Hari Om

Hello friends. If this practice is to invite wholeness, we must begin to question individualism. I think, with any level of serious scrutiny, the concept that we are individuals begins to fall apart. Not a single one of us was born of no one. Not a single one of us was fed by no one. Not one of us could live in this world without anyone. We are inextricably interdependent upon one another. I would go as far as to say that we are never not one. Oneness does not begin with our awareness of oneness. We always were and always are. This can be a statement of comfort, and also a statement that opens extreme discomfort. How would this understanding work with my current belief that I am solely responsible for my spiritual life? My practice? My healing?

We have an easy enough time believing that “others” are responsible for our pain, but tell us when we are in our pain that our pain requires “others” to see it for it to be opened to be healed, and we run for the hills. This is true for all of us sometimes.

How do we begin to take our collective healing seriously then? Do we follow the teaching of Christ and rid ourselves of our belongings, join the choir of voices singing Hosanna, and live in a commune or monastery for the rest of our incarnation? Well, I think there have been many movements to talk that talk, but few of us in the modern world can walk that walk. But, in short, the answer is yes, this is the way. Not necessarily to sleep twenty to a room and live on unseasoned lentils and rice. Mary Oliver tells us:

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”

Thankfully someone has given us permission, and a poet is the perfect voice to do so. Thank you Mary Oliver. Thank you permission to live more fully and more human.

The last part there is the real kicker. It is telling us that sharing our despair is precisely how we will begin to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves”. There is no question to me that this is transcribing the message of the collective inviting us all back in. When I say that, what is mean to say is inviting our awareness into what is already happening. It is in our awareness that we discover the truth of our suffering, and in our awareness that we are able to find our way through that suffering. It is awareness that Ram Dass reminds us that is also our love. It is the same place.

Place is important to us, and for very good reason. It is from place that we are born to move into that place’s consciousness of the whole. We are the eyes of place, and the ears, the mouth, the body of feeling of place. Would it be here without us? Of course. But who then would tell the story of the cherry blossom exploding into a spring day? Who then would tell the story of the “little living creatures uprooted” if not for bell hooks.

Appalachian Elegy 18 bell hooks when trees die all small hearts break little living creatures happy and safe uprooted now in need of finding new places when home cracks and breaks and falls all life becomes danger how to find another place where all is not yet barren

We must find one another to find that place that “all is not yet barren”. That’s my story, and I am sticking to it.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity Here