As products of our society, we are trained to accept the struggle for stability as a natural byproduct of life. We learn from an early age that being stable comes from the vigilant effort of resisting what’s happening externally. This is a teaching that begins at birth. We’re loud, our parents want us to be quiet. We want to nurse, they teach us to want a bottle. We want the bottle, they want us to want solid food. It can be an insidious cycle of learning that permeates throughout our existence. We might watch our parents struggle to buy a house, then pay the mortgage by going to a job disaligned for them personally for forty years so that they can be comfortable in retirement only to find retirement itself disaligned with who they’ve lived their lives becoming.
In many circles we consider this a privilege. And I’m not saying that it isn’t.
But consider…
Those same circles might find themselves looking at other cultures, who live with materially less, but somehow seem to have culturally more. More peace, more joy, more sense of community, more enamored with the sense of their own being and we wonder how can that be?
Foundational systems, by their very design, keep individuals from looking within for their own direction and force acquiescence to external sources. Once those systems take root, they have little choice but to grow. This is the nature of societies and societal systems – what they lack in individuality they make up for, in theory, by shaping the whole. But the spiritualist path, in its deeply quiet way, stands in defiance of these systems. Not in judgement of them, but by demanding an alliance with the self rather than the passing ideals of a population. In opposition to constantly reaching for what society assures us we need, the spiritualist understands that no one can know like we ourselves know. In turn, they extend that same sovereignty to others.
The spiritualist trusts that if we each move in accordance with our own innerstandings, no stone would be un-turned and not only would we move in a kind of harmonic dance, but we would each have our own knowledge that no other has like we have. We could express it as no other can like we can. It’s here, where we stretch into the well of our being and begin to find wisdom, that we find ourselves reflecting upon the pool of service.
It’s inevitable, at some point along the path of our own sovereignty, that we are called to help others. Not necessarily help them to the door of spirituality (because questions questions questions), but toward the peace and harmony within. When we shift our perception away from what we think we do not have, external, and on to how we exist in the world, internal, we see that what we have and what we are is enough. It is within our deepest selves where we find and are ultimately called to share our authentic knowings.
Here, in the heart of self, we begin to understand how purpose is specific to each of us. W,e recognize that life is a perpetual dance with all that is, in which we discover we have precious few moves. Life sweeps us into the whirlwind of sound, smell, movement and all too soon we’re tapped aside to watch as others are swept to the spot we once stood, until we are swept out all together.
Visualize a masquerade ball. How the attendees, all fully individual beings with fully individual stories, move together in dance. Outside of the movement on the dance floor another kind of movement coordinates. Someone crosses the room to ask a someone else to dance; an energetic swing of information spreads through the room as they say yes/no. There is the preparation of food offered on the table at the back of the room. How each piece is taken and eaten even as more comes to the table.
Life is this dance. We are all co-creationists in the ball of our existence. Just as the dancer is not more important than the farmer who grows the food or the chef that presents each gorgeous dish, we are not more important than each other. We each have what we need to execute our part of the ball.
Here we find, we simply are as we are for what we’re called to do. If we embrace what we are, we may find ourselves letting go of the societal struggle to need.
Because what you are is enough.
These separations around us are just us seeing through the lens of perceptions we were taught to identify. With this understanding we can start identifying for our own selves. Examine where you see worth and understand yourself deeper through the lens of your own perceptions. Interrogate yourself gently about what that says about you. Examine the sense of your own worth and sit with it until you see more. Until you have questions whose answers can only come from you. Until you feel the depth of self to ask in a deeper more existential way.
The self is a journey in actualization. It’s not something to do – you already are. It’s a call to embrace ourselves and our knowings and work toward heeding the call to embrace the world. None of this is have to, but rather, the opportunity to be. If we’re busy working for what someone/something else says they think we need, we might miss the call of our own name on the wind.
Ramana Maharshi once said; What will not happen will never happen, whatever effort one may put forth. And what will happen will not fail to happen, however much one may seek to prevent it. This is certain. The part of wisdom therefore is to stay quiet.
So may we stay quiet, and let each other learn to be.
*My heart is with all of us on Mother’s Day. Whatever it means to you, feel loved and seen.
