Wind gathers
Pulls at my skirts
Rips branches from limbs
Causes moan-songs in structures
harmonizing their weight
A stillness inside me
It won’t quit me
Noiseless, rock-solid, unmoving
Contrast
So much movement
Encircling such wild and stubborn quiet
I’m not like you
When you want to spin and run and go, go, go
Stones fall through my waters
Land soft and silent at the bottom
I’m not like you
I am you
Everything is its opposite
Like Neruda said
A breath so close that when you fall asleep
My eyes close
This nearness, raw intimacy
So alive that we try to take cover
We try to point at shapes and tones
As if contrast could
sever the bond.
When you cry, my eyes fill
When you laugh my lips cheshire again
I’m not like you
You’re not like me
We are not separate.
One animal, same breath
Inhale.
Exhale.
One life
seeking
To live
The human condition comes with a yen to end the trance of seperation and have a lived experience of belonging.
As we reach for this experience, in our relationships, communities and within ourselves, our tendencies train our vision, our bodies and our breath.
We habitually seek belonging by finding others like us. Often sameness is so wired with belonging that we mistakenly believe it is a requirement. In times when pressures and stress rise, the yearning for belonging can become so great that we deny there is any difference at all. We don’t share what’s inside of us, for fear of the distance it might create. In the same way, we deny how others’ experience, view or value might differ from our own in an attempt to keep the bond intact. We feel that to be different might burn the bridge between us.
This becomes problematic though doesn’t it?
Rather than anxious scanning and assessing for how I might be different or same with the life within me and around me, I can soften my gaze, let my peripheral vision come online and see something new. I can see that belonging is the result of sameness. Belonging is the experience of something shared.
We share this earth.
We share this breath.
We share a desire to give and receive love.
And whether we can see it or not, we share a wish for peace and for wholeness.
Now is a time that is asking us to stretch, not only to celebrate our differences, or even to look for how we are the same. But to see what is shared.
When we are in conflict, we are sharing something. And when we commit to conflict as a path of deepening intimacy, it becomes something that loses its venom.
We share this moment, now.
We belong, now.
………………
As part of my practice, these missives include shamanic field guides for you to partner with. What I know is, this is no longer a time to sit passively, to take things in at an intellectual level and shroud ourselves in concepts. This is a time for embodying our full aliveness, for digesting what we take in rather than letting it sit.
These guidebooks are created from a knowing that you have untapped treasures dwelling within you that are ready to be liberated now. I create from a desire to empower you, nourish you, to bring pause to your mind, fire to your heart and intention to your path.
What we practice is what we have.
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