Being – KM Huber's Blog

When Spring Occurs Inside and Out

Posted on April 6, 2014April 5, 2014 by KM Huber in Florida, Inspiration, Spirituality

Every moment is the best time to begin. Beginnings are never out of season no matter what the weather is in your heart or outside your door. Every once in a while, spring is the season inside and out.

No matter the season, we welcome its beginning for in opening ourselves to any season, we stand at its threshold new, and the possibilities are infinite.

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in

summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

Wu-men (as quoted on Zen Flash)

In each moment of every season, we thrill to the unfolding of what we do not yet know. All together, these are the years of our lives, each with its own spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Sometimes the spring of a year, both within and without, is sporadic in its blossoming but nonetheless, in spring all comes alive again, anticipating the produce of summer, the harvest of fall, and the sleep of winter.

Of course, each season has its days of clouds but on the clear days of spring, eternity seems within our reach for the bursting forth of life is the promise of forever.

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature

is constituted to be that profound secret

and mystery to every other.

Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

In any beginning of any season is the promise of life’s renewal for every sentient being. There is birdsong, the greening of grass blades; there is the flight of the insect, dazzled in its moment of life.

It is in a moment’s beginning that all seasons start. Beginnings are for poets and painters capturing forever a moment in a blossom’s life, the uncovering of what was once winter stilled. A season begins the life cycle.

In the moment that is spring the world awakens because we, too, awaken, stretching for the infinite possibilities inherent in every beginning. There is spring in such a moment, and we wrap our arms around life.

All winter long, underground roots have embraced one another in frost or warmth, sharing nutrients through the stillness in anticipation of the moment of movement that is a thaw or a breaking of the surface. Life begins again, unpredictable but renewed.

Where I live, it is the season of beginning all around me as well as inside me. I am reminded that I am in constant relationship with life no matter where I am, inside or out. It is the season of my life, rich in bursting forth, magnificent in blossom, resplendent in fall foliage, and sated in winter.

In every beginning of every moment I stretch my arms to the sky in appreciation that I see the sky, whether or not there is weather in it. I am in a moment’s beginning and all that it may be.

It may be the moment that I look into the face of an iris and discover a shade of purple not ever known to me for the light in this moment is new, unlike it has ever been. Together, the iris and I, wild in our ways and settled in others, share in the sentience of being.

Always, we are in relationship with life whether it is an insect, a blade of grass, or a plant in a pot on a bedroom windowsill. We engage constantly in the cycle that is life and from time to time, we burst forth as an iris bloom or as a human, both grateful for another spring inside and out.

As Death Brushed By

Posted on December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 by KM Huber in Cooper and EmmaRose, Oneness

It does no good to make an appointment with death for death has its own schedule. In other words, death knows its moments. That said, death may give us a glimpse if we are observant and completely present.

On the afternoon of the winter solstice, Cooper James was jolted from his sleep by a spasm/seizure so severe and so long in duration, I thought death had stopped for him completely. Not so. Cooper was more than content to let that moment go and get on to the next.

I could not, however, let it go. With more ease than I care to admit, I abandoned the freedom that is in every moment and tried to secure every moment that remained for Cooper as if I could know when his death would be, as if I could make an appointment for it.

I wanted to be ready but by looking to the future, I was missing what was occurring: Cooper was approaching his life as he always had, a little slower, perhaps, but with just as much interest. In fact, he took advantage of my rather dazed nature by sticking his nose into the cat box, something he hasn’t done since…well, I can’t remember when.

My head stayed stuck in the future, creating and re-creating it, as I cleaned up the cat gravel without giving it any attention. Of course, Cooper seized every moment in which I was not present and that included scoring extra portions of chicken and rice.

Cooper steadily improved but my head remained in the future because of what had occurred in the past. My head was trying to decide what was best for him while my heart went unheeded, as if it did not beat.

By Christmas Eve, my head was so restless there was no chance for sleep so I watched Cooper sleep and listened to an NPR broadcast of A Christmas Carol. His seizure/spasm had altered our lives but Cooper stayed present–it is all he knows—while I was stuck in the moment that death brushed by. Disregarding the present, I anticipated the future when death would make a complete stop.

As Christmas Eve turned into Christmas morning, I did not hear sleigh bells or angels singing on high but I did receive a gift. As my heart tucked my head under itself, the joy of being filled me with gratitude for what is.

I realized that my best is always in being completely present. That is what assures a future and heals a past. I have written about being present in so many blog posts but it seems I required a winter solstice event and a Christmas Eve carol to experience it completely.

