Enjoy
Your Life-for Norque
"I enjoy life when things are happening. I don't care if it's good things or bad things. That means you're alive." Joan Rivers
My
friend and brother Norque, is from West Africa, he stuck me as a very
unique individual when I first met him, and this feeling has only
deepened over the years. His hallmark expression, which he embodies
and transmits to everyone he interacts with, is to; “Enjoy
Your Life!” He even started a meet-up group with this name
and this philosophy, and it is this idea that I want to point to as a
hallmark of mystical experience.
So
I'm going to my first Enjoy Your Life meet-up, and I'm at an outdoor
club waiting for others, a little nervous, a little irritated that
people are late, feeling some of my usual social phobia, when out of
the blue, I realize that I am alive! It is a profound feeling
of mystery and awe that I'm actually alive, a living being, conscious
of myself and the environment. I connect this to the idea of enjoying
this living experience and instantly, the bliss of pure sentient
awareness is there in all it's splendor!
I turn my face toward the setting sun, and feel the warm and energy of life giving particles soaking into my living skin, I am a plant photosynthesizing all the nutrients that sustain and enliven my being. I see several dogs walking past, and I acknowledge them as living beings sharing the same sun, the same life, and the same enjoyment of their life as I am, they do this so easily and naturally. There are beautiful women, that fuels my maleness of life seeking, life sustaining sensuality, and I feel my batteries fully charging as if I've been plugged into an electrical circuit. I feel my connection with children, and see they are pure, innocent, and unencumbered. I feel my connection with all the people I see, and all the beings everywhere, as part of one living family.
I am breathing all this in, drinking my beer, watching the scene, entering deeply into the moment, and delighting in the experience of being alive and feeling the enjoyment of it all. A great sense of gratitude is present, that I am blessed with this life, with friends, and with an awareness that can observe and delight in the experience.
This experience is the unbearable lightness of being, which is to realize the delicate fragility of life and the challenge and responsibility to be present to it and live it fully. As well as joyous, light, and loving experience, it includes all that is tragic, painful, dark and ugly about life, this too can and should be 'enjoyed,' which is to say experienced fully and embraced. In Buddhism, Buddha is often depicted with a smile of unbearable compassion, that is to say, he sees, knows, and feels, the amount of suffering that is part of life, and yet he is detached yet infinitely compassionate toward all of life, this is an ultimate type of enjoyment of life, and a hallmark of enlightened consciousness. Mother Teresa used the phrase “Christ in all His distressing disguises,” when she was working with lepers to denote how she saw each and every person as Christ consciousness, and treated them as if she was tending to Jesus.
So we are challenged to practice and embrace this idea of enjoying our lives as fully as we can. It helps to be around people who understand and are practicing this with intention, integrity, humor and love.
No comments:
Post a Comment