I have a dog named Ruby. There’s a place we love to hang out together In the summertime called Barton Springs. Maybe you know it. In case you don’t, Barton Springs is a naturally occurring spring in the middle of Austin, Texas that’s fed by a deep aquifer. So the water is nice and cold, about 70 Degrees, all year round. The city made a public pool around it by damning off the spring at one end and there’s an informal, dog friendly, swimming hole kinda place on the other side of the damn where the water turns into a river and runs down to the lake in the center of town. When the temperature spikes into the triple digits in the summertime it’s the absolute best place to hang out with a dog. At least we think so.

In the summer there are hundreds of people at the springs, all kinds of people...families with little kids, teenagers, adults of all types cooking ad drinking. And lots of dogs. There are a bunch of things that Ruby and I love to do in this place and there’s an agreement that we seem to have reached very naturally over the years. Half the time I act like a dog and half the time she acts like a person. And when we’re able to flow back and fourth between the two, we are the best of friends and the place is just magical. We swim. We meet people. We catch turtles and snakes to share with little kids. We stalk fish and we balance stones.

Stalking fish and balancing stones is actually one thing for us. It’s a meditative realm that Ruby and I work ourselves into where both of us are doing our own independent thing as dog and person but we’re doing it together. To the outside world we seem to be doing totally different activities, I’m balancing stones and she is stalking fish in the knee deep water, but on the inside Ruby and I know we are doing the very same thing... being right Here, right now.

The Temple

Balancing rocks is actually a very simple thing. But like many simple things it’s not necessary easy and when it’s done well, the result can seem almost impossible. In terms of physics, to balance one stone on another you have to position the center of mass of the balancing stone directly over the middle of three points of contact with the base stone. Like a camera sitting on a tripod. But those three points can be so close together that relative to the size of the stone, they look like one point. When rocks are arranged this way and they balance what’s actually happening is the force of gravity is pulling through the top stone, through the contact points and the base stone towards the center of the earth and the two stones are becoming one single mass. Granted, a little tap and they fall back into two, but under the mathematical laws of physics, once they balance, they become one stone. Which I think is pretty cool.

So that’s what’s happening, but that’s not how you do it. You don’t look for three contact points, match the surfaces, calculate the location of the center mass, line it up and force two stones to become one stone. In other words you don’t balance stones with your mind. You balance stones with your body. Or more accurately, you balance stones with your feeling awareness. The part of you that is capable of knowing and reasoning with sensation itself. You balance stones by feel.

Just a few minutes into the boys second stack another boy about the same age, cute little blonde kid, walks up next to him, almost knocking over his first stack, and asks him “What are you doing?”

“I’m balancing rocks...he showed me how”

“I wanna do that too.”

“Just get a rock...he’ll show you.”

So, In a matter of minutes this new boy has his own two foot section of the stone wall, far away from the first boy and my original balance. He’s in the zone and I’m starting to work on my second.

That’s when Josh walks up to my original balance, totally wide eyed with his mouth gaping open “How in the heck?...”

He’s not saying a whole lot just yet but everything he’s saying he’s saying with his whole body. He’s looking all around the balance, up and down and around again, looking for how they’re being held up. Then stepping back and looking around the whole space for an answer to this feeling he has. This feeling of mystery. He was so animated about it that it was amazing to watch. And the first little boy points at me and says

“He did it”

Josh looks at me like no one else ever has, like I have a secret power that he HAS to know about.

“How are you doing that?” He asks

Not “how did you do that” but “how are you doing that” as if I was still actively holding the stones up while I was talking to him from six feet away.

“I balanced them”

“There’s no glue?”

“Nope, just gravity. It’s pulling the stones towards the earth and I lined them up just right so they stick together. Careful, tho, if you touch the top stone they’ll fall down.”

“They can fall down?”

“Oh Yeah, they are just balanced, and they are really heavy so be careful”

He looks at the younger boy and then back at my balance and says, “Can I do it too?”

