Even though I sense an aliveness within, it is often difficult to access it because there are so many transparent, invisible remnants of my human conditioning that obscure the true nature of the force that lives through this body. I am still ignorant of so many subtle and deeply embedded beliefs, the result of both personal and collective misperception.
The clearing of such misperceptions requires multi-dimensional attunement and reorganization at every level: psychic, emotional, somatic, and transpersonal. Fortunately, the path to clarity is not something I need to produce or manifest. Knowledge of “the way” is already encoded in my body. There is already an inner knowing guidance, my own personal GPS, producing signs, symbols and images in my everyday thoughts, in my dreams, and in my interactions with others showing me the way home.
Yet, I am often unaware that I am receiving direction and support, numb to the sensations of somatic communication. So, I practice and attempt to refine my awareness in creative, non-conventional ways: Silent sitting, yoga, dance, walking, hiking. From experience I do know, there is no greater guide or instrument, than my body. So I try . . . I resist . . . and then I try not to try . . . .
I know I am not broken, nor do I need fixing. I am not a cosmic mistake that must be repented and resolved by some spiritual process. I am not a project to be managed or accomplished. But I can sense that something quite magnificent has been forgotten and displaced. I know it is true when I look into the eyes and the lives of my loved ones, my friends and fellows and clients. When I see the magnificence which they cannot see in themselves, I realize I am looking at them through the eyes of self-recognition.
Experience is showing me that remembering, sustaining this perception, maturing this kind of seeing and knowing is accomplished in an environment of kindness and presence. When patience, simplicity and stillness shape the focus of my attention, the universally encoded capacity for empathy and attunement is activated and my vision is clear.
I understand, and sometimes accept, that this human journey will inevitably require encounters with the numbness, the ignorance, the darkness. Although I bargain frequently to get out of it, or “try” to be aware, there are no quick steps, no fulfillment of fantasies of consistent happiness, no guarantees of getting everything I want. I am growing to accept that it is in the crucible of CoVid, of Trump, of my husband’s annoying habits and my resistance to taking responsibility for my experience of all these things . . . this is where the raw material for the work of love is found, buried inside the opposition, the victim, the rage, the emptiness, the heartbreak, and the disappointment.
These processes of dejection herald the beginning of another level of inner reorientation and reorganization. From the dark places, I glimpse the light and the wholeness of this sacred world. I see that the possibilities and the beauty available to all of us are beyond anything my human ego could muster. What is happening here, in my body, in our bodies, and in this world, is unprecedented. This body and this world are one. There can be nothing left out, nothing excluded. The way home is “yes” to everything.
Comments