About 10 years ago, after I retired, my former life suddenly became more fluid than it had ever been. I had no obligations to place or person. All the reference points of identity and behavior either loosened or disappeared. In the midst of radical uncertainty, I felt an unfamiliar and delicious lightness.
I have a strong orientation to dharma study and practice. I decided to indulge my curiosity, explore a new lifestyle and a new intention: spontaneity, fearlessness, creative integrity and no regrets. These conditions present an opportunity to make life as practice a more immediate reality. The world needs much more of this anyway. Who would I become? A global nomad? A divine madman? A lion, unafraid? Unattached, like the wind? Or like space, not relying on anything? All of the above? Whatever I was to become , I desired to be more fluid, to live closer to emerging truth. I explored new surroundings (Southeast Asia for most of five years), new activities (blogging), new endeavors (a hydro-power start-up in Laos) and associations. Looked at separately, they may seem odd fellows. But together, along with ongoing explorations of group resonance, publishing a book or facilitating a critical illness support group, they have been an enriching, provocative and renewing path.
After being a travel blogger for some years (all that material disappeared from the site years ago), my writing has blended and bled spirituality, culture and politics such that their divisions disappear. Awakening in real time means centering a few essentials: impermanence, interdependence & mortality. This tiny corner is an exploration of meaning in the moment, Being seen through the non-dual lens of Dzogchen and the offerings of my teachers. All appearances, all perceptions arise spontaneously from the infinite creative potentiality of nothing whatsoever; their essence empty, clear, open and unlimited. Non-duality is the mind becoming the body.
What becomes possible here? — freshness, simplicity and joyful, open presence: the makings of authentic compassion. Who–or what–shall I become? An argonaut of the ineffable? A whale-rider in the turbulence of late-stage capitalism, ecological devastation and collapse, responding in the most present and honest way possible to the emergence (and emergency) of this world.
Spontaneous Presence 