To begin with

After all these years, I think I finally understand what Natalie Goldberg meant in Writing Down the Bones and her subsequent books when she wrote about writing practice, and how it is about trusting your own mind, your own experience. I think I’m finally learning to do that through this daily minimum of words–learning to look round at my life and see that it is worth sharing, worth transforming through writing.

Ken Wilber says that there are three main disciplines in the Integral Approach: art, which is discovering and expression the self; morals, the discipline of right relationship with other beings; and science, the exploration and explanation of the world around us. Or, as it may also be expressed, the Beautiful, the Good, and the True. I think each of these things may partake of the other; art is primarily about the Beautiful, but it may also teach about the Good and the True. That which is True, I find, is also Beautiful and leads us to the Good. And what is Good must partake of what is Beautiful and what is True in order for it to be virtue.

To cultivate self, culture, and nature through art, morals, and science, leading to experience of the Beautiful, the Good, and the True–in service to all sentient beings, in awareness of the Nondual. And taking refuge in the Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The teacher, the teachings, and the supportive, guiding community.

At least now I know what I’m doing and where I’m going in this life, and for the next life, and so on down the line. It has taken me forty-two years, but now I know.

Maybe Douglas Adams was right about 42.