I said “sure, you can do that, I’ll show you how”

“No way,” He said, “I couldn’t do that”

“No, not that big at first. We’ll start with small ones like his. See, he’s doing it”

“Not like you he isn’t”

“No not exactly, but I think yours will be more like mine” First I’ll tell you how, then I’ll show you.

At the beginning of the summer all the stones in the river, thousands of them, are spread evenly along the bottom of the stream, spread out by the heavy winter rains that swell the river with massive amounts of water. Which makes the river difficult to walk around in. So slowly over the course of the summer, the people hanging out in the water start to stack the stones and use them to sit on, clearing an area where they can stand comfortably in bare feet. Eventually, day by day, large circles of sandy river bottom about 6-8ft in diameter appear like whirlpools surrounded by rings of stones stacked high enough to act as seating areas above the water. These pools are where the people hang out. And the rocky area around them is where I balance stones and Ruby hunts for fish.

Sometimes people approach me while I’m balancing stones and ask me about it. Some of them want to know how to do it. But the ones who feel open enough to ask me to show them are usually kids. And I love when then do. I remember one in boy in particular who asked me to teach him. I never got the boys name but I’ll refer to him as Josh because that’s what he feels like to me now. I have no idea why. Josh was a very energetic, talkative kid about 10yrs old. He approached me while I was balancing stones one day with Ruby stalking fish nearby. His expressiveness impressed me right away. Really bold and unselfconscious. The kind of kid who moves quickly and constantly...a little hyperactive ...almost uncontainable. The kind you whisper a secret to and he immediately says it back to you loud enough for everyone to hear simply because he can’t help it. You could say he had a big personality.

Josh wasn’t the first kid to approach me that day, tho. The first was a little boy about 5yrs old who walked up to me and said “I want to do this!” As if he had just finished contemplating a list of possible things to do and was making his ultimate choice. “THIS!”

“Sure”, I said. “I’ll show you how.” But first I had to warn him about how dangerous it was to actually stand around the large stones that I had balanced. Which it was. Typically I balance large stones in an area where there is plenty of water all around them. Because water is really dense compared to air and if the rock falls towards someone, the density of the water slows the stone down rapidly and softens the blow, making it less likely to hurt them. But on this particular day, instead of 4 or 5 stone rimmed pools there was one massive pool about 15ft in diameter and when I got there no one was hanging out in it yet. It was totally empty. I had never seen that happen before. So i thought it would be really cool to place a large balance right at the twelve o’clock position on the ring of stones, which was right in the center of the river. So I was balancing stones in an area that was surrounded by all this rocky surface above the water. Which meant if you were sitting or standing on the rim of this circle and the stone fell on you it had no water to soften the blow... so it was really dangerous.I was explaining to the boy that this little two foot area of the wall over here, far away from my balance, was his place to stack rocks and I wanted him to stay over here so he was safe...and he got it.

So I found a base stone for him to stack on. I make a distinction between stacking stones, which is kinda like layering pancakes and balancing stones which is more like placing a ballerina on point. In reality they are all balances and there is a large range in between, but little kids mostly stack at first. So I had him find the first stacking stone by himself and he found one about the size of his head. We lifted it out of the water together and we placed it on the base and I brought his attention to the feeling of solidity when the stack was secure enough to let go of. “This is how you do it. Feel that?”

“Yes!”

“Good job! You did it.”

He was all smiles. Then I had him choose the next stone by himself and coached him through finding the solid feeling. After a few tries he got it and we both gave out a collective

“Yay! “

He immediately started a new stack all by himself right next to the first one. Totally in the zone. He was hooked.

Remember, you need three points to balance. As soon as you place one rock on another, that’s one point. If you let it go it can fall down in any direction, whichever direction the center of mass is leaning towards. It has no support from any side so you have to hold it up. That’s one point. Now you have to find a second point but you can’t see where the stones are connected anymore so you have to look for it with something other that’s your eyes. You have to look with your feeling awareness. You have to explore the sensations produced by the two stone touching each other. Which, if you think about it, is also really cool. You have to feel something really intimately that your not even touching. When you find the second point you instantly feel a sense of solidity in two of the four lateral directions. If you let go at this point the stone won’t fall this way or that way. It will only fall in the other two directions. Now you have to feel for a third point that creates a tripod with the first two. When you find it, the feeling of the weight of the stone just disappears from your hands like magic and it stands up all by itself. So to find the third point you have to feel around the subtle contours of something your not even touching for the feeling of absolutely nothing. Which is kinda trippy, right?

