"Where is the Life we have lost in living?”
T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock.
Over the years I’ve lost a lot of Life in the living. I’ve lost it in shadows of worry. I’ve lost it in work that absorbed me and stripped my soul bare with its demands. I’ve lost it when I didn’t sleep enough and when I slept too much. Lost it in religion that wounds the spirits of its practitioners. In over-thinking. In allowing conventions and institutions and sometimes people to rule my spirit. I’ve even lost it in all the good things and beautiful events of my life by not being truly present.
My wedding day was different. I chose to be fully in each moment. Many friends had said their wedding day was such a blur they couldn’t remember it. So, I determined to remember wholly. Without knowing the word for it, I practiced Consciousness. I remember waking up to a cool pale sun diffused by light cloud cover. I recall the happy conversation (though not the exact words) while driving my parents to the church an hour from the house. I remember getting ready with Mama and my girlfriends in the church basement that substituted for a bride’s room. Curling my hair. Pre-wedding photos with my family. Taking Daddy’s arm to walk down the aisle and catching my breath with a pure thought ~ “I’m really doing this!” The smile in Bob’s eyes as he caught mine.
There is a parallel memory of a magic moment from just two weeks before Bob unexpectedly died. We were at a choir rehearsal practicing a processional. He, in the bass section, was still in the choir loft. I was in the sanctuary standing with the other altos. Our eyes caught with a spark and my 70-year-old friend next to me punched me in the ribs. “How many years have you been married?” she querried. “It will be thirty-two in three weeks,” I smiled back to her. “What do you do to keep such light in his eyes?” she asked in response. She spoke at Bob’s funeral and recalled she felt as though she had intruded on a private moment between lovers. Well, she did. He and I exchanged such glances all the time; I took them for granted. It was only her awareness of it that enabled me to be present that moment and to remember.
This consciousness, this mindfulness is possible to practice every day. Finding My Real is a partial chronicle of my journey to welcome and appreciate every moment - delicate to audacious - of this short, wonderful existence as me on Mother Earth. It is the pilgrimage inward to discover the Divinity existing in my Soul from always to always. It is a compendium of wonder-filled observations of Nature all around me, a venture to gather every particle and embrace Truths as I find them.
Finding – because Life is about continually seeking and discovering. Real – because I want to discern the authentic, the genuine, the true. I aim to discover the deepest part of my Soul, the Beingness of my heart, and in my own finding I wish to encourage others to find their own peace in the Divinity of Now.
Even today my intentional efforts to be present get caught up in…oh…I don’t even always know what. Busy-ness. Conventional thinking. Emotions. A few years ago, I nearly missed another opportunity to find sincere love. Fortunately for me, the Universe intervened and this wonderful man and I are together now. In part, I was afraid of taking the risk because the realness of love is always an exposed vulnerability. Then “one day, for no apparent reason, you simply know that you cannot continue to play by the rules you have accepted for years.” *
I ceased being afraid to explore my own apostacy and Finding My Real was born.
Apostacy. Apostate. The word comes from the Middle English derived from Latin and Greek with" runaway slave" as one possible meaning. Viewed from one side, an apostate is bad. From the side of the apostate it’s quite the opposite ~ it’s the pure flight of freedom.
Captivity/Freedom. Fear/Love. Good/Bad. Black/White. Dark/Light. Yin/Yang. These are positions of opposites, of duality. Opposites are simply the extremes of a continuum with nuances of gray in between. Without dark could we understand light? The deep duality that begins with Fear polarizes us and separates us from the Love that is open and available at the other end.
What if we could see the whole as God sees it? Would there be any separation at all? What if we could truly sing from our hearts with Ray Stevens, “everything is beautiful, in its own way, under God’s heaven the world’s gonna find a way.” And believe it. And live it. “There is none so blind as he who will not see.” She, too. (And for those of my generation, I bet you’ll be humming this for a while.)
Our fear-based, polarizing culture often makes me wish I could move far, far away. But running away would be a kind of blindness. Leaving would not give me the opportunity to learn the lessons of Earth’s duality and beauty. Additionally – and unfortunately – interstellar travel is not yet available to my human form!
So, here I willingly stay. Learning to navigate the Fear/Love challenge. Learning to see things not as Good or Bad, but as a part of the spiritual continuum of Life: Real, True, Sacred, Found.
*Roger Housden in "Ten Poems to Change Your Life"
Kommentare