasies, our opinions, and our judgments. We're either in awareness, which is our natural state, or we're doing something else.- Joko Beck

Do you subscribe to the Daily Peace Quote? Oh, you must. The address is http://www.livingcompassion.org/. Every day you will receive a wonderful quote, some more wonderful than others, like the one above. I have a special folder in my "saved" emails for the ones that really hit me between the eyes, and I go back and look at them now and then. Sometimes I use one for the signature line on my email. My current email signature is a quote from that old curmudgeon H. L. Mencken: We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

But let's get back to Joko Beck, whose full name is Charlotte Joko Beck (born 1917 and still living, in Prescott, AZ), who is a Zen teacher and the author of the books Everyday Zen: Love and Work and Nothing Special: Living Zen. Once again we are told that we already have within us everything we need in order to be fully conscious, fully present as Eckhart says. All we have to do is stop thinking about everything else and there it is: inner peace.

I had an opportunity to practice today while doing my volunteer assignment. Second Harvest is getting ready to do a Hunger Survey to find out more about their clients, the people who are served by the 200 agencies who help Second Harvest distribute food. As an incentive for the clients to complete the multi-page survey, each one will be given a $15 VISA card. My job was to open the 500 envelopes containing the cards, detach the cards from the printed material, recycle the paper and reinsert the cards into the envelopes in number order. It took nearly four hours, and I did it by myself, with no one around to talk to, not even a radio playing to relieve the tedium. I thought, what a great opportunity: four hours with nothing to think about. It wasn't the same as painting furniture or drawing (two things that never fail to engage me so fully that I forget to eat) but, amazingly, I was able to focus on the task and not think about what I would do afterward, or what I did earlier, or where I would go to dump the holding tanks in the RV, buy gasoline, do laundry and get a shower (which are the things that have been on my mind lately).

Later I went to the warehouse to help with food packing and came upon a group of adults from The Arc, the organization formerly known as ARC (Association for Retarded Citizens). They were packing "backpacks," which are bags of food for kids to take home from school on the weekends.

The bags include non-perishable, ready-to-eat foods such as Spaghetti-Os, pudding, snack crackers, fruit cocktail, etc., and they go home with children who usually get their daily breakfast and lunch at school through the free/reduced-price meal program. I have been aware of the school program for years, having worked in a school district where 50% of the kids are served by it, but I never stopped to think what those children ate on the weekends.

Anyway, here were these developmentally disabled adults packing bags of food, and I thought to myself that if anyone is probably conscious most of the time, it might be these people. They certainly seem to be living in the moment.

So I've had many reminders today that I have within me the ability to be at peace any time I choose to be. Incredible, isn't it? And if I can do it, you can do it. And everyone else can do it, too, all over the world. Stop thinking. Do it now.