I've been often asked this question,
Maybe you have the same.
What is it that we should focus on,
On our spiritual path?
Presence to become more aware,
Or is it the love,
The heart?
Because it seems those two streams are different.
No,
One is the more the path of awareness.
I call it the wing of mindfulness and presencing.
It's like the masculine wing.
And the other one is what I call the feminine wing,
The love,
The embrace,
The wholeheartedness.
And I believe we need both.
So for example,
You know,
When you learn to witness what is here in your immediate environment,
Or you're witnessing your thoughts,
Your emotions and your body sensations,
And you don't get so entangled with that anymore,
Other than just being able to notice what is here.
And therefore the glue that often holds us so tight is slowly dissolving.
And there's more freedom when we actually,
You know,
Cultivate presencing.
And presence is who we are.
It's nothing to cultivate.
But the way is practicing mindfulness,
Mindful eating,
Mindful walking.
All these things really,
Really help to,
Then you don't experience less stress and you're more present with your partner.
You're more present in life and you have more freedom of choice,
Meaning you don't need to react to everything.
You're just noticing,
You learn to notice your triggers instead of automatically following that train and acting it out.
So it causes more and more suffering.
So this wing is literally,
Is both,
Is the truth of your being,
The presence,
But the cultivation is a practice.
And this being right now,
If you just notice what you're aware of,
When you include the sounds and the sights and look around in your space,
And then you,
You noticing,
Becoming even maybe aware of space around you.
And that leads us to this point of,
Oh,
There is only one way to be,
There is only this moment.
Whilst in this moment,
The past can arise and thoughts of the future can emerge.
It still is in this moment.
And I,
I call it a more muscling wing because it's also the path of Buddha.
And this clear seeing and the,
The capacity to have awareness.
We have awareness,
Which is,
You know,
Sometimes we just,
We don't pay attention.
It's like when you,
When you drive a car,
It's not a good idea to go to sleep because you're going to have an accident.
So,
But most of the time we walk around in life being more or less asleep.
And then we wonder why we bump into all sorts of things and hurt ourselves.
And,
And,
Yeah,
And it also,
I think was with one pointedness,
There's a one pointedness,
You know,
It's like the arrow that looks straight to its presence.
And that's what you focus on.
And that in itself,
I think is essential for a path to cultivate.
But what's off,
But with,
And we also gain discrimination,
We gain so much.
I mean,
In my own life,
You know,
Just being able to watch my breath in the beginning when I started meditation was really big because I watched my mind being like a monkey jumping here,
Jumping there.
And I,
And soon enough I had forgotten my breath and then I come back and then I come back and then I come back.
And that after a while,
You know,
After many years,
Of course,
I also practiced other meditation and not just paying attention to the breath.
But what it,
What it gave me was such an immense capacity to be really here and present and far less stressed and entangled with all sorts of stuff.
Yeah.
It's like really coming to life.
And,
But I also felt that something was missing and what I then decided what I then discovered more and more was the other wing,
The feminine wing,
You know,
Where there's this love that love is needed because just awareness becomes so dry and removed from life.
So it's kind of like awareness is like the empty canvas.
It's like an empty house.
It's the house.
And,
And it's,
Of course it's so much more,
But the love and the,
The love fills the table in the house.
Um,
It's,
It's almost like you have with the awareness,
You get clear space,
You get clear seeing,
And you can cut through the BS and,
You know,
But with the other wing,
You can fill the house with warmth,
With friendliness,
With kindness,
With goodness,
With the capacity to embrace even the darkest stuff.
And it's,
You know,
It's,
That brings the warmth.
Now,
When we just,
For a while,
I've also just dove right into just the love and opening the heart,
And that was absolutely wonderful.
But what I also saw that without awareness,
Um,
It's like,
Um,
It's that you,
You can get so mushed into things,
Um,
Because with love,
We recognize we are that plant and we are the sky and we are this earth.
And another person is literally,
It's one with us,
Is part of us.
So we're not separate.
But with just the love without the presence,
It became also lopsided.
It became a meshed.
It's like in a meshed relationship.
It's you,
You,
Um,
You,
You so meshed with everything that you can't even feel your own sense,
Your own boundaries anymore.
And so I find on our spiritual path,
It's equally important to just look sometimes.
Okay.
So am I mainly involved in practicing mindfulness and,
And awareness and focusing on presence,
Or am I mainly involved with loving everything,
Letting my heart break and allowing everything to pierce me,
Which is one of the practices of the,
No,
The embrace wing and loving,
Loving until I have nothing left,
You know?
So it's this piece where you want to find,
Um,
A balance is maybe the wrong word,
But you need both wings.
It's like a bird who wants to fly.
Just flapping with one wing is not going to get you very far and you're going to land flat on your face.
But when you,
When you really learn to use both wings,
It's in that moment,
There is a natural alignment that there's a rightness that you will experience in your own being.
That's like at some point,
Of course,
All the practices follow.
The practices fall away and then life is just the teacher.
And,
Um,
But I find I always come back to also,
For example,
The,
The wing of embrace is savoring the moment,
You know,
Presence is like,
Oh yeah,
I'm aware of this moment,
But then the,
The love is savor this moment,
Cherish this moment right now when you're just listening,
What are you cherishing here,
What touches you in your heart and feel that and let it fill you so that we,
There's a melting of the veils we carry around,
Uh,
Where we're very separate from the world and we're separate from each other and we're separate from our own being,
But with the love,
There's a melting that begins to happen and a warming of the heart.
And I think in this world,
We are very much heart deprived and many people have closed their hearts because of hurt.
Yeah.
Nobody wants to be hurt.
We have created a heartless culture.
And I think that wing of embrace is a remedy,
A medicine that we urgently need as much as we need the presencing.
And so for a moment,
I invite you to,
Yeah,
Just look,
Just sense something really simple that you experienced today.
And that was good.
Or that was difficult.
Become aware of your heart.
How does it affect your heart?
Is it still affecting your heart?
When you think of that moment,
Maybe you notice that your heart is contracted,
Or maybe you notice that your heart is more open.
There's no judgment needed here.
But whatever you experience,
Just bring your drench it with your breath.
And you might want to put your heart,
Your hand on your heart and just allow that warmth from your hand go to the heart.
It's like saying,
Hey,
I'm here.
I'm here with you.
And I notice and feel what is emerging.
And there's also warmth,
Not just noticing how the heart is,
But also warmth of tending to.
And then just dwell there.
It seems so simple that because of our own inclinations,
We are either weird this way of being more like noticing things or we're veering more.
We have to hug everything.
We need both.
And so I invite you in the next couple of days to play with that,
To explore that and to begin to use both wings into freedom.
Thank you.
