Anew

This morning at 6:37am, the exact time of my birth (adjusted for the fact that it was 8:37am Central time, where I was born) I was urinating.

I don't mention that to show how "mundane" life has become...that at a particularly significant time on a particularly significant day I was reduced to pissing. Not at all. Nor do I mention it to demonstrate a weird coincidence (seeing as how my mother had called just five minutes earlier to leave me a birthday voicemail...thereby waking me and allowing the "urge" to rise up in to my consciousness, it can hardly be a "coincidence" in the way that we normally define the word). I mention it because I knew it. That is, I was aware of it. The whole thing. I was conscious of the fact that it was the day and time of my birth and that I was urinating.

Awareness will be a theme. Please remain awake.

This morning Seattle is covered in a deep, deep fog. With visibility of only a couple of hundred of feet it's easy to turn inward. The volume on all of the outside stimulants that our senses are normally tuned in to is turned down, making it easier to hear what's going on inside. That blanket of introspection has always been something I've treasured. That turning inside. Fog is nature's forward bend...the asana of self-reflection.

So it seems appropriate that today be the day that the new path is tread. That the footsteps I take in the next fews days, the next few hours, lead in the direction that I want to go, and not just continue in the direction from which I've come. How consistent I am at documenting all of this, of course, remains to be seen. But be assured that the intention is there. And if you find me suddenly wandering away from that place of awareness, please be so kind as to nudge me gently.

That's not to say that awareness is only about sublime Zen-like moments. In fact, here is my un-Zen-like, ego-based thought for the morning.... it's frustrating that I can go out and run a 5:44 mile without any training (like I did yesterday) and yet I can't go out for a jog around the lake. For me, and my own particular situation and constitution, injuries seem to be the great spiritual mirror...reflecting my own inner state back to me...sometimes not always in a very attractive fashion. But I guess it's all a part of what life is...grist for the mill. Or as Rilke said, "living the answers" to the questions of Life.

And so my life flows....