In the wildernesses of the world that is rapidly changing, disintegrating and disappearing, it is a great challenge to be present. And yet, the only way to survive this shipwreck is a living in continuous presence. And that presence is not selective, but comprehensive. Presence with your own awareness, not only in events and with living beings around us.
Being present with myself is a demanding work. And yet, these days, it is so easily imposed.
I am present with the chaos around and inside myself.
I am present with the beauty inside and around me.
Present with the loss within and around me…
When a person is fully present in the moment, in the hour and in the situation that also brings the presence of other people, feelings and experiences from the past do not leak into the present. We are entirely in the moment, one hundred percent committed to the experience that is happening. And, the whole day like that... not only in the session, not only in the workshop... every day becomes a living workshop, every minute enlightens us with some mystery of existence. Inner visions and insights become kinesthetically tangible and real. The veil has simply disappeared and the worlds of spirit and matter are finally beginning to become one and the same, even from a human perspective.
Consciousness expands and carries in its arms the dualities that, otherwise, always split us in half and fragment to infinity, dividing each piece into even finer fibers of separation. Separation and unification happen at the same time. These days, dualism is confronting itself and transmuting into a total awareness that we now have the opportunity to witness more than ever.
The vision of holding myself in my arms, on my hands, appeared to me recently during a meditation in motion. Like the Pietà, represented in many works of art, it is at the same time a moment of great loss and grief, and a great encounter with oneself. When instead of losing another (as represented in Michelangelo’s legendary work where Mary holds Jesus’ body) we, in the same way, carry ourselves and realize that the old self is going away, that it is leaving, that it is disappearing and that it will never return, along with the world from which it arose, a great tsunami of sadness and grief overwhelms the awareness that realized that fact. And at the very same moment, one feels pietà - mercy, empathy and compassion towards oneself and the world, towards thousands of souls who are going through the same thing on this planet which we call our home. We separate from the old, whether we like it or not, and at the same time we unite in that transformation that we all inevitably go through. Francis Weller calls the time we are in - the Long Dark, indicating that this period of dying off is probably going to last for several generations.
And at that moment I become aware of the paradox - the immense sadness and the peace that follows. Then relief and a deep breath that expands the chest... which then contracts when exhaling and expands again when inhaling... A new rhythm is established inside me, my personal rhythm - soft, vulnerable, yet my own and enthroned in its authenticity.
So many things are dying in me and around me. I no longer feel like I can't wait for it to pass. It is what it is. It's here and that's how it is. I don’t need to speed it up, to change it, to move myself and others from that extremely uncomfortable place and jump into birthing, into the new, into the light. All that already exists simultaneously. Experiencing waves of awareness and emotions within oneself gives strength and stability in times of uncertainty, change and the unknown. While, on the one hand, everything is scattered, destroyed and disappears, some invisible tissue in the soul reorganizes and embroiders an unknown pattern that brings... I still don't know what.
As Rumi said: Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.
A field where mortality, transience, dualism and separation are no longer relevant. Among other things, our concepts and beliefs are slowly dying out.
Which, after all, isn't such a bad thing.
Pietå, Memorial to David. Bronze, Sculptor Lindsey Daen.
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