The moment is always free, neither attached to the past nor future. What we are in each moment will frame our past and color our future. If we will tuck our heads under our hearts, we will not get caught within the ego web of our thoughts.

In keeping an open heart, we know joy, love, gratitude and compassion, the emotions the ego cannot know. This I wish for each and every one of you for every moment you have.

Blog Format Change

Beginning Thursday, January 3, 2013, I will begin publishing a weekly Thursday Tidbits post in addition to my regular Sunday posts. True to the definition of tidbit, these posts will be some choice bits of information that I find curious and think may interest you.

Often, I come across information that does not warrant or merit a full blog post but is worth sharing with my readers. Obviously, I am quite enamored of the idea of all of us connecting with one another—oneness meets technology—so my thinking is that Thursday Tidbits will provide us another avenue to do just that.

Other times, I discover blog posts that I would like to share but re-blogging has its issues so I’ve decided I would rather direct people to those blogs and blog posts. Thus, I will provide some introductory information and possible background information regarding the post and then you can decide whether or not to click on the link.

I may also include some videos and at times, these Thursday posts may be a forerunner for the Sunday posts. At times, I may ask for your thoughts on a subject before I write a blog post. Clearly, the Thursday Tidbits format is fluid.

This week, I am celebrating my one year anniversary of blogging. I have thoroughly enjoyed this past year. Obviously, that has a great deal to do with you, my readers, who have been so constant. I thank you and look forward to another year together.

Freedom in the Unknown

Posted on September 9, 2012 by KM Huber in Oneness

For a while I have been residing with two, well-worn nemeses, the past and the future. I am deliberate in my use of the terms future and past rather than a specific moment, incident, or person for what keeps the past and future ever present is what Deepak Chopra calls “the conditioned response” or the known.

Each one of us has a myriad of conditioned responses for every situation that arises. Regardless of whether or not there is a replica of a particular situation, the mind enthusiastically emits a thought barrage of past experience and future possibility. Both future and past are attached to what happened or what might happen but not to the moment that is. Living in the moment is the unknown, free from past or future.

Essentially, every moment is free. We choose between the known and the unknown, between what we have always been and what we have never been. It is that basic. What is not free is the situation surrounding each and every moment.

Situations reside in the past or in the future–they have strings–and where there is attachment, there is ego, a constant chatter of what you already know. Only when we practice what Chopra calls “choice less awareness” (Moksha), are we in the unknown of the moment and truly free. It takes a lifetime of practice and ceaseless awareness.

For without awareness, we get comfortable and our practice becomes what we know and not what is. Increasingly, my enthusiasm was on the wane, whether for the revision of my novel or for my nonfiction manuscript on consciousness. While I love what I am doing, I could not deny a familiar tug of weariness. Briefly, even the malaise of lupus loomed as I turned more and more to the known of the past.

Mindless television is a tried-and-true response of mine to whenever “the world is too much with us” (William Wordsworth). Some would argue that I could not have picked a better time than the broadcasting of the two major political conventions in the United States. There may be something to that. For completely opposite reasons, both conventions made me weep but as I reached my saturation point for both weeping and politics, I discovered my enthusiasm for republic and democracy. Both are messy, completely life-like, wherein lies the sliver that is hope.

No matter the moment of life, hope is always the light of the unknown and may be the heart of risk as well. In hope lies enthusiasm, the total immersion into life, “the ripple that follows the stone…[as] we are each faced with the endless and repeatable task of discovering or uncovering our enthusiasm, which means in essence being at one with the energy of God or the divine” (Mark Nepo). Not surprisingly, God and the divine are within the political whirlwind of the United States while the world watches.

Regardless of how we perceive our relationship to one another–Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” the Tao, the Universe, the Source or quantum physics–we are all connected to consciousness, which is so much more than a mere pinprick of light. Consciousness connects us to existence, transcending all we have ever known; it moves our heads under our hearts so we may hear one another. When we listen, we observe. We make a response within the moment.

In observing the political conventions I listened, dropping my decades-long conditioned response of ranting and raving. Rather, I was grateful for living in a republic brave enough to reveal the messiness of its democracy to the world, at considerable risk perhaps. I immersed myself into the enthusiasm that is the noise of life, the unpredictable but eternal moment.

