Pass

After two days of sun in the morning, the grey of May is hanging on. The temperature sits at 57 degrees fahrenheit. Today is Friday.

What passes through your hands, your head, your heart as each day completes a cycle? We don't think too much about the infinite number of things that go through us, leaving a residue of life behind. Your body begins to break down (it's inevitable no matter how well you eat and how consistently you exercise). Your head fills up with memories - some that bring happy feelings and others that bring a burden of regret that must be processed and composted. The heart moves with what is happening in the world, in relationships, and in your own reckoning with the chance at a little joy and merriment, grief, excitement - all of which come with living.

Some just want to pass. Pass on everything, from awareness of self to awareness of what is happening in the world around them. It seems like a safe way to go, but in truth, there's no hiding. Everything is there and the awareness simply moves to the unconscious and one's reaction will manifest in some way – sometimes very unhealthy ways. This is why it's important to face the task of raising one's awareness of not just self - but the impact one has on others.

It takes a long time to move through ego, self-centeredness, and fear – all of which get in the way of finding what is sometimes called "true North." And the great teaching is that all of it is empty. In that emptiness - it all passes.

The fact of emptiness is part of the teaching about form and substance. The form is an idea - not yet a thing. The substance is the thing. Almost all spiritual teachings share this lesson so one can begin to understand "spirituality." In other words, it is one thing to think about gold and all of it's elements; quite another to have it manifest - whether in a statue of a dragon, or a ring. It's one thing to think and talk about spirituality, and quite another to be it and to see everything around you as possessing through its substance and existence, spirit.

And of course, all the things we see and touch eventually go away. We are left with nothing and this is as it should be (otherwise the world, the universe, the galaxy would be a big mess). As the song title goes, "All things must pass." Someone got the message again and tried to let the world know in a different way - without the gurus and sages on the stages of the world.

It is hard to look at what passes through the head, what passes through the heart, but not so hard to look at the hands. They reveal a lot. The hands of one who worked the fields, the hands of one who cleared the tables, the hands of one who held babies, and delivered them, too. Take care of your hands.