This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you.
Hafez
Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.
Hafez
I am still dealing with the effects of Long Covid and thought to say a few words about what it is like being present these days.
There is so much I could say and write about . . . and plan to if and when I am fully recovered. For now, a couple of things that stand out as I notice what it is like to stay conscious, and actually increase consciousness in the midst of so many obstacles.
A while back, a very dear friend and her adult daughter were at a major park, filled with rides and hundreds of people. My friend began to feel ill – ill enough to know she needed to lie down. She and her daughter found a bench and sat down. My friend put her head in her daughter’s lap and they stayed there until she felt well enough to walk to the car – perhaps an hour or so.
The reason my friend was telling me the story was to tell me about not feeling well. While I registered that, in full; what really got my attention was a deeper discomfort in me. One that let me know, under no circumstances, could I imagine putting my head in someone’s (anyone’s) lap when I felt unwell, inescapably vulnerable or unstable, or at the mercy of “who knows what might happen next”.
Taking that to heart, I let that resistance sit and move in my consciousness and system. Much to my pleasant surprise, I have by now, both metaphorically and literally put my head on friends’ and families’ laps.
My body continues to be spent (14 months of not being well) and I live with daily symptoms of a messed-up gut (thanks to the virus), and yet, all the while my heart is deepening and becoming more alive. Wonder of wonders, how love works. Change, our inner worlds, the responses from the external world are countless and forever new. It was so sweet to notice that, even what appeared to be a deeply embedded pattern, when consciousness shone its light on it, was effortlessly shiftable and what initially looked like a behavior set in concrete, unmovable, loosened and relaxed.
My strong discomfort with such raw vulnerability revealed to me a protection so deep it wasn’t even conscious; for I am not speaking of a superficial distaste for dependency (I am happy to ask for help when I need it) or an insistence on being self-reliant. This shudder of armor ran deep in the marrow of my being. I can well imagine dying without having known this shield; it being so subtle, hidden, and didn’t seem to be in the way of living life fully or loving well. And yet, here it was revealed, coming to awareness. It surprised me, and since it was such an intensely visceral sensation, it was clear to me that it needed attention, TLC, and integration. An unconscious part of me had been left out in the cold and needed to be seen and loved. Given an opening, life will always move in the service of true wholeness and unconditional love.
Unconditional love must include our precious human selves. I am often asked the same question when it comes to looking at our humanity, paying attention to how we are uniquely wired – the question usually has different flavors but it comes down to “why do that”. Why look at or show interest in our humanity, our personality. Especially when you have had a glimpse or more of your true nature and the bounty of living from the infinitely larger and know that is the truest reality.
Being awake (I love the mystics way of seeing awakening as a sacred marriage, a holy union) is being viscerally aware of our connectedness, how everything is interconnected . . . not divided, not apart . . not distanced from anything. Unconditional love means nothing is left out. It is intimate with every bit of life. Unconditional love, by its very name . . . unconditional . . . is accepting and inclusive of ALL. Presence means being present to what is appearing each moment. No matter what is showing up. Doesn’t that, therefore, include our humanity, our personalities. Awareness, the very ground of being, the formless, is expressed through form. Doesn’t it make sense then that we are wired to be curious about this expression, wonder about our inner life, wonder what animates us, why we suffer, be called to know ourselves, in a nonending deepening inquiry. Compassionate and deep self-inquiry has the potential of opening our minds, hearts and fists, allowing unconditional love, clarity and awareness to flow endlessly in and through us. The infusion of such love and clarity opens our eyes and ears to the inner world of “others”, to a deepening kindness for all humanity and an understanding of our universal pain and suffering. It reveals our common source as well as opens us to be attuned and receptive to the essence of the animal kingdom, the make-up of the trees and the rivers and the flowers.
Typically, the question of why would I look at myself, especially the painful parts when our true nature transcends our personalities, often comes from being concerned with inflating self- involvement or egotism or placing undue value on what is real in the relative world but not the Absolute world. (Or not wanting to hurt). And yet, paradoxically, when we genuinely pay attention and explore and notice, non-judgmentally, beyond shame, how we are wired, self-involvement is dissolved. Within an honest and serious inquiry of our inner world – who am I – we open ourselves to the transcendent.
Our inner life is so much more than a personal thing. It can have a fundamental flavor to it. Know thyself so consciousness might expand, so love may deepen – courage might grow – reactivity can be understood and evaporate. We only have to look around to see the chaos of the world we live in; when many have no idea who they are, as humans much less as source.
