July Sky

​​In the Pacific Northwest, the sky in July can take your breath away. After months of gloomy gray, it opens and clears, revealing something boundlessly blue and beautiful. The clouds that shroud the shores of Puget Sound for most of the year dissolve into nothingness and what remains is a vast expanse, so magnificent and mysterious that to look up into it is to sense something sublimely spiritual.
 
Some Eastern faith traditions see the sky as a metaphor for the mind. Not the mind we usually think of — that clamorous cacophony of hopes and desires, dread and despair — but an unlimited, untainted awareness that holds all thoughts and emotions. The true nature of mind, they say, is like the sky - a vast and crystal-clear consciousness that contains everything. The weather – the clouds, wind, rain, hail, and snow - is merely passing through.  
 
Look up at the open sky in July and the meaning of this teaching becomes clear. The sky does not become blue when the clouds dissolve; it was blue all along. The blueness was always there, when the clouds formed, moved across the landscape below, and then faded into the distance. For its part, the sky doesn’t try to get rid of the clouds or to cling to them. It simply lets them be, without trying to interfere or control them in any way.
 
Back on Earth, most of us spend our lives believing we are our mental weather. Identifying with the clouds, the wind, the rain, the hail, and the snow, we define ourselves by whatever thoughts and emotions are moving through our minds. A fog of anxiety rolls into awareness and we say, “I am anxious”. A angry clap of thunder explodes into consciousness and we say “I am angry”. The heavy, dark rainclouds of grief descend and we think they will never, ever go away. We identify with every type of weather that passes through the sky of our minds, seeing each thought and emotion as our true nature – as the totality of the self. And as a result,  we are perpetually at the mercy of our internal experiences and the changing mind states they will inevitably bring.
 
The sky in the Pacific Northwest reminds us that nothing is permanent. The blue sky of July will not last forever, September will bring the fall’s first rains, and by late October the curtains of cloud will be pulled closed again. And yet it is not an illusion; it is real. The blue is authentically blue. The clarity is candidly clear. The vastness is genuinely vast. And knowing that this will change does not diminish the truth in any way.
 
But there is a subtlety in this teaching that is often overlooked: The true nature of the sky is not above or beyond the clouds, and the sky and the clouds are not separate from each other. The sky includes the clouds and all other vagaries of the weather. Similarly, the unbounded mind of awareness does not exist in some separate or transcendent realm, untouched by the storms of life. It holds it all — the black thunderheads of rage, the bruised purples of shame, the white wisps of irritation. It holds them the way the July sky holds the occasional afternoon storm that rolls in from the Cascades - intense, electrifying, cleansing - and leaving the air fragrant with a robust, earthy smell that even has its own name – petrichor.
 
Standing on the eastern shores of Whidbey Island, you can sometimes see this teaching unfold around you. At dawn, a sea of fog lies low over the Saratoga Passage, obscuring everything in sight. And then, gradually the Sun ascends into the sky and the fog begins to thin, and then to lift, and finally to dissolve. The fog is not banished by the Sun; it simply melted away of its own accord, revealing the gray-blue of the water and beyond that the greenness of Camano Island, and beyond that the whiteness of the snow caps on Mount Baker. Nothing was added. The fog simply hid what was already present.
 
This is what is spiritual teachers mean when they speak of the mind's natural clarity. It is not a clarity we can strive to attain, but one we can uncover when we stop identifying with the weather. When we sit quietly, or walk slowly in the long light of a summer’s evening, or simply pause to look up, there is sometimes a moment when the sense of self thins, lifts, or even dissolves. And what remains is the empty mind of awareness. Open. Clear. Unlimited.  
 
Tibetan Buddhists say this is the true nature of mind – a limitless, empty expanse out of which all experiences arise. It is there in January, behind the dark, heavy cloud banks that blanket Puget Sound for weeks. It is there in the sideways rain of November. And it is there in the darkness of December and January. But July makes it visible - apparent to anyone willing to look up and see.
 
The practice, then, is not to try to get rid of the clouds. It is not to achieve some permanent weather-free existence in which nothing disturbs the mind. Even if this were possible, it would not constitute awakening or freedom. It would be an emotional flatness, a disinterest in life, and a numbness in the heart. Instead, the practice is to see all mind states as temporary and to recognize the natural spaciousness of the mind. It is to bear witness to all the weather passing through and to touch into the unbounded awareness that holds it all. And to know the clouds, wind, rain, hail, and snow for what they are – impermanent, contingent, transient.
 
Wherever you are, I invite you to look up at the sky in July. Not just with casual curiosity, but with awe and reverence. Look up into the blueness that has no boundaries, the clarity that has no confusion, and the purity that has no prejudice. And understand that your mind and the weather passing through it are like the sky.
 
The clouds will return. They always do. But there is nothing bad or wrong about this. It is simply the nature of weather, and weather is the nature of life. Impermanent and ever-changing. But the sky always remains, even when its clarity is hidden. And on those July mornings when the air is still, the land is hushed, and the sky seems to go on forever, remember this teaching. Take it into yourself. Let it permeate you and fill your entire being.
 
And then rest there in the empty vastness of the sky.
​

Events

All times are Pacific Time

Tuesday, July 7 4:00 - 5:15 pm In Person
Healing Circles Langley
Mindfulness Meditation & More

Tuesday, July 21 4:00 - 5:15 pm In Person
Healing Circles Langley
Mindfulness Meditation & More

Tuesday, August 4 4:00 - 5:15 pm In Person
Healing Circles Langley
Mindfulness Meditation & More

Tuesday, August 18 4:00 - 5:15 pm In Person
Healing Circles Langley
Mindfulness Meditation & More

Sunday, August 30 10:00 - 11:15 am In person and on Zoom
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Whidbey Island
Topic: TBD

Tuesday, September 1 4:00 - 5:15 pm In Person
Healing Circles Langley
Mindfulness Meditation & More

Tuesday, September 15 4:00 - 5:15 pm In Person
Healing Circles Langley
Mindfulness Meditation & More

Thursday, September 17 7:00 - 8:45 pm In Person and on Zoom
Wise Spirit Buddhist Community Portland, OR
Topic: The Sacred Pause

Saturday, September 19 9:00 am - 4:00 pm on Zoom and In Person
Portland Insight Meditation Community
Daylong Retreat: The Sacred Pause

Friday, November 6 - Thursday, November 12 In Person
Cloud Mountain Retreat Center, WA
Residential retreat (six nights)
Expanding Perception and ReMembering Who We Are...Slowing Down-Sensing-Responding
Co-taught with Ayya Santacitta
More info and registration​