In Oct 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) released its most recent report on the state of the climate globally.
Its prognosis was startling in its immediacy. Human societies must act now in
order to stall the most grievous effects of increased warming of our
planet. And urgently so. They gave us a timeline of 10-12 years to get our collective acts together.
But how when we are hapless victims and perpetrators both?And what is there to do in the face of such overwhelming
and urgent news?
I have spent a lot of time
thinking about this sort of thing and personally had no idea where to begin beyond those
measures my family and I had already put in place.
I was beginning to be given to
despair.
I mentioned this despair to a person I admire greatly and
who marches gracefully to the tune of his own heart, his very life work a lovesong to trees and the natural world as a whole. He said to me that for him,
hope is prerequisite to breathing. It is what keeps him moving forward. And he trusts in the goodness of others. And he can't help but bear witness to the beauty all around.
And I understood his words as though they were my own.
Beauty of the natural world exists to sustain us so that we can protect the
earth. A kind of symbiosis beyond the obvious life supports systems the earth
affords us with—it is a symbiosis of the heart.
And so I took a breath and held it all lightly trusting that a shift in my own heart would occur.
And then
last night this awakening happened:
I knew to wait for this moment, trusting that it would
arrive without even being certain how exactly it would present itself but that
I would somehow know when it did.
Tenderhearted awareness--that is how I choose to respond to
the immense suffering of the world. With the tenderness I offer my own children
in their times of suffering and confusion.
This too I offer the world.
I have been lost as of late in the uncertainty and confusion I see
around me. In the midst of dire climate change warnings and painful and confusing
political and social upheaval I have been drifting like an un-moored boat from unknown shore to unknown shore in
search of a sheltered harbour. I have identified too deeply with the confusion and pain of the world,
internalizing it to the point of becoming it.
But tonight on my yoga mat I arrived at the harbour I had
been searching for in vain as though it was outside my bones and breath. My bones and breath. And all I had to do was lay them down prostrate before the world, on my own living room floor in order to find what I had been looking for.
I arrived back home in myself with the same sense of
being received as my own little two year old self did at my grandparent's upon
my announcing I AM HERE...I arrived at a place of humility and acceptance and welcoming and love.
This world
is swirling and twirling about in a vast sea of space with room enough for all
possibilities to unfold. Mine and yours included.
In my own fear and confusion I had not allowed any of the
immensity of that vast sea of possibility to truly permeate my thoughts and actions.
Space---and time---those strange companions that my unusual brain has struggled
with for so long came together within me last evening in a dance of joy so profound that I realized that I do not have to do or be anything or anyone
other than who I already am.
Nor do you.
The simple act of being, of existing and
bearing witness to this world is all that is asked of me and any of us.
Be and bear witness. That simple.
And I came to realize once again that when I fall open-hearted into the arms of that vast expanse of universe I can trust that my very existence
contains the fullness which I so earnestly seek.
I need look no further, it is there--here-- in the moment
of my relinquishing from the stranglehold of self. The very act of trusting in the
larger processes at work and bearing witness to the unfolding is all that is asked of me.
Of any of us.
Of any of us.
Compassion, non judging, a field of love so wide that even
to call it a field is restricting.To call it love restricting too. That field of awareness which the poet Rumi so beautifully spoke of is where I found myself. Conjoined inseparably to the nameless void containing all is what I had become.
When I fall into that place of trust I fall out of all the
things in life which hold me back--fear, judgement, a sense of lack,
resentment, exhaustion and I fall open-heartedly into an awareness so spacious that there is
room for everything to unfold.
Falling into the unknown can be a life changing experience.
There are endless parallels and portals into my yoga mat experience in the natural world if only we have the hearts and minds to see them.
Over the past several days I have had the great pleasure of
watching the hardwoods near our house release their leaves. The way they swirl
off the tree is an ecstasy itself.
The first day I noticed our Maple letting go
there was nary a breath of wind to incite the riot of leaves as they took leave and fell. I watched rather breathless, knowing that this was their moment--that
the urge to fall had grown so huge within them that nothing could hold them
back.
I felt honoured to watch their little copper faces
catch the morning sun as they downturned swirling towards the still green grass.
And I felt a little heartsick too.
Time passing before my very eyes and almost
frantically so.
I tried for a few minutes to choose a leaf and watch it make
its way to the ground but I kept being interrupted by another and then another
leaf. I noticed my heart rate beginning to increase to match the madness of the
swirling and had to pause to catch my own breath.
Each departure so singularly beautiful I felt as though I
just might cry.
All of a sudden these leaves were my beloveds; dear friends
whose life span I had witnessed from bud to leaf and whose season of life was
waning, dry and muted now in late October.
A fullness come to pass.
And it came to me upon my mat this evening after my own dry patch of soulless disconnection to my life that I
must hold it all with tenderhearted awareness.
The suffering in my own household, the pain, the
uncertainty and confusion. The tiredness, the fear, the forgetting to be kind
to self before all else so that I can be kind to others.
And in that moment my heart grew to accommodate the whole
world and all the suffering parts with such a measure of compassion and clarity
and purity that despite my tiredness and the late hour I knew I had
to write this out to share with you.
The paths through the darkness of this era in which we
live are there before us if only we have hearts that are brave and willing
enough to trust in their very existence.
The paths will show their way through our very willingness to act out of
kindness and open-heartedness. They will be revealed to the degree in which we are
willing to look with truly open eyes of awareness and hearts and minds of acceptance.
We are victims and perpetrators both but there is no one person to
blame for where we have found ourselves. Multitudes and eons have brought us to
this moment in the universes' expression.
But we are here and this is the truth before us and so we
must bear witness and act accordingly with a loving responsiveness we would
offer our own beloveds in their time of need.
After all, we are all of the same
flesh and breath and sea and bark and bone and petal and rock and crawl and
dance and slither and swoosh of falling leaf.
There is no separation.
We are
one.
And so I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing to fear
and everything to gain from our willingness to tend to this world with a mother's tenderness
for her suffering child, with the graciousness and humility of the wise, with
the kindness and urgency we would wish for our own healing and wellness.
The task before us is a large one but I know we are up to it-- otherwise we would not have been called to do so.
In love and beauty.
Thanks for reading,
Jill
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