Preface

The oaks are almost bare. The remaining leaves dangle in the fall wind, dry and crackly. Shyla pauses and stillness takes over. I follow her lead, as I’d done literally thousands of times throughout the ten years we’d spent living remotely at the cabin. She scans the canyon laid out before us. Every time we come down the hill, she does this. She does it with the time and attention one would either use the first time seeing the view, or possibly knowing it would be the last.

This was her last. Not that we knew it then, but we knew it.

We were making a final trip up the hill to clean the cabin and retrieve some remaining belongings–mainly, a couple of solid wood and green leather dining chairs found free alongside the road during our second year living there. We wheelbarrowed those and other miscellaneous items that we needed for our next adventure together–our new home on Cobb Mountain.

As Shyla descends the glorified deer trail, she is unable to move her hind legs in full range–a sign of her age. Instead, she leads with her front legs and her back ones kind of hop to catch up. It’s hard to tell if she’s in pain, but since they can’t move fully, I assume she is experiencing some discomfort at the very least .

Up the next slope she pauses again, this time by the overlook to our benefactor’s monument. I reflect on our friend Walter who had offered us the cabin as a home when the end of a 13-year relationship found us homeless. The Tibetan prayer flags flap gently in the breeze and a wooden striker twists and turns, tenderly tinkling the long metal rods on an aging set of chimes. Shyla again scans the scenery.

Over the years, Shyla’s growing consciousness continued to amaze and inspire me. As we had settled into the cabin and our voluntarily simplistic lifestyle, her presence and awareness grew to like that of a monk–intentional, in the moment and bright.

Our relationship with Walter was one of spiritual companions on the path. While he had passed some years before, connecting with him was as easy as pausing momentarily and bringing him to mind. Voila! His consciousness was with us and sometimes Shyla would react as if he were there–with a skittish concern and distancing that reflected her relationship with him while alive.

We spent many mornings and late afternoons at his monument space. An oak tree’s low reaching arms stretched above and around the stone-cast Buddha statue placed in his memory by his family. His ashes tucked close behind in a simple plastic container with various colorful silk scarves draped over it, a sacred space was created. The usual altar accoutrements–candles, incense and vases–are further behind, protected from the elements by the muscular oak.

A lit candle, some billowing incense, an offering of fruit and one of Shyla’s biscuits in the offering bowl was our usual alms at this site which was the site where Walter camped some 30 years prior. It was fitting that this be his final resting place. He so loved the land–this land where he lived with family and ultimately in solitude until his final year.

I would sit and meditate facing out towards the canyon, aside the Buddha, and Shyla would put her back to me looking up the hill, as was common when we were outside together. She would usually take a view that could oversee everything, and, if she could, she would tuck herself into a spot where she was protected from behind. She was always on alert when we were outside together. Her Shepherd nature, I thought.

Always protective and aware of my whereabouts, whether I was cutting and gathering wood, sitting and meditating, practicing Xi Gong, or eating, Shyla was my companion–spiritual, physical, emotional.

One morning in meditation, about a month after she had passed, I saw Shyla’s life in metaphor. A petal in the blooming flower of life. A soul in the awakening consciousness. Still part of the whole awakening, but an individual petal that grows and falls of its own accord, living within the limits of the laws of nature.

My life too, of course. I am but one petal on the flower of awakening. The importance in playing my role in the blossoming is to be as present with the whole process as I can. As well, to bloom and be part of the bigger blossom in the most magnificent way I can.

It is also to accept the eventual aging and dying of not only other petals, but inevitably, myself. My intention is to do this gracefully .

Shyla is a petal that has blossomed and fallen gracefully for me and before me...She not only gave me the gift of her life in companionship, but I also had the gift of her death, literally in my arms, as conscious and incredulous as all that can be.

In the Buddhist tradition, the Buddha, or the One Who Knows, is the One who not only experiences the whole blossoming process through each of us, but observes it as well. It is the awareness that witnesses the All That Is.

In this quote by Rumi:

The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

I think this is so true. By holding up a piece of the mirror to ourselves, we do see the truth–but only a part of it. We are that mirror of God. We are God. But only a part, a piece, a petal. Vitally important to the blossom and vitally true, but only with all the other petals in any given moment do we become the totality of God.

This book, this teaching, is but one petal in a flower of information, insights, stories and pictures on awareness, self-transformation and sacred spiritual journey. And, as with most flowers unfolding, the essence and fullness of the unfolding remains to be seen.

How will this petal in the flower of life affect you?

As I once shared with Walter: One purpose of existence is to directly experience the unfolding. Upon further reflection, another is to be touched by the experiences of others in their blossoming and to allow that touch to affect us and our choices. We are all interconnected. We cannot NOT be touched by what is happening around us. Our openness to this determines the depth with which we can blossom in our own lives–with which we can contribute to the whole blossom of existence.

It is with kind regards, that I hope that you, the reader, be touched in some positive way by the stories and teachings contained in this book, and may it bring some benefit to you in your awakening–in your own sacred journey.