In times where so much comes to an end, nothing feels more urgent to me than to forgo frantic action and to let myself fall into the mystery of creation life is. Again and again, softening in the relentless pressure of linear time and feeling the power of just this breath. This breath carries all times in it, including the future we have so many fearful and hopeful images of. I practice not following these images but feeling the mystery of what we call “Earth” under my feet, merging with Her warm heartbeat and with Her moist womb and letting my human womb sink into its home. In this one breath I feel that I’m at one with the energy of creation, that I AM the energy of creation. The question is now not any more, will the human species, will my children and their children, stay on this planet or not, will we survive? This question feels as distraction from BEING the Earth, from loving Her and letting all of my passion flow into how She moves me with this breath.
Mystery or machine?
She shows me how to let my energy move in interconnection with other life forms. How to allow life to take me totally, beyond my resistance. The biggest resistance I can trace is in doing too much, going too fast, with the idea it’s still not enough and I should be doing more. In this resistance, stuck by mental images, I am in the prison of linear time, and there I can never be carried by the power of cyclic life but drag my small life ahead in a lonely and exhausting way. This plays even when I do simple things as hanging up laundry or cooking a meal: do I take part in the mystery or am I in the machine realm of repetition? When I am in the automatic realm, I am tricked out. The energy of my heart does not flow through my arms but spills right next to them, letting every chore be strenuous and without joy and leaving me exhausted and cold, never warmed and fulfilled by my day.
Living through the eyes of Mystery
I feel how any haste takes me out of the depth of oneness with Her, how I am literally spilling the mysterious chance to change my ways beyond imagination, beyond recognition. When I slow down, the possibility emerges to reclaim walking and talking on this Earth through the eyes of mystery. Reclaiming asks for a fierceness in standing for what is truly natural and life-giving. It takes readiness to use the sharp sword of discernment so that the unfathomable softness of being can take me home. Saying “no” to answering my e-mails or having the ironing done before I cook for my family, allowing space and letting Her heartbeat flow into the meal, letting Her stillness resound in the hug I give to my child coming home from school.
Aligning with the snowdrops
The mystery unfolds in innumerable small, often even invisible movements. Each of these small movements carries immense power, it cannot be underestimated. Just look at the snowdrops coming up in these weeks. They are tiny, delicate and live only a short life, and yet they make an overwhelming change in the winter garden, bringing the fresh energy of spring. Called by the light, sung into growth by the birds, pushing through the hard, cold soil, rising and then letting their bud bow to the earth, deeply listening in the unfolding of the flower. I like to place a few snowdrops in vases in my kitchen and on my desk and let them take me into their tender presence. As soon as my impulses and actions become too big and too fast, I lose touch with the gentle snowdrop energy, like a candle being blown out by the wind. Then I relapse into repetitive patterns, which check in momentarily with mental programs of fear and lack. The spring energy is gone.
Ending the realm of linear time
I feel that the tender force of everyday actions coming from the eyes of mystery, being the poetry of life, carries the soft, yet explosive energy to end Goliath’s realm of linear time, of survival pressure, of loneliness and lack of belonging, of dwelling in the marketplace of life, of keeping white western privileges though we know they are destroying the world. Leaving the system for what it is and moving with the breath, my body in harmony with my action, is walking on a razor’s edge. I am badly injured when I am not in presence of the next step unfolding. I am gobbled up by Goliath. But there is always a following breath to heal me, to bring me back home. And on the razor’s edge I know without doubt: is my movement weaving the tissue of life, letting it heal, or am cutting this tissue with my movements and my words? The long, gray, cold winter has bestowed me with the quality of sharp discernment of what is really life-giving, of the snowdrop energy that brings freshness, that brings rebirth.