Being Fully Alive In A Troubled World

The Heart Does Not Close

Even now,
with the world trembling
and certainty dissolving—

the heart does not close
unless we ask it to.

It waits.

Not for better conditions,
not for the storm to pass—

but for one honest moment
of turning toward
what is here.

And in that turning,
something ancient remembers:

I was never meant
to survive this world—

I was meant
to love it.

John Roedel

At this particular moment, our world appears to be on fire, leaving many of us unsettled and even, at times, feeling powerless. Let’s use this moment - let’s wake up folks, wake up America. Wake up world. Wake up to loving this world. Let our hearts break, let it crack from the weight of the current destruction and sorrow. None of us are strangers to the anguish of loss and confusion. Let's open our hearts to feel with each other and care for each other - black, white, brown, blue, red, rich, poor, prideful or ignorant. When we look deeply inside, we see, underneath the surface of those appearances, the very same desire for being treated with respect and kindness, for enjoying a meal with a loved one, for making a life that brings us joy, and a sense of rest and ease in every moment.

The capacity of unconditional love is innately within us. We have come to this planet to play a character in the unfolding of absolute reality.  To love, to heal, to wake up. To know in every cell of our being that we are all one Mind, one Heart, one Being. 

In our deliciously unique personalities... and bodies ... we are designed to grow, to move, to shift, to love... we are designed to expand and be fully aligned with our essence, the very same energetic material of absolute reality.  What does it mean to face... or more to the point... to live as absolute reality.  To see illusion – superficial appearances - for what they are... unreal, whiffs of vapor turning our faces, beckoning us to follow it, to be distracted…

There is a place within all of us that is untouched and eternal, a place that is neutral and cannot be harmed. We come into this world as such. Every single being! No matter what we experience, no matter how deep or shallow our wounds and our trespasses, there is a fundamental well-being. We are called to live from here, to know this abiding well-being. Knowing this, to any extent. . . we can then mature from our travails, we can be better off by feeling, really feeling, the slings and arrows of our lives, we can have the courage to face life directly - all life, easy and hard, pleasant and horrific. We are essentially irrepressible!! We are essentially well-being, how amazing is that…

And . . . we live on a planet of duality – where everything expands and contracts – where everything comes and goes - nothing stays the same. It seems one truly universal truth is every single one of us living on this planet knows or will know loss – personal and collective loss.  Right now, we are living through a massive, destructive falling apart.  We are in the midst of a large contracting collapse.  A profound amount of loss.

What does it mean to live within loss, within collapse, within contraction?  It is one thing to stay present (and have access to the still point within that is untouched) when things are rosy; quite another thing to find and be fully alive in heart and soul in the midst of what, to our limited mind’s eye, appears completely destructive and uncertain.  What does it look like to live through profound loss – feeling its full impact and being untouched, not harmed by the destructive forces on earth. 

This collapse is not new; collectively we have collapsed before.  But we are having to face THIS darkness and THIS collapse as it unfolds; how can we face this moment with fresh eyes and expanded consciousness?  Perhaps we can use this moment to individually and collectively grow, mature, love more and maybe even wake up to our deepest reality – our natural beingness that is not divided, not reactive, not closed off from our own shadows and the shadow of the world.

We have come to this planet to heal and to love; to heal all that has been ostracized and held with shame; to love every cell and trait we have inherited and as situations and circumstances energetically put pressure on us, clear our inner tangles so we may truly love all that is; love us back into our innate being.  

What if our response to destruction and heart-less-ness was genuine kindness, compassion and heart-felt love? Not in a passive, weakened state, but love as its profound wisdom – gentle as a dove and wise as a serpent. 

There is a whole lot of hand wringing and certainly much that needs paying attention to "out there". Heart breaking, worrisome, maddening? How to be with all we are feeling as the latest happening shows up? I know when things fall apart, really, really fall apart in a person's life it can be an opening to wake up. To wake up to a deeper knowing, a visceral knowing of our true nature. An embodied realization into the transcendent stillness inside us all. 

Doesn't it stand to reason that the same thing applies for us collectively. So much is falling apart, being torn apart . . . we are in the midst of big unknowns, profound changes and messy growing pains - 
What if we take this as a serious wake up call. What if we have the courage to look deeply inside our hearts . . . look clearly and honestly, find whatever hate, fears, anxieties, and judgments we carry (we all do!) and instead of subtly or overtly projecting them out, we notice them - notice them gently and with benign regard, welcome them into the wholeness of our being. 

To our conditioned minds and hearts, it can feel overwhelming or even impossible to face ourselves with such raw honesty. The deeper truth is the vast spaciousness inside all of us, vast enough and spacious enough to contain and dissolve anything and everything we are feeling. So much room that lovingly holds, without judgment or criticism, every bit of our human frailties and shadows. Giving us the freedom to respond to every situation and every moment with creative and life affirming movement. 

What a gift to the world --- what a gift to ourselves.

but for one honest moment
of turning toward
what is here.

Turning to what is here – terrifying feelings – incomprehensible destruction of how we have known the world.  Close by and far away.  Turning to what is here is the movement of radical acceptance – the doorway into well-being and ease.

 If it is happening it is already here... wishing it different, holding our breath until it changes, denying it in part or full out does not, . . . will not, cannot alter the reality (as much as we wish it could).

Being reality is acceptance - not passivity, not stupidity, not empty protesting or fighting.

It is accepting what is...

If it is happening - if it has happened - a profound acceptance of this fact, this reality is where freedom lies. This is where true unity dances, where our longed-for peace is.

Actually, paradoxically, it is our resistance to what already is that causes us stress, that makes us anxious. NOT the actual circumstance or situation or even the feelings we have. This is often so subtle we can miss it. Often our cue that we are resisting lies in feeling stressed, anxious, tight, heavy, constrained.

We come into the world open, transparent and one with it all. Being and harmonious is our nature - we have learned to be resistant. We have been conditioned to not trust, shut down.

The evidence for that conditioned state is so glaring as we watch and engage in our world.

Let's open our hands wide – lean into the possibility of an epidemic of acceptance of what is... and an explosion of creative and intelligent resolutions…

For the love of all that is, let’s awaken to the still point waiting in our depths.

Love is reckless; not reason.

Reason seeks a profit.
Love comes on strong,
consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,

Love proceeds like a millstone,

hard surfaced and straightforward.

Having died of self-interest,

she risks everything and asks for nothing.

Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;

without cause, give it back again.

                                                                   Masnavi: Teachings of Rumi 1994