7.16.2009

What’s your pocket wisdom?

Do you carry important words, quotes or poems around with you? Simple phrases that inspire you to live authentically and compassionately, taking time to breathe and experience as much of life as possible? If so, what are they?

And for the rest of us, are there a few words or phrases that inspire you, remind you to be vibrantly alive, help you feel joyful, content and accepting, invite you to be present and grateful? If you could carry just a few precious words or phrases around in your pocket, always having them there to reference and learn from, what would those be? What words would you carry?

graphic by wordle

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posted by ashley

7.14.2009

At Home in the World


First train home, I've got to get on it
First train home, I've got to get on it
First train home, I've got to get on it
First Train home
(soundtrack for this post)

So what? What matters to you?
What are your strongest feelings? What is your central wish? What stirs your inmost being?

Are you home yet?
Lying awake, enchanted by the natural world, caressed by the powers that envelope you, genuinely relating to the beings and things in your life, aligned with a divine presence that permeates everything? everything? It's there... is it here? Can you see it? Can you touch and taste and smell and hear that divine immanence resonating in the world around you? through you? connecting you... to you... to me... to a tree... to much, much more than we can see? Can you feel it? Is it here?

A lover is trying to seduce us into her wonder and mystery, into the heart of her beauty, home. Day by day, moment by moment, the waters of life are pouring forth into our soul, fed by the little encounters of being that happen without effort... simply because we are alive. We are alive! Can you feel it?

This week three men and the lineages, teachings, and life experiences they embody are helping me travel home. Their messages and essence swirl in my being, chemical reactions activating holy sparks and snapping authentic living into the cells of my waking body.

ahhhhhh
{{{ insert your favorite sound for the divine here }}}
{{{along with one deep breath }}}

You can read my full notes from an evening hearing Brian Swimme, the next night listening to Bill Plotkin, and all the while reading Martin Buber's book, The Way of Man. And below (as well as above) are some of the pieces that are cooking me... igniting me... wanting to be shared!

Brian Swimme's central point was that we humans have forgotten the sacred dimension of nature. We need to renew our capacities to recognize the presence of the divine throughout the natural world. He believes that people have a deep hunger to:
  • Know how we fit in
  • Make sense of the world
  • Live in alignment with the powers that envelope us, with the divine presence that permeates everything

Buber says that here is a fulfillment of existence that a quiet devoted relationship to nearby life can give us. Developing genuine relationships with the beings and things in whose lives we get to be in, a mutual gift, creates true, fulfilled existence.

By hallowing our relationship with the things and beings that we meet on our way and that attract our hearts, we get in touch "with what manifests itself in them as beauty, pleasure, enjoyment. Hasidism teaches that rejoicing in the world, if we hallow it with our whole being, leads to rejoicing in God." (Buber)

Bill Plotkin defines soul as "our place in the world." He sees a true adult as someone who knows how they belong to more than the human world. They understand their place in nature, not just their place in culture.

He talks about how we humans long for our own unique and vibrant participation (membership) in a world that works for all beings. At a soul level we want to be contributing, being of service, and we want to feel at home in the world. We can both contribute and thus feel at home in the world by embodying our deepest passion. Plotkin believes that each individual has gifts, ways of being of service, they were born to embody. Finding our service is both deeply fulfilling and incredibly challenging. Embodying those gifts that are unique to each of us is the biggest contribution to social change that we can make.
And Buber supports this belief,
Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique. ‘It is the duty of every person... to know and consider that he is unique in the world in his particular character and that there has never been anyone like him in the world, for if there had been someone like him, there would have been no need for him to be in the world...

Every man’s foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities...‘Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else.’ But this precious something in a man is revealed to him only if he truly perceives his strongest feeling, his central wish, that in him which stirs his inmost being...

He must find his own self, not the trivial ego of the egotistic individual, but the deeper self of the person living in a relationship to the world.... A man [must see] himself … as a genuine person, whose transformation helps towards the transformation of the world... The task of man, of every man, according to Hasidic teaching, is to affirm for God’s sake the world and himself and by this very means to transform both.
And in order to "belong to the world in the ways nature birthed us," Plotklin acknowledges the challenge for many of feeling at home in the world. Most people have never learned to feel themselves as a natural element in the world and so cannot feel a part of it and at home in it. Not feeling at home in the world creates a core restlessness and anxiety. Humans have the ability to experience the enchantment of the natural world, they can learn how to be at home in the world and wonder about the world. Feeling at home in the world leads to treating the world as our home. And as these men point out, in order to do so, we must recognize the presence of the divine throughout the natural world.