It seems like Josh totally understands me and we practice with some small stones, stacking them like the younger boys. Then I challenge him with a stone that would actually balance instead of stack and I leave him to it and visit the other kids to see if they need any help. At this point I’m acutely aware of how awesome I feel about all of this and I’m a little amazed at how naturally it’s evolving. The kids are totally loving it.

When I turn back around Josh is on the verge of his first real balance. His focus is immense. The uncontrollable quality that was present when we met is completely gone now. It’s been replace with an utterly calm, focused absorption. It’s obvious now that he’s not hyperactive after all. He’s passionate. When he’s opens to the whole world the passion is wild and quick, because it’s really smart. But when the passion is collected and focused you can really see its power. Josh is a very complex individual. I can feel for myself, even across the distance, that he has found two of the three points and is straining to capture the third. He keeps sliding past it and resetting, sliding past and resetting. Given the intensity of his character I would expect to see frustration. But there’s none. He is completely relaxed. For the very first time i experience what it must be like to watch me do it. How captivating it is to see someone so present to their own feeling.

So working with gravity and geometry is what’s happening and feeling into the play of contact and force are how you do it. But, that’s actually not what I’m doing with Ruby. I’m doing something that’s a secret. And it’s the secret part that’s the real reason I balance stones. And it’s the secret part that Rubys doing too. The only difference is that I know I’m doing it and she doesn’t. For her its not even a secret. But It’s very hard to describe this part so I have to illustrate it to get you close enough to the experience to know it for yourself. Ready?

I want you to notice right now if your hungry. Now I want you to notice how you found out if you were hungry. How do you find out if you are hungry? Just notice. Now I’m going to ask you a few more questions and I want you to watch what you do in order to get the information to answer my question. It’s easier and more effective with your eyes closed. Ready?

Is the chair your sitting on hard or soft?

Are your feet warm or cold?

Do you have a headache?

Does your low back hurt?

Notice how in each case to answer my question you look inward to the area inside where you would expect the information to be. We call it feeling, but have you ever really looked at what’s happening? Watch. Are you hungry? Don’t you check a certain place and if a certain sensation is there you say yes, if not, you say no?. Is your chair hard or soft? See that? You look somewhere else and notice what’s there. Right? We are doing this all the time. Like I said, we call it feeling. But have you ever wondered how we can look around our inner experience and see sensations? How are we seeing them without eyes? Check it out. Hungry? The chair? Cold feet? Are you experiencing now, that feeling is a kind of seeing? That’s what I mean by feeling awareness. Awareness is like a light that you can shine around your experience and it reflects what is there like a mirror. We typically associate awareness with the visual system, with our eyes. So much so that we don’t even notice that awareness and seeing aren’t the same thing. That what we call seeing is actually the awareness of visual information. Hearing is the awareness of sounds. Feeling is awareness of sensation. In this moment and every moment our entire experience is made out of different kinds of awareness. We don’t usually notice that what is there underneath all of the sensations in our experience is awareness itself.

Now here is where it gets really interesting. I want you to find a few other things with your feeling awareness. Just follow me around. First I want you to find the space above your head. Now the space around your left ear, now the place you call your heart. Now find your belly, the chair, your hands, the object you call the floor, and then back to the space above your head. Notice that you are doing exactly the same thing each time, looking inside for a feeling in a certain place inside your experience and when you find a sensation you are able to know what it is and can describe it as something you feel. Now let me ask you a question. The space you find around your right ear, is it inside of you or outside of you? There’s the sensation of space and the sensation you call ear. Is the ear any more inside than the space? The sensation where you’re sitting that you call chair, is that inside or outside? There is the bottom of the body and the sensation that feels like chair. Is the body any more inside than the chair? How about the object you call the floor? It’s outside the body, yes. But outside of you? Really look. Compare these. Your hands, the chair, the floor. Aren’t you finding them all inside of you in exactly the same way? Aren’t they all in the same feeling space?

