Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Not a word… Not this time around. They say silence is golden, so let there be silence… not only around us but also emanating from deep inside our being, outwards into the world.

I was watching today, laying in a hammock, watching people chatter on the beach, me being disconnected, removed, and alone. I’ve been working to reconnect to my own personal silence, away from it all, back outside the circle for the first time in a long time.

Quite a few people have remarked that the past month has already seemed like an entire year. It almost seems as though we’re cramming more and more into each day as things continue to speed up all around us. It’s not that the world is speeding up in terms of economy, job stress, or errands to run… to me it seems like there’s a sense of urgency in the world that is beginning to grab hold.

Studies have been done of why people aren’t reacting to the threat of Global Warming, and it’s been found that human evolution has hinged on our fight or flight instincts. We’ve evolved to react to immediate threats but not to those further down the line. This is the reason why, although the world as we know it may be slowly ending, we all continue with business as usual.

But I feel something. It seems there’s a sense of urgency that IS actually beginning to get through to some people. It seems there is a increasing sense that every action DOES count and EVERY thought or intention may hold the potential for dramatic affects down the line. It’s time for us all to get REAL and do it NOW since how we behave towards one another and most importantly how we treat ourselves likely holds the key to the future.

So how do we get real? I’m reading a book that talks about how everything is exactly where it needs to be. Every action, reaction, pattern, or belief is all an expression of divine perfection. So given this realization, one would think that we don’t have to do anything… AND THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT!!! But the problem is, we’re all so busy getting in our own way, not to mention the way of everyone around us. Everything IS perfect but our patterns and behaviors (mostly in the form of desire and attachment) can tend to interfere with that perfection. So what do we do?

Let go.

It’s really the only answer. We need to let go of all of our programming and experiential knowledge that’s taught us how the world really is. Because frankly the world IS NOT what we usually tend to think it is. It’s actually so much more. It’s a living breathing flowing magical singularity that doesn’t need us to fix it, set it straight or meddle in any way. What it really needs us to do is have faith, and let go. Not just pretend to let go, but actually let go and fall into the perfection of the flow.

Let go and fall into the perfection of the flow. I like that… I should put it on a t-shirt.

So on this end, things have been difficult, since I'm re-examining the road I've been on, but rather than resist that difficulty I’m making peace with it and accepting it. Letting go of how my ego thought things were supposed to be. Letting go of the program I myself wrote, invested in, and then became attached to.

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” –John Lennon

So in the wake of all this letting go I’ve been struggling a little. The ego keeps resurfacing and grabbing at me. But I think I’ve found a solution. Since my mind and my emotions have been a bit out of whack, I’m working on creating a space of true silence and getting back in the body. The body is easy, since as you push, it grows and becomes stronger. I rented a surfboard and have been sitting in waves trying to regain my balance. And when I haven’t been sitting I’ve been paddling working out my shoulders and strengthening my core. People invite me to have a drink and hang out… but I just read, meditate, and surf. It’s what I need right now before I get back on the road to Guadalajara to my next interview… I’d like to be balance when I meet this man.

The reading is also important for me, since I don’t have all the answers, and never have. At a young age I guess I was lucky to have self-help books all around me… the right book can make all the difference in how we see and approach the world. And why not, why should we as individuals have to recreate epiphanies that are often hard come by… why should we have to lose everything to gain perspective, when others have already gone through those cycles and grown and then written about it. The book I’m reading now, The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is the perfect example of the right book at the right time. Sometimes they come to you by way of other people and sometimes it pays to just get over our egos and go spend some time in the self-help section of bookstores until they jump out at us… or call our name as books often do.

But there’s still always the other option, to trudge along and figure everything out for ourselves… but as far as I’m concerned, why waste a perfectly good lifetime struggling when the answers to many of our questions lay in waiting. They wait in meditation, they wait in friends, and they wait in a few good books.

I guess to sum up, what I’m trying to say is, now is the time to get real, let go, take responsibility and take care of ourselves in the best way we know how, because when the time comes, it’ll serve us well to be ready. It’s not up to US... it’s up to every single one of us… it’s up to me... and it’s up to you.

peace,d