Practice Corner

Cultures living near the poles of the planet all have myriad expressions for how snow and ice appear and behave. Given how central the experience being pointed to in “the joy of Intelligence knowing itself” is to Practice, it stands to reason this too would have myriad expressions. After all, if the folks in Iceland can have a word for “snow blowing around a corner,” then what language might I use in an encounter with something akin to “joy blowing around a corner”?
 
I heard this expression recently and curiosity was piqued: “They did it out of the kindness of their heart.” In exploring my experience, to get a glimpse of the process behind the words, this came to light: the heart is kindness, and in attending to the language of the heart — the felt sense of kindness emanating from the heart— kindness reflects back on itself in a kind of hall of mirrors of kindness. I become the kindness I am, and I am that kindness in the world. All without thought or effort.
 
In being taken by a beautiful sunset, it’s common to exclaim: “What a beautiful sunset!” But aficionados of Awareness Practice will often reframe this more accurately as “my experience of the sunset is beautiful” as a way of acknowledging there is no way of knowing if the sunset is beautiful or not. At some level, it’s just a bunch of somewhat organized photons whizzing about. But I can certainly know my own experience of the sunset. It seems the movement of those whizzing photons gives rise to sensations in the body and a resonance with beauty. In attending to the resonance, beauty reflects back onto itself in expanding awareness, and the experience of beauty comes into fullness.
 
The Sufis refer to Life processes like beauty or kindness as “Names of the Divine.” On any given day, it seems I am gently nudged from one Life process to another, from one experience of Divinity and the joy of Intelligence knowing itself to another. Curiosity and wonder in this moment, ebullience and reverence a moment later, and perhaps patience and receiving in yet another, so that each day becomes an experiential tour of the joy of Intelligence knowing itself as Life unfailingly takes care of Life. 
 
These Life processes can take on any content. Working outside along with a brilliant sunset, I paused to let the experience wash over me, and in checking in, my experience was indeed beautiful. As I put the wheelbarrow away, it, too, became beautiful. And the shovel shortly thereafter. Makes it hard to deny the possibility of living a life entirely within the life-affirming experience of the joy of Intelligence knowing itself. 
 
Gasshō,
chris