It is such a small step from the known to the unknown. In the unknown resides the “choice less” awareness that is the freedom inherent in risk, the heartbeat of hope. It is neither the past nor the future but only the moment, which is all we ever have yet is always more than enough as long as we are aware. “Despite our endless limitations, it seems that the qualities of attention, risk, and compassion allow us to be at one with the energy of the whole and the result is enthusiasm, that deep sensation of oneness” (Nepo).

(All Mark Nepo citations appear in The Book of Awakening)

In the Moment

Posted on May 6, 2012May 6, 2012 by KM Huber in Cooper and EmmaRose

KM Huber image of Cooper — Reading up on Ramps

Cooper and I are ramping up—and down–our daily outings.

As always, he is unruffled when being requires an expansion of our routine. If I am honest, my “Beagle Boy” is an exemplar of being, a trait that has run strong in the beagles I have known and one to which I aspire.

Cooper is progressing through another aging phase as his vertebral disks join his joints in degenerating—it is a condition we share–heightened by the dripping, Florida humidity that hails spring’s slide into summer, silent but steady. It is a fully body experience for both of us.

A week ago, Cooper’s front legs gave way as he stumbled, searching for a way to stay standing. His back legs held while both front legs were indecisive when it came to a simultaneous up or down.

We had not met this moment before.

Cooper kept calm—clearly, an anthropomorphic observation on my part–for an animal’s survival instinct is to cloak injury or weakness. I like to think I played my part in the deception as I kept talking in a tone he knows.

The moment seemed to require it.

Most of Cooper’s vocal responses are like a lilt, whether as a question, agreement, or his observations irrespective of mine. Infrequently, he sighs a low, gravelly moan that seems to signify resignation as well as contentment.

In this moment on the ground, however, he offered no comment.

Rather, he focused on breathing that was not panting, and I found myself breathing with him. We were in no hurry as we were within the confines of our apartment complex, and we had a sunset if we needed it, which we didn’t. Eventually, Cooper’s legs found themselves and a familiar rhythm, although forever changed.

For awhile, we confined ourselves to the area just outside our apartment, which is woefully inadequate. A day without an outing to a park or at least a ride in the car is like a day that never seems to start, as if we are willing to let it pass us by. Admittedly, that is how it feels to me, but if I read Cooper’s keening correctly, he concurs.

He is his own beagle, a definite advantage in being, as is having a portable canine ramp.

Cooper has always used the ramp to stroll onto our adjustable Tempur-Pedic bed, which sits too high for any access with ease. The ramp is also adjustable, shrinking to half its size and sporting a side carrying handle.

With medication and rest, Cooper stabilized. We moved into our next moment.

I carried the ramp outside and secured it while Cooper “waited” just inside the apartment door, trusting in the fact that he was wearing his harness, which was actually attached to his leash–both good signs. Yet ever aware, he kept his nose to the door, only backing off to let me proclaim that “bye-bye” was a go–Beagle Boy found his grin, again.

Even with disk disease and deteriorating joints, Cooper strives for the handsome gait that has all but left him. In seeing his ramp with his car for the first time, he took that in stride as well—allowing me to guide him in—bearing the grace of the being he is.

Once in the car, I buckled us into our seats. With hand and paw on the gear shift, we moved into yet another moment.

For those of you who want to follow my ROW80 progress, you may view it here.

“Do you Believe in Magic?”

Posted on April 29, 2012August 2, 2012 by KM Huber in Oneness

These days, I find myself wrapped round story, magic, being—in any and every order—an entangled trio so reminiscent of a quantum entanglement known as “spooky action at a distance.”

It seems entanglement is the heart of this blog.

Quantum entanglement Flickr beccapugilsi — Becca Pugilsi Image
WANA Commons

The story I pursue is layered in the oneness of the 10,000 things of “the Way” (the Tao) that connects the consciousness of all always and simultaneously. That is the story of the human plane, I believe.

It is a story I want to know.

I have enrolled in a sixteen month course that offers a synthesis of the ancient traditions of the last 25 centuries including Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity in its “original state,” meaning not according to St. Augustine of Hippo, a prospect much more exciting than it may seem. I may write a post on that but we are not there yet.

Magic Dave R Farmer Flickr — Dave R Farmer Image
WANA Commons

Perhaps a more practical way to consider the course is this: the predominant Western belief of “you are your rational mind” is lacking in magic and story, at the very least, and at its very worst, it is unsustainable dogma.

That is how I see the course, and while it is early in my study, I am impressed with its evidence-based emphasis, specifically that hypothesis is not fact.

