The Candle Merging with the Sun

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:

so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those

who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,

reconstitute the world.

- Adrienne Rich

I have never lived through a war, although I have known violence anbd chaos.  I have never starved but have known the hunger of longing.  I have never been forced out of my home or country but I know the loneliness of not belonging.  I have been arrested (I ran away from home at the age of 14) and know what it is like to be unsafe. I have some understanding of my fellow travelers current suffering.  

The world is so very loud right now . . . and dark.  I wonder what is it like for you to be living through these times of divisiveness and uncertainty?

Where do you look for our north star to navigate this moment of tumultuous waters and profound destabilization of what is happening and not happening on this fragile, beautiful planet we all share.

The truth is we are all sharing an evolutionary journey.  Everything that comes into being on this planet is alive. Everything that lives on this planet will decay and die.  It is a fact of our life that we all live through destruction and expansion.  Over and over again. Is it any wonder that everyone of us has known . . . knows sorrow.  We know loss.  Whether it is conscious or not – our hearts are aware of how very tentative everything is in our personal and collective world.  

 And now – we are living through a massive, destructive falling apart.  We are in the midst of a collapse.

We have all lived through dark times and we have all suffered.  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 come into this world with a body . . . a unique body . . . and a distinctive mind that is ripe for programming.  Not a one of us has not been conditioned by our family, by our community, by our ethnicity, by the color of our skin, by the country we were born into, by our society and by generational experiences and orientations. 

We are taught there is a you and a them.  We learn and experience fear early on and are often taught what and who is safe and what or who to avoid . . . dislike . . . feel threatened by . . . hate and oppose. 

Our world mirrors that – we do experience unsafety and conflict amongst each other. Our experiences select, recalls bits and pieces and recounts our inner lives, often imprisoning us in our narrow view points.  

We are watching this lived out on a global level and many of us are living in fear, powerlessness, despair and helplessness as we witness violence and cruelty.

And yet, we are called to look much deeper within ourselves.  Feel into the vastness and silence that is alive and omnipresent in our inmost being.   Notice the beauty and the neutrality of all of Nature.  Do not miss this invitation to go beyond the polarity coming from our limited minds and from the projections seen and felt around the world.

We have come to this planet to play a role in the unfolding of absolute reality.  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 aligned with our essence, the very same energetic material of absolute reality.  We have come to this planet to be, 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.

The deeper our attention and maturity dives into our inner lives, the more compassion and true understanding we will have for ourselves and for our fellow beings.  It is enormously powerful to have compassion for someone you do not agree with or you see doing harm to themselves and/or others, AND being very, very clear that their behavior needs to stop. The more clarity we will have, coming from kindness and not reactivity . . . spacious and silent enough to accept what is happening in our lives and our world at the very same time making so much room for strong, firm, unmistaken truth telling, the more our voices and our behavior will come from our essence and not our limited conditioned perceptions.

Our bodies are great truth tellers.  Walk down a street or path where everyone is being respectful to each other, those they are with and those simply walking by. Watch people enjoying themselves, at ease.  If you can “read” energy, notice the lack of judgment.  Now, notice your body.  Is it relaxed or contracted in this scenario.

Walk into a room or public space where there is tension – perhaps it is not a safe place, meaning some conflict or violence is threatening to roar.  The people here are either living with some inner demons at the moment or putting each other down – being hostile.  Or even, more mildly, there is a slight tension in the room.  Notice your body.   Is it relaxed or contracted in this scenario.

The energetic intelligence that is the source of movement on our planet, (ALL movement) blows life into every one of our bodies/forms so that this unique being can play its distinctive role.  We are spirit living in bodily form, energy holding cells, blood and bone.  Our bodies would have looked different worn by any other being. Our individuality and our universality are our contribution to the indivisible evolutionary journey. It behooves us to take good care of our bodies and our nervous systems since they are magnificent truth tellers and are our unique radar bull horns.  It behooves us to listen closely.

I have had the privilege of working intimately with hundreds and hundreds of people over a course of decades and it never ceases to amaze and humble me to see authenticity and light reveal itself as each and every unique being cleaned house and could see and touch and let go of their limited, conditioned beliefs and patterns.  To be in the presence of a sincere and dedicated personality, while remaining unique, becoming more coherent and more innately connected, to themselves, to each other, to nature, to all of Life.

Bearing witness to folks bravely revealing when they feel fragmented; when their nervous system is fried, where they are scattered and reactive instead of coherent.

Such transparency allows access to our essential spirit.

We are designed to be the grounded presence in every room we inhabit.

What a marvel to recognize this . . . to know, in our heart of hearts, that we have the capacity and the blueprint to meet every interaction we have with ourselves and with “another” being, with kindness.  We are designed to meet these dark, uncertain times with openness and clarity – even those times we are scared, feel closed down.  Being compassionate, even to unconscious parts of ourselves, to parts we don’t want to know; to those we profoundly disagree with, with those we see being harmful. . . is fierce and powerful. Compassion has room for any challenges as well as the clarity to discern and firmly and decisively call out harm, put a stop to cruelty . . . compassion and love are not weak, nor passive.  How long do we need to live with an eye for an eye – meeting hatred with hatred – to fully recognize only Love can do the trick.

To ready ourselves for such love and truth we are called to pay close attention to our thoughts, our bodies, our nervous system, to our reactivity.  There are many, many ways of calming our nervous systems and raising our vibrations (we radiate our thoughts and our feelings through energetic vibrations – even when we are unaware, we are intuitively picking up each other’s vibes.)  

Take your well being seriously – Life is counting on it.  You can center and calm yourself through body work, through mediation, through deep shadow work, through questioning your thoughts and feeling and choosing to take a moment before acting.  You might be called to prayer, to sending goodwill (when the goodwill is real and not pretend, even, maybe especially, to those causing the most harm), finding ways to be genuinely helpful and wise.  Perhaps one of the most salient things any of us can do is to not let our nervous systems or thoughts be captured by the drama.  Find the balance of staying informed enough and walking away when there is no earthly or loving reason to get caught up in the theatre.

For our candle to merge with the sun, we are called to unified consciousness.  Reality as it is showing up moment to moment.  We have been living in fragmented reactions that broke the system.  In ourselves and collectively.  We have lived in deep, deep sorrow forgetting our wholeness and our connection to all living beings.

We broke it and we can repair it.  In physics coherent systems are more stable than chaotic systems.  We can grow larger, we can be calm, no matter what, we can choose emotional stability instead of reactivity or dominance or force or a push to do more, fix more . . . my goodness, haven’t we tried all that over and over and over again.  Like the definition of insanity, trying the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.  Instead, it has left us in a state of profound disharmony.

We can learn to live at higher vibrations.  We can live coherently (which is stronger than force). We can live in harmony.  I don’t know where I read this, but is speaks poetically to what I see is being called for.

We can be a living choir of consciousness.

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,

Death's great black wing scrapes the air,

Misery gnaws to the bone.

Why then do we not despair?

By day, from the surrounding woods,

cherries blow summer into town;

at night the deep transparent skies

glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close

to the ruined, dirty houses --

something not known to anyone at all,

but wild in our breast for centuries.

Anna Akhmatova

And because I couldn’t resist ending with this!

My Lord has told me a joke and seeing Her laugh has done more for me than any scripture I will ever read.

Meister Eckhart