We live lives of enormous complexity. Many things vie for our attention and time, leaving us with an underlying fear about our capability to cope with these many demands. Listening gets placed on the back burner, conversations become abbreviated, relationships become frayed and disconnected. Listening, something that is connective and sacred, is seen as just another demand that must be addressed, and, haven’t we heard it all, or don’t we know it all already?

Many years ago, a passion to be “One with God” rose up inside of me.

This was my prayer night after night for decades. It was my prayer although I really had no idea of what it meant. It was an inchoate yearning for something that at some deep level I intuited already existed within, waiting to flower. This passion has led me for decades, and continues to lead me now.

We all are feeling the impact of these changing times. There is a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, fear that subliminally haunts us. We feel increasingly powerless to fix the multitude of situations that appear to be going awry. At the same time we don’t want to avoid our responsibility to positively respond to life as it is currently unfolding.

Can you imagine a world in which we live in humble respect, wonder, and awe for the experience of life?

In this video, a man wakes up wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. He bursts out of “the package” in gratitude for life, and he discovers thing that we daily take for granted such as a light switch, the shower head, shoes, and his wife and children wrapped in Christmas paper. They are all gifts. He meets his morning in a state of innocent gratitude and awe. He is living a life of wonder.

Recently, a friend described something I said as being “egoic”. I experienced an inner twinge, and a sense of rapidly pulling back. I could see, almost in slow motion, the rising up of defensiveness. Internal rejection and denial automatically stepped in. The conversation sailed on with no time to explore the issue, and in truth, I could see my resistance to exploring it in the moment, although my friend was more than capable of receiving me outside of judgment. I was already inside of judgment.

More and more I see that “I don’t know love at all.”

I see how difficult it is to allow love to penetrate my heart.

To be awakened to Life, to “meet Life from both sides now”, one must be willing to be vulnerable.