Swimme uses the story of the cosmos to paint visions of and personify some of the wonderment and divine essence of the universe. For instance, he explains that the atoms of our skin and the air that we breathe are from an exploding star.

Carbon and oxygen exist in the core of a star. When a star explodes it releases these and many other elements into the universe. Our own solar system and planet with its minerals and life forms were created out of these supernova explosions. Every single atom of carbon and oxygen (of which humans are made of) is foraged in stars. The atoms of our skin are from an exploding star. In order for these atoms to exist, stars had to blow up. "I am a cosmological event!" (source)

And when I breathe, I breathe the creations of stars. All the life I will live is possible because of the gifts of those stars. These facts/stories help to illustrate for me the immensity of each moment and they invite me into a direct experience of the divine presence that exists in the natural world.

And then Swimme teaches about the sun. Every second our sun is transforming 4 million tons of itself into light. The sun doesn't get back that energy. Once it transforms itself into light, the light disperses in all directions. The sun gives it away. Everything that's happened in the life of this planet is directly dependent upon that light. We're moving here and talking and thinking only because coursing through our bodies is the energy from the sun. All of human activity is powered by the generosity of the sun. Our existence directly depends upon the giveaway of the sun; this is a real sacrificial, ongoing event. (source)
All of these men are extending deep invitations to directly experience the divine presence permeating the world. The Baal-Shem (founder of Hasidism) teaches that no encounter with a being or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden significance. ‘God dwells wherever man lets him in.’

To go, to go, to go
Get, get, get, get
Out, out, out, out
Now, now, now, now
soundtrack by Imogen Heap!

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posted by ashley

7.08.2009

A Life of Many Streams...

Glaciers in the Alaska Range seen from an airplane flying near Denali

A life of many streams...

Pouring through,
igniting different flavors,
waking up my being to the spirit of my soul,
dazzling my senses
with wonders to behold
and desires I want to know!

Which sparks capture my attention? Can I get quiet enough to hear the inner wind whispers? How glorious the sun feels soaking its warmth unto my skin, held as I float, the water carrying me upon its flow, to where, I don't yet know...

A few details of my life:
  • I've just finished 4 amazing years as a school counselor for children in preschool through third grade and with the parents, teachers and staff of that learning community. It was an enriching, inspiring and highly creative time for diving into many of my passions and being a part of a vibrant and rich with potential community. My learning has been immense and much of which I am still to discover. The time to leave arrived somewhat unexpectedly in February, I turned in my notice, and in June walked the path of closure and transition.
  • The day after my last day at the school, I left for a 12 day excursion into Alaska with my family... part of the journey on land and the other part on a cruise ship. The profoundness of that part of the earth enchanted my soul awake to a grandeur that frequently took my breath away and stretched my roots deep into a source. And the heart-strings of love and family connections played their melodies in a variety of harmonious and dissonant tones that sew me deeper into the fabric of my being!
  • Upon return I moved out of the house I was living in, transferred my few remaining belongings into a storage unit, and embarked upon another floating adventure into this mystery of what is next. For three weeks I am blessed with an amazing haven as I house-sit on a gorgeous houseboat on the water of Portage Bay in the heart of the city of Seattle.

And right now... I ponder a life of many streams. In Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve I witnessed as the deep sea waters of the bay made contact with a new stream of "glacial flour."
As gravity pulls glaciers down out of their mountain birthplaces, the ice grinds away at the mountains, ripping off large chunks of rock and abrading smaller chunks down into rock powder, called "glacial flour." When [streams that contain glacial flour] meet the sea the glacial flour colors the seawater, an iridescent green [meets] a muddy brown or sometimes a gray or milky white. source
. . . . .

I feel like my life right now is that expansive iridescent sea with tributaries filling into my bowl. Some of these clear, freshwater streams invisibly blend into the whole. At times I recognize a cool new flow pulsing through my system and at other times this new life circulates through my being unbeknown to me. And then there are these streams bringing a new and different color and composition, carrying artifacts and remnants, invitations and offerings from other times and places, like glacial flour mixing with the salt water.

One question I hold is how do I write about this? How do I both stay in contact with the changing and present currents of my life, including the mystery, and also find ways to reflect and share, give voice, words and images to these experiences unfolding. Obviously this is my first attempt and hopefully there will be more to follow.

Rainbow, mountains and glacier from airplane

P.S. I'm really wanting to write about my experience of "cruising."

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posted by ashley

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