I don’t think we can truly know ourselves, take good long looks within, care how we treat the people in our lives and all sentient beings, without loving ourselves. Accepting our humanity, opening our hearts and our fists so we allow life to dissolve our unconscious shields over and over and over again. In many ways, many of us have become accustomed to living with our guard up to some degree, to feeling unworthy in one regard or another, to seeing the surface of ourselves as the whole picture. It is in the inner delving, with kindness and compassion towards every part of our humanity, that we re-connect with our completeness; remember ourselves as we truly are – vast, eternal love.
In the 10 years since awakening, it has become crystal clear that awakening is the beginning of a movement. There is no arrival and nothing is really stable. I am reminded of this over and over each time I am challenged by something new showing up. Being ill has reinforced this to the moon and back.
I have a strong and kind medical team working with me. There is no known “cure” for L/C and I have relied a great deal on homeopathy. The remedies have given me some relief, here and there, but the important thing for this essay is what I noticed inside myself. I began to call myself Charlie Brown, after the cartoon character; specifically, when Lucy tells him to kick the football and time and time again, no matter how many times she grabs the football just as he is going to kick it, leaving him falling flat on his back, he still goes after kicking it.
I would find myself feeling better, almost, almost okay and would think, “ahh, I am better now and can begin to recover” only to face a disappointing crash when I felt awful again a day or so later. No matter how many times this happened I seemed to have no control of interfering or stopping this dynamic or internal exchange/conversation – even while watching and noticing how I was setting myself up each and every time. All I could do was to be fully present to it and hold it softly and lightly.
All I could do was be aware of it and live it out.
I mimicked Charlie Brown until I came to the end of my rope. Hanging onto hope was taking up so much energy; which was in short supply and leaving me wrung out. I only realized this in hindsight when I came to see that I had actually lost hope. It had simply disappeared; was not operating anymore. I was living in a state of not knowing (will I recover, is this my new normal, might it get worse) and now was living there without hope – knowing in my cells that I cannot know how this will go and I was up against living in a state I had not known before this moment. I spent a lot of time reflecting on what hope meant to me and watching what it was like to not have it to grab hold of when there was no physical relief from being sick and no ready answers from the medical world. I felt cold and adrift, not alive as this moved through my entire system. This was a big deal; I had even written a book on resiliency! Throughout my earlier years hope had kept me sane; it had been the driving force for meaning and growth and expansion.
And now, in the snap of a finger, it was gone.
And yet, to my delight and astonishment, the shock and the distress did not last very long. As soon as it became clear – named – I had lost hope, I felt better being conscious of what was happening. (The truth shall set you free). The delicious irony is that hope was taking up valuable real estate. Without its energy and desires, there was space and room for greater presence and the sweet current of love to overflow even more. The circumstances have not changed and yet my heart and my being are often lighter.
Whether it be fear/anxiety or hope we are holding onto, we are distancing ourselves from the present moment. Hope was keeping me, in subtle and not so subtle ways, looking to the future and distracting me, again in subtle and not so subtle ways, from the physical sensations in my body. Understandably! I remember reading, many years ago, that most of us humans do not want to fully face reality. It is not for the faint of heart. It requires great devotion to looking for and knowing what is real, what is true, no matter how it feels. Our minds, designed for survival and feeling good, cannot grok this.
I don’t feel better physically, which is quite rough at times, but I see more clearly being grounded in the present moment reality of being sick, not holding out for an imagined wellness. In the here and now of things, in any given moment or day, I find myself feeling the pure sensation of pain in my gut; the feeling of PTSD from the trauma of feeling unsafe in my body resurfacing; feeling deep, deep love wash through me, either “just because”, or as I look at any of my beloveds’ faces; my mind being foggy from the pain in one moment and clearer than ever in another moment; the pure jangled nerves radiating from my nervous system reacting to chronic pain; gazing out my living room window aimlessly or over the months, watching the orchids on my side table bloom and the flowers die, and then bloom again; my heart’s unending gratitude for being conscious – amazingly, the whole universe is within us and what a marvel for anyone of us to know this.
And no matter the circumstances, like a constant gentle warm rain or a perpetual flow of vibrant still energy, peace is steadfast. To be, to be aware and in awe of the radiant source of ALL at the same time seeing, being and being aware of this particular human being, is something I have no words for. I need a poet for that.
I once asked a bird, how is it that you fly in this gravity of darkness? She responded, 'love lifts me.'
Hafez
There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.
To pass from the inner light to the light of the sun, was not the work of the senses. A click sufficed, a slight change in point of view, like turning one’s head a hundredth part of the circle.”
Jacques Lusseyran
And There Was Light