Ok you can open your eyes.

So I hope you’re having the experience, even if it’s fleeting, that from the perspective of your own feeling awareness, all objects of feeling are inside.

So what does this have to do with balancing stones? There are no stones. If you settle your consciousness into the mode of knowing we have been exploring deeply enough, the thinking part of your mind can slow down and take a back seat. When that happens, you feel the stone in your hand and you know directly, you see directly, that what you call the stone is a feeling inside of you, not a separate object on the outside of you. You see directly that what you are calling a stone is the feeling of a stone and that feeling is made out of your own awareness. The whole activity of balancing stones, for me, is awareness focussing itself on itself and knowing that that’s what it’s doing. It’s awareness knowing itself directly as the ground or the basic substance of experience. And that is the definition of what spiritual teachers call meditation. Awareness knowing itself directly as the ground or the basic substance of experience. I am aware that I am awareness.

So, I’m not balancing stones. I’m meditating.

And at this point, so is Josh. But he doesn’t know it. He’s positioned his body so that it’s naturally balanced and stable. Something he discovered on his own from necessity. His awareness is so focused on the subtle feelings involved in the balance that everything around him has become a background that no longer hooks or involves his awareness even though he still feels everything that’s there. He is completely absorbed.

This way of meditating can lead to the experience of awareness as a presence. More accurately, You can become aware of a dimension of experience where what you are is an aware presence. Not a physical body, not an emotional heart or a thinking mind...but an aware presence. Which is a very simple but very powerful and very satisfying experience of being. I am aware and feel fully present in a very immediate, direct way. I am so aware that I can see that all of my experience is actually made out of awareness. This awareness is spacious and empty but feels palpable and full, like a fluid medium, with a compact feeling of here-ness that I recognize as what I am. I feel immediately present and real. Right here, right now.

So that’s the secret, what I’m actually doing. But I never tell people that. When people ask me what I’m doing, which they do all the time, I tell them about gravity and the mechanics of physics. When they ask me how I do it, which happens from time to time, I tell them how to feel the force and find the points. When they ask me if I can show them how, which happens far less than you would imagine, we feel the force and find the points together, which is my favorite way. But I never tell them the secret. The only real way to know the secret is to feel it.

So I miss the moment when Josh completes the balance but I catch the immediate aftermath. He’s standing back, facing the balance, frozen with amazement. He’s totally silent. Totally still. Just like the stones. Slowly and silently he moves back in really close, examining the point of balance from all directions. He’s looking so closely his face almost touches the stones. It’s not about excitement anymore. Doing a balance yourself taps you into something much deeper, moves you closer and closer to the secret.

So Josh is now helping the other little boys without me asking him to. He just understands. He’s talking with them, telling them how to be careful about their fingers, picking out stones with them, even helping to hold the stones for the little ones while they search for the points together. And he’s magnetic. In about 30minutes time there are 7 or 8 little boys stacking rocks, I kid you not, each with there own two foot section of wall and their own little challenge in front of them. The wall is starting to fill up with stacks of rocks all around the circle, some of them 4 and 5 rocks high, it was gorgeous.

So I’m thoroughly enjoying this whole display while wandering in search of something special. I’ve established a base stone with a surface that will support a really pointed balance, my favorite kind. The kind that looks impossible. So I’m searching around the water for just the right stone and Josh comes over to see what I’m doing, why I’m looking all over the place. “What are you looking for?” He says

“I’m looking for one that’s impossible!,” I say, with a crazy sounding emphasis on the word impossible!

“Impossible?! “ He asks, mimicking my tone and reigniting his initial wonderment, which has been subdued by meditative absorption ever since he started balancing them for himself. “Yeah, impossible!”

His whole body lights up...he’s riveted

The timing was perfect, because just then I see what I’m looking for. I bend down and pick it up out of the water and I show it to him.

“There!”

And he says

“THATS IMPOSSIBLE!”

