Facing Reality

Usually when we speak of facing reality, it has a negative connotation. We may recoil and go into our resistance mode. No, I don’t want to look at this because it means facing all the things I have been trying to deny, suppress, forget, and put away!

Don’t worry.

The point I want to make is that the true meaning of facing reality is exactly what it says – seeing and experiencing the reality of who and what we are and the world we live in.

I faced reality in a profound way when I swam with whales in Tonga. The exuberant play of the baby whale was a sight to behold. I felt it in my heart and it touched the child in me. I wanted to swim and frolic with the baby. His zest for life and curiosity was palpable. It took me beyond the mind and any sense of self. Just me in the water, with the mother whale and her baby. I write about this in chapter 22 of my book When We Wake Up, Anything Is Possible. The whales in the ocean are a reflection of the ocean of being where whales also live. I have had profound encounters with spirit whales in my journey and one of them gives me a priceless gift.

I faced reality when I meditated in a beautiful tree in Ashland, Oregon, and a hummingbird hovered close on the right side of my head looking at me. What is this? It is very still, it may have been thinking. Did the tree grow an appendage? Are they coexisting? I saw her, heard the hum of her wings, and felt her, not a foot from my face. Then she flew, lightening quick, to the front of my face at the level of my forehead, very close, and observed me some more.

The symbolism of the hummingbird is joy and love. That is definitely something we feel when we have a close encounter with this beautiful bird, don’t we? The hummingbird is also a psychopomp. This is a being who guides you through the dimensions. When the teacher at a retreat I attended in the mountains of Colorado talked of other dimensions, I saw a hummingbird behind him outside the large windows. I have had profound encounters with hummingbirds who guided me through the dimensions in my journey.

I faced reality recently when I came upon a small, three-inch hummingbird at the Big Hill Springs Provincial Park northwest of Calgary. I can tell you where she lives but I won’t, because it’s already busy enough with park visitors. At the edge of a burbling creek at the back of the park stands a tall spruce tree. When I stood there, I heard humming and there she was, hovering close to her tiny nest. She built her nest in the fork of two small branches. The nest is two-and-a-half inches wide and it is perfectly round, in all dimensions. The nest itself is perfectly round, the opening where she sits is perfectly round, and even the height of the nest is perfectly rounded and would make a perfect round ball if the nest were fully extended vertically. It is a masterpiece. She sat in her nest but wasn’t comfortable with me so close. I went to visit her again recently but she wasn’t home. Her nest was still there; you’d never notice it if she wasn’t around. I wish her a good life in this beautiful piece of paradise on earth.

The beautiful, innocent smile of your child is reality. The love you feel for your partner is reality. Having a deep moment of gratitude and appreciation with a friend is reality. Being silent with someone else and sharing this deep moment of connection is reality. The smile of a stranger is reality. The love and fun you have with your animal friend is reality. Watching the squirrel I talked about in my second blog take a giant leap into the tree is reality. Watching moving shadows on the walls of my living room, the reflection of trees in the front yard casting shadows in the sunlight, is reality. Watching the projection of rainbows all over the walls of my living room, cast by the crystals hanging in the window, is reality.

I have a lot of fun observing the animal activity in my small front yard. There are various types of birds, hares, squirrels, the occasional cat, different types of mice, dragon flies, bees, wasps, and other insects. I even saw a gopher recently in my yard, first time ever, and he hid under the concrete front step.

In spring, the red-winged blackbird comes. It is black with a little red and yellow, like the rising of the sun out of the darkness, on the joint of the wings. It has an amazing song. When I hear it, I always acknowledge it and say, “He, red wing.” One day, I see a male red wing walking on the ground close to my tree, where I feed birdseed, with the upper part of his wings spread out from his body making him bigger, the red and yellow more visible. He struts around trying to intimidate another bird into leaving. This is his territory! He walks towards the bird, who isn’t impressed and doesn’t move. He continues around it, around the tree and through the chain link fence to the playground where he continues to walk with wings wide for a bit. It didn’t work. I see him at it again later and this time he is successful. I have a glimpse of the life of this red wing. I have a peek into his world and it is also my world. We live in the same world, together, and we are connected. That is reality.

I have beautiful roses growing on the side of my house. The flowers are abundant. One of the rose branches has produced a rose mandala; it has four roses with one in the middle. This is a rose mandala of reality! It shows the four directions of creation. In the middle is the indestructible diamond of reality, the heart of awareness from which arises everything.

To see the roses come to full bloom is amazing. It is an opening to life, to the caress of the sun, unprotected, and so beautiful. This is what awakening is, a blooming and opening, an opening heart like the opening of the bud of a flower to the sun and the elements. It is an opening to everything life has to offer. This opening is a desire for life, for connection, to be connected and one with everything, and it can be very painful. Sometimes the sun doesn’t shine and it gets cold. Slashing rain may strike the rose. A great wind may yank it from the ground. The soil it stands in may not adequately sustain the rose in its growth. It is not easy being a fragile rose, dependent on its environment. That is reality.

Trees and flowers can communicate with us. I remember the joyful chattering of flowers, like little enthusiastic children, wanting my attention and appreciation. I remember a tree in Colorado telling me to do something, described in my book. I remember my fig tree wanting water. That is reality.

Reality is that moment we are fully here, in the body, embodied, right now, having a direct experience of our lives and our environment without the veil of the mind. Life is really a collection of moments, which is a discrete underlying reality. What is our relationship to that moment? Am I there? Do I live it fully? Or am I in the moving, flowing story of the mind that strings all the moments together into a specific story like a collar of beads, and that bypasses reality?

Reality is breathtaking and it can take us, like the hummingbird, into the depths of being that is a treasure chest holding much in store for us. This reality is beautiful and in beauty there is love. Do you feel the love when you have these real moments? This love is all around us, always. Its nature is abundance. This is the abundance of the heart. The heart is reality and love and beauty.

Reality is love. The two cannot be separated. Even the suffering we do is part of reality, although an impermanent one. Also in that there is love and beauty, although that is hard for most of us to see and feel; it is more challenging. It is our sacred heart (see the heart page on this website) that perceives suffering in a different way and where beauty can be seen even in suffering.

This is the reality that comes into sharp focus when we have faced all the things that keep us from seeing and experiencing it. Or when we simply dispense with our focus on our minds and our pain. When the veil of the mind disperses and blows away on the wind of our being.

All the things we don’t want to face are part of this reality, but they are impermanent creations that are in the way. In the way of reality. They are like clouds in the blue sky. They exist, they are part of the blue sky, but they come and go. They function like a veil over reality and they are like ephemeral ghosts we have created with our minds, and they come to haunt us over and over again because they need to be seen and liberated. We create these things ourselves in this endlessly fascinating play of existence in the cosmos. Facing reality is seeing the blue sky and seeing the clouds for what they are and liberating the ghosts.

What if we could live a life fully embodied, facing reality every moment? What would we have to change or give up to accomplish this?

I, for one, want to live a life fully embodied. I want to face reality. I want to live my life informed by the flame of love and joy in my heart. Even if it is the end of me!!