I learned just this morning that my daughter's grandmother-in-law may have a terminal disease. My daughter and son-in-law are quite upset about it. This woman means a lot to them. It made me think about the finality of life.

We are all born and so, by default, we all will die. It is something that we tend to ignore or pretend doesn't exist, especially when we are young. As we get older, there comes a time when we begin to face the reality of our own death. Once we have confronted this inevitable event, it holds much less sway over our lives.

In meditation, we are sometimes encouraged to face our own death. Some would say we should go so far as to imagine our body decaying, rotting in the grave. Whether we go that far or not, I think it is a good idea to come to grips with the fact of death. I don't say this to be morbid, but to encourage along the Path of freedom and enlightenment.

Buddha said that the cause of all suffering is attachment. Yoga teaches the same thing. Jesus said it as well. The Bhagavad Gita 2.57 tells us that the one who is unattached does not suffer from negative events.

When we come to the point where we can let go of everything in this life, including our own lives, then life holds little threat over us. This does not mean that we no longer wish to live, wish to prosper, but that we are willing to live in the enjoyment of the moment, whatever that is.

We lived in the country about sixty miles north of LA. There were hills all around us and I would spend hours and hours roaming those hills alone. I felt so free and close to the Infinite. I loved to listen to the wind in the trees or feel the sunshine down on me. I had a sense of everything being all right, even when it wasn't.

As I was making bread this morning, I began to meditate on Jesus saying that the only unforgiveable sin is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. To blaspheme means to, literally, to count as nothing. So the unforgiveable sin is to count as nothing the Holy Spirit.

Since the Spirit of God dwells within us, how can we blaspheme? One way is to live contrary to the gifts that God has given us. We are apportioned God's Spirit each one so that we may incarnate God into the world. We are given a little bit of who the Infinite is to be the infinite to those we come in contact with and the world at large. If we count this as nothing and pursue other avenues, do we not blaspheme?

In the Gita, we are encouraged to strive in our own Dharma than to attempt to live another's. In other words, we are to live out who we are. If we attempt to live in another's Dharma, we will be afraid and feel insecure.

The Buddha encourages us to have a right livelihood. We are, again, told to live within our Dharma, our Path. Only then can we hope to gain enlightenment. Only then can we discover the Self, the Divine within.

Well, my Dharma now says it is time to put my loaves into the oven. To leave them out and never finish would be to make them half baked. Our lives are half baked when we refuse to live who we are, who we are meant to be. Do we dare make the Spirit half baked?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if consciousness fell on us like the gently falling snow? I sit at my desk and watch the snow fall and wonder at its beauty. To be enlightened, to be awakened would be beautiful beyond description. I don't mean in the way that we are; having moments of awakening and then, like the snow, it disappears. I mean to be awakened all the time.

I am currently reading After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield. In it, he states the obvious fact that there is no such thing in this life as a permanent state, a stage, if you will, of awakening. Sure, there are those who are in this state longer, more fully than the rest of us, but there is none that does not have to occasionally come down from the heavens to scrape the dishes, to pick the dog droppings. Yes, there are those unique individuals that can maintain a sense of the Infinite while picking up poop, but they can't do it all the time.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could?