And I say “I KNOW!, let’s go balance it.”

So i walk over to my base, position my body and the stone for maximum support and I can hear him whispering to himself

“No way...No way...No way”

And I’m so happy because I know it’s gonna work

I find connection, feeling into awareness for presence and begin. I see right away that it may take a while because the points I need are so close together I have to tease them from the stones like individual threads of hair. It’s requiring all the awareness I have and in that space I feel Josh standing in the water next to me, completely still, his attention riveted to the balance as if he’s feeling for the points with me. The crowd in the river is gone. My dog is gone. The water, the rocks, the other kids, the whole world....gone.. only this... only now

Silence.....................

Then very, very faintly I hear the words “no way”. And I literally can’t tell if its a thought of mine, a memory of hearing josh earlier, a thought josh is having right now or something he just said out loud. And the fact that I can’t tell which one it is doesn’t even faze me. A few more moments of this absorption in presence and the stone balances.

And Josh screams. “THATS I M P O S I B L E!!!!!

And we both start laughing out loud, hysterically dancing and splashing in the water

THAT’S   I M P O O S I I I I I I I I B O O O O O L !!!!!

THAT’S   I M P O O S I I I I I I I I B O O O O O L !!!!!

THAT’S   I M P O O S I I I I I I I I B O O O O O L !!!!!

…it was beautiful....elegant....magnificent

When you balance a stone it totally changes. Suddenly it’s radically different from the stones that are still lying on the ground. It has something now that it didn’t have a second ago and everyone who sees the balance can feel it.

“Whoa, what’s that?”.

“Dude, that’s crazy”

“No way!”

Somehow the stones feel more real, unique, solid and full, yet simple and quiet. More themselves. If you spend time contemplating what it is that is so obviously, but invisibly there, you may discover that what the stones have now is presence. And people feel compelled to look at them, sometimes closely and for long periods of time. Actually, the stones had presence before they balanced, everything does because presence is a dimension of experience, but when they lye in the water like they always do our minds believe they know what they are and pay no attention to them. We don’t really see them as they really are. We just see rocks. But when they balance there all by themselves, suddenly they become much more themselves. More there, like individual beings. And when a balance stands in the middle of the river all by itself, it activates the whole space around it. Its presence fills the whole space. That’s what it feels like. Some people actually look all around when they see it, even behind them, trying to feel the meaning of it.

But why is feeling the presence of balanced stones so captivating? Why do we feel compelled to relate to them...to know them more intimately? ll tell you why I think it is. Because presence doesn’t belong to the stones. The stones are expressing the characteristics of a whole dimension of experience that we don’t usually pay attention to. And this other dimension is a dimension of our own being. So what people feel when they encounter a balance, I believe, is there own presence. In other words. The balance is a mirror. So this river is actually a temple to me, where I meditate on presence, allowing it’s secret to express itself through the stones so they can mirror back to people the amazing feeling of being present as themselves, right here, right now.

That’s the secret of the secret. What I call the Magic. But don’t tell anyone.

In the space of that, however long that was, another boy had joined the group. He was waiting to catch my attention. As I pause to look around, wondering how I am going to stay present enough to keep all of these kids safe from the massive display of rocks that now fills the entire 15ft circle, the boy walks up to the circle and calls out to me. He’s standing outside the ring across from Josh who’s inside helping another boy. He looks around the entire circle of stacked and balanced stones and yells:

“Hey!, what IS this place?”

And Josh, with absolutely no hesitation, opens his arms wide like a circus announcer,

his eyes shining with the very essence of pride and amazement,

and bellows out HIS secret.

THIS.......

IS THE TEMPLE.....

OF THE I M P O O O S S S I I I I B O O O O O O O O O O O L !!!

His gesture slows down time

He stands there for a moment all by himself

His arms outstretched

Facing the temple

Holding himself open to it

He’s so There

All of him

Shining out

Unrestrained

So Present

Bold

Ambitious

Complex

yet Poised

Collected

Powerful

and Still

My new friend Josh

One unique individual

Standing there in the mirror

Pure Magic