NEW & SELECTED TEACHINGS

When we’re relating with someone, it can be like Spirit to Spirit, or essence to essence, or heart to heart. But it can also be like connecting in stillness, connecting in a listening space, or a space where whatever is going to occur unfolds and appears to you. It’s as if you’re sitting back a little and just letting the whole interaction unfold to you. You’re in the front row seat, and they’re in the front row seat, but it’s more like a co-arising, and you’re letting what unfolds appear to you both as it’s unfolding.

Sometimes when people think of connecting, they might think at some level that their body and spatial energetics are moving toward and connecting, like moving forward or out. You can experiment with resting back and in, having that inward landscape be the connecting tone of what’s happening. It hinges on a sense of identity, not as the person connecting, but as the aware space that connects all things and expresses as all things.

There’s something that I call spatial mind. It’s a little bit different than thinking mind. It’s that part of us that references “big,” but it also references close or more proximal. It references out and in, just any directional kind of referencing. This is not only a referencing of the mind, but it’s a referencing of the heart and the entire body.

A common situation is in nature where people can feel like their whole energetics open into the woods or the beach, or wherever it is, and it feels like their energy body can relax and be as big as it wants, because it’s so soothing. You want to drink in the vitality of nature—not that you’re thinking about all this, but that’s just what the system is doing. It’s not only relaxing and connecting; it’s taking in and feeling the nourishment of it all. There are certain settings where our system feels more comfortable to do that, or we actually want it to do that or encourage it to do that in unconscious ways that we might not be knowing. Some people have a definite preference for being big and open over not attending to that.

In my experience, when I started focusing more on the hara and on the earth, a lot of this came into balance on its own. You might want to do the exercise about sensing the breath coming in and out, down in the lower abdomen, or the exercise about growing roots into the earth. I also have a free meditation online called Iron Mountain that gives you some basic principles about sensing what it is to feel more energetic ballast. You can contemplate that as a complement to what you've already developed.

It can feel really good to be in your body and be anchored, and your body will be happy. It will be like, “Ahh! She’s at home in me, and I’m being resided in.” It can feel really good. Most people report, “Wow, I haven’t felt this before. This feels great.” Sometimes it can be challenging coming back into the body, if the body is associated with past difficulties or trauma, but as it becomes more comfortable to settle in the body, it can feel really good.

That rooting will have a conserving effect, like self-resourced energy. You’ll feel more resourced in your local body, in your local self. It will conserve some of the energy that may be mapping to the sense of being vast, or maybe even having a slight preference for being vast. The goal, which is something more sustainable, is to know yourself ultimately as That which is not vast or small. It can appear as those things, but you really sense the place where identity doesn’t land so much.

Sometimes it’s helpful for the body to bring these different expressions online, such as “up and out” and “down and in,” so that all of the instrument is at the ready and available for freely flowing into these different expressions that all complement each other. After you bring it online and these things become resident in your architecture—like what it is to ground and what it is to open—once they’re all known in your being, then you can kind of forget about it, and Awareness just uses the instrument however it does. The referencing becomes a body memory, like riding a bike or driving a car. Once you’ve done it enough, you’ve got it and it’s in your body memory.

From Mukti’s Got Juice? Online Course, 2018

© Mukti Gray 2018

They speak richly of life lived . . . of journeys, distances, home, arriving, and of a great love that seeks the earthy ground. Such are the boots, as painted in 1886 by Vincent van Gogh. This famed Dutch artist had a supernatural ability to bestow the perception that all around us, the “ordinary” is vibrating with life, even exuberantly grounding the transcendent.

As for van Gogh’s Shoes, 1888 (pictured below), I could have missed them while visiting New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art two decades ago. But I found those shoes where Adya stood captivated before them—he in them and them in him. It was one of thousands of times I have seen Adya inwardly bowing, communing with the totality as two shoes.

His captivation was not surprising, as the first instruction that he received from his respected teacher, Arvis Joen Justi, was regarding his own shoes. When she noticed he’d haphazardly left them upon arriving for the first time at her house to attend a Zen group meeting, she stood wordlessly looking at his pair next to the others placed with care. In that one short encounter, Arvis conveyed volumes about living consciously. I’ve heard Adya share an understanding that he had in that moment: Take care of your shoes; take care of life. And so his conscious relationship with his shoes began then, at the age of 19. And he has passed this pointer on to his students.

I’ve shared about shoes herein because they are a great symbol of grounding spirituality in daily life. This is about bringing forward what is core and essential and manifesting it outwardly. I’m speaking of what you offer when relating with your shoes (or with whatever is before you). And I’m also speaking of being conscious of what your relationship to life is founded upon, the depth that seeks to pour itself into life.

As practitioners, we have a great opportunity before us: to have an ongoing dialogue with depth, to be rooted in depth. I’m not only referring to clarifying what you deeply value, as truly important as that is. I’m advocating for your listening and sensing deeply and for your listening and sensing to sync up with your words and actions. I’m also advocating for your noticing when your words and actions are out of sync. This noticing is a return to conscious awareness that allows you to realign to depth again and again, and—eventually—to know yourself and Self as depth’s root.

As Adya’s wife, I have picked up his shoes many times. I’ve had to move them when dusting the shoe rack or vacuuming where they’ve been placed. And I tell you, the intentional consciousness that permeates the placement of his shoes is noteworthy. Although I’ve often sensed the consciousness that his shoes and the floor beneath embody, the placement is never to be repeated. Each time that I’ve returned his shoes to the floor, it is with my own expression of consciousness, presenting in that moment. So it is with each of us: in each step, each breath, each moment, consciousness expresses uniquely, anew. By expressing our nature as eternal depth afresh in daily relating, wherever our feet take us, we give shoes to the timeless, the mystical.

© 2025 Mukti Gray. All rights reserved.