The irony of my beginning this study as my lupus moves into its own story is not lost on me; I suspect irony is frequent when one leads with the heart and not with the head. Yet, to live with an open heart and to discover what that truly means–for there is not agreement upon it or about it—is to dive deep into the head-heart connection.

Mark Nepo writes that “with your head beneath your heart, you must stop doing….Time and time again, the head must be brought beneath the heart or the ego swells” (The Book of Awakening).

Consider the entanglement of placing the head under the heart, thereby creating the “voice” of the gut. Nepo calls it, “a truth of being for a truth of being.” The resonance of the gut is like a messenger rushing through every system of our being proclaiming a resilient, “I get it!”

And resilience is rather magical but it is not magical thinking. To me, resilience lies in remembering the distinction between believing and knowing. While believing is akin to knowing, what we believe often lies in faith but not always in fact. For fact, experience provides us evidence of all we come to know.

“By opening fully to our own experience, we can feel and see the resilience of life around us” (Nepo).

resilience amber n west flickr — Amber N West Image
WANA Commons

Being completely within the experience of our life–being fully present—we experience what every other life form knows: living fully means denying nothing. Being present in every moment is to experience all the moment offers, a pure opportunity to be.

Being is the magical story that the natural world celebrates completely and constantly every moment. It is a story that plays out moment by moment, a real page turner.

For those of you who want to follow my ROW80 progress, you may view it here.

Being Lily

Posted on March 4, 2012March 4, 2012 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Cooper and EmmaRose, Oneness

“Originally, the word power meant able to be.
In time, it was contracted to mean to be able.
We suffer the difference” (Mark Nepo, Book of Awakening).

In a world weary and wary of power, I doubt the distinction that comes from rearranging words—even contracting them—is noted when we consider our power, inner or outer, globally or individually. Usually, we find power and ourselves lacking, somehow; “…the wish for more always issues from a sense of lack” (Nepo).

Yet, there are times when lack results in abundance sans want and wishing. I think of Lily, a dog story of joy ever after because with Lily, lack is always more.

A white-muzzled, chocolate lab kind of canine, Lily found herself at a county animal shelter; she was too old to care for, she was too fat, her hips were bad. Lily lacked everything she needed to continue her life as it was so she began a new life, incrementally.

Lily 1A — Second Chance Farms Inc. Photo

First, there was Underdog Foundation whose main operations are not in the area Lily lived nor is Underdog usually contacted about dogs like Lily. Underdog provides funds for various rescue operations but it is not involved in any physical rescue nor does it have its own facility so Lily found her funding but no place to be.

Yet, home was always near. Lily was in a county shelter that was part of the network of Second Chance Farms’ sanctuary. The sanctuary takes in older animals of almost all species, offering them forever home for the rest of their lives. Lily would live with dogs, cats, a tortoise, ducks, chickens, a horse named River, two goats, a donkey, and at that time, an opossum.

But with Lily, there was still more.

In under two weeks and entirely unexpectedly, Lily met and fell in love with her permanent foster parents who also care for cats, dogs and horses. At first, Lily slept a lot, as always, but her new life moved fast. With her human mom, Lily learned about her barn, her horses and having all around romps in the barnyard grass. Her personality perked.

Lily was no longer quiet about life. Eagerly, she showed her humans that she could howl like a wolf, if needed, yet with a little eye contact, she was just as capable of carrying on a conversation, of sorts, with humans. Lily being Lily, she ascended to alpha dog in her canine pack of three.

Lily’s family travels quite a bit. In particular, her humans are serious college football fans. In less than six months and in time for her first football season, Lily shed the weight that had been too much for her age and for her hips. She was on her way to a victorious season of football trips, especially the pre-game activities inside and outside the family RV.

When it came time for an extended family wedding, Lily attended, of course, and was included in the official wedding photos. In her first year of so many firsts, Lily’s world of canine and human contact is ever more. Lily no longer lacks for family, for care, for life in any way, a true alpha dog of her canine and human pack.

It’s the kind of story that takes us out of lack into what is best in all of us, canine or human. Lily, lacking all except her ability to be, created a chance for humans to prove they are able, always, to be more.

And that is powerful.

Rhythm of ROW80 Sunday Scheduling:

This week, I begin a month-long workshop with Bob Mayer on Idea and Conflict. For the rest of this round of ROW80, I will work with the idea of my current manuscript so I may actually turn the story into a novel.

Daily, I write for at least 30 minutes, often longer, generating at least 1,000 words per day for blog posts as well as some creative nonfiction.