A part of the R/L practice that has become like brushing teeth is recording a nightly love letter and listening to it first thing in the morning. Along with that, I have noticed that when I get up and start going about my morning routine, I am vulnerable to the voices. Attention can go to conditioned mind and conversation can begin about the day ahead.

Noticing that, I started immediately to record what I was doing, talking about what I was loving best about the moment—inspired by the Guide’s “what am I loving best about this?” practice—and, on days when the human was struggling to get up and do her morning routine, talking her through it, step-by-step. Just this step. Now this step.

Making these “just press record” recordings as I go about my morning routine and as I do yoga in the evenings helps to keep attention Here in the moment. I talk about what’s right Here, staying in the senses.

There’s something about having the recorder running beside me as I’m doing things that helps keep attention Here. It feels like a training in making real to myself what’s always so: that the Unconditional Love that’s animating us is accompanying us every moment, that we can’t be outside of it.

It’s a training in being with and staying with the human being, unconditionally.

When attention wanders, the little recorder sitting there running helps me to notice that attention has wandered. It’s not that Unconditional Love is chastising or judging when attention wanders, but its presence—made visible and more easily sense-able to me through the sight of that little recorder running—calls me back to it.

Presence calls me back to presence. Unconditional Love—the recorder running—is quietly bearing witness, interested in everything I have to say. It’s an encouraging, loving, “tell me all about it, tell me about what you’re loving in this moment.” 

I also love listening to these recordings. I get to hear the human being—embodied, alive, going about her life. Just doing stuff.

In this way, these “just press record” recordings are also a training in identifying with Life living in the moment, rather than with the abstract, disembodied conversation about an imaginary “my life” happening in the head, declaring that it’s “real life” and that its “real life” is more important than the life of the human being.

In these recordings, I get to really hear the human living her life, and the experience of hearing that is love. 

Without realizing this, when it dropped in to “just press record” and I started doing it, I now see how it’s training to live in the love letter in every moment, a training to make real to myself the presence of Unconditional Love in every moment.

In one of the earlier love letters, Unconditional Love had said, “I’m with you all through the day, when you’re brushing your teeth, when you’re writing emails, when you’re taking out the trash….”

“Just press record” practice is helping me to practice living there. HERE.

Gassho.

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