Knowing is Different than Being

    My heart is stretching out like a fat guy on his lazy boy chair and yet I can still find myself being unkind. I see myself mostly as a vessel through which love can be transported from there to here and yet the fact remains: I am tempted to be a human twenty-three year old girl all of the time. 

    Today I was rude to a customer. I suppose it is never a good look for me to be anything other than loving and it shows each time I act out of accordance. That goes for everyone. What about those greedy shits who wipe their wealthy butts with the money that their monkeys broke their backs to make? Am I to be kind to them, too? In addition to the kindness that is easy to give out? The answer is yes. I do not believe that it is my karma to put grumpy people in their place, if not gracefully. This is something I can read loud and clear about myself. There is work to do. 

    I am much too gentle (when I am at my most spacious) to stoop down and get into the mud where kindness can not breathe. So I can sympathize for the ache and the mindlessness of this world but there exists an inner awareness that I did not choose to be a human all over again to get stuck another round. I've arrived again to sit in the lotus. Having knowledge of wisdom is one thing and being the embodiment of wisdom is another. It is an entirely alternative dance. 

    What I'd like to be is a mirage of love. It is not in my heart to want people to perceive that I am lovely but that they know love is real because I'm alive with it. As if there are ribbons of it twirled around my flesh. I can not say how deeply reverent I am that I have gotten to be a barista for so many years. It sounds playful when I say this but this experience has granted me so much spiritual practice. And also many years of spiritual warfare, as my friend Bee and I called it when we worked together in our hometown coffeeshop. A sour customer may alchemize your tender heart, molecule by molecule, if you aren't living too much in your spirit that day. 

    What am I trying to do at the end of all of these interactions? What do I want? After steaming gallons upon gallons of milk, what's the work really about here? I think you know. I'm trying to get free, man!!