JACK
Jack: The Sacred Art of Being Here
Some dogs come into your life.
Others walk beside you through it.
Jack was the latter.
He arrived before there was language for what I was building, before SAGmonkey® had a shape or a name that meant anything to anyone else. Back then it was just instinct, grit, and a quiet yes to something I couldn’t yet explain. Jack didn’t need an explanation. He never asked where we were headed or how it would turn out. He just climbed in, settled into the seat beside me, and let the road unfold.
Wherever we were going, Jack was already there.
He rode shotgun on long drives, waited patiently at trailheads, wandered unfamiliar towns, and slept on floors that never quite felt like home, that we were in them together. He showed up for every version of me along the way: the confident one, the lost one, the striving one, the one trying to outrun himself. Jack didn’t judge the shifts. He didn’t track progress. He didn’t keep score.
He didn’t just witness the journey.
He was the journey.
Jack did epic shit. Not the kind that announces itself. The quiet kind. The kind that leaves no résumé, no proof, no story you tell at dinner parties. The kind that looks like loyalty without expectation and devotion without demand. The kind that simply stays.
Dogs live in a way most of us spend our lives trying to remember.
They don’t live in the past.
They don’t project into the future.
They don’t narrate the moment while it’s happening.
And they certainly do not have a story! Jack taught me about presence long before I had words like mindfulness, awareness, or nonduality. He taught it by example, by resting fully where he was, by meeting each moment without resistance, by responding instead of rehearsing. When he was hungry, he ate. When he was tired, he slept. When he loved, he loved completely. Unconditionally.
No story. No strategy. No separation.
There was no “Jack over here” and “life over there.” There was just what was happening, and his wholehearted participation in it. Watching him was a kind of meditation, though I didn’t know it at the time. He was a living reminder that the moment doesn’t require improvement. It only asks to be met.
Presence isn’t something dogs practice.
It’s what they are.
And in that way, Jack was a teacher. Not because he tried to be, but because truth doesn’t try. It simply reveals itself when we’re quiet enough to notice. He showed me that devotion doesn’t come from obligation, but from intimacy with what is. That love doesn’t need a future to justify itself. That being here, fully, honestly, is already enough.
In the years I couldn’t be there, my heart never left him. Distance didn’t diminish what was real. Time didn’t erase what was known. You were never forgotten, Jack. Not for a single moment. I’m sorry I couldn’t walk beside you at the end. That grief is real, and I don’t bypass it with spiritual language or pretty ideas.
Grief is the echo of love.
It hurts because it mattered.
And still, another truth stands quietly alongside it: love doesn’t disappear when bodies separate. It doesn’t depend on proximity or permission. It doesn’t end because a chapter closes. Love remains because it was never bound to time in the first place.
Dogs seem to know this.
They don’t cling, yet they never leave.
They don’t grasp, yet they give everything.
They don’t ask for eternity, they offer presence.
Jack continues to teach me that what we are looking for is not ahead of us. It’s not waiting in some improved version of ourselves or some imagined future moment where everything finally makes sense. It’s here. It’s always been here. Quiet. Ordinary. Whole.
The sacred doesn’t announce itself.
It breathes.
It walks beside you.
It waits patiently at trailheads.
You were always mine.
And I was always yours.