Oneness

L'orge by Jipol

Mae gen i afal, what we would translate into English as “I have an apple,” literally means “There is an apple with me” in Welsh. In Celtic languages there is little concept of ownership, of “having” things. Things are not possessed by you; they are “with” you.

Imagine the shift in consciousness that would occur if our language suddenly didn’t support the possessive case. ~from Fruitflesh by Gayle Brandeis

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I think this is one of the most profound shifts the human race could make – to shift from the idea of ownership to ‘being with’. What would happen to us, where we believe we own everything from goods, to natural resources, to the planet, to each other, if we were to realize we don’t own a thing…not even the days we have ahead?

It’s not like it’s a new idea – many cultures, not just the Celtic culture, have seen, and continue to see, things this way.

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As I pondered this, I thought of how things would change if we humans realized we don’t own each other, if we realized this about our partners, our children, our lovers, our family, and not just our human family, but also other living beings, the earth, all of life.

I don’t own a thing. Everything that surrounds me is ‘with’ me.

When I see it this way, I no longer feel things hierarchically, but rather relationally.

When I see it this way, I feel connection, relationship, mutuality, and kinship.

When I see it this way, I feel reverence for the dignity, autonomy, and sovereignty of the ‘other’ I am with.

When I see it this way, I see you next to me, not across from me. I see you with me, side by side, walking together.

When I see it this way, especially in relation to the Earth, I feel a sense of awe. When I see it this way, I come to know the grandeur of the Earth and the fact that She gives me life. Without her, I would not exist.

Without each other, we would not exist.

Without you, I would not exist.

What a slippery slope the possessive case has been, and continues to be. Language is powerful. How we use it creates how we see the world, each other and ourselves.

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And, you?

How might this shift cause you to see things differently?

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Image courtesy of Jipol by Creative Commons 2.0 license

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.
~Marianne Williamson

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What if the Internet, itself, was spiritual in nature? This is a question I wondered about back in 2001, when I designed and wrote a thesis on Spirituality and the Internet. My ideas at the time were roughly hewn. I had just finished three years doing a lot of coursework in design, computer science, and digital art. The project was to create a spiritual space on the Internet. But, the deeper message, was that the Internet itself was a spiritual space, simply in its form – following on the form follows function idea.

On this same idea, just today, two very interesting and timely articles fell into my lap, by way of – you guessed it – the Internet.

The first, Saudi women revel in online lives, written by Caryle Murphy, gives us a small glimpse into how the internet is opening up the world to women in Saudi Arabia.

In a country where about one-third of the population regularly goes online, the internet gives women “a place to vent out our frustrations and our dreams,” said Reem Asaad, 37, a professor of banking and finance in the Saudi port city of Jeddah who blogs at reemasaad.blogspot.com.

It also has allowed women who normally are “physically invisible” to participate more actively in Saudi society, Asaad added.

“From the authorities’ viewpoint,” she explained, “so long as women are behind a curtain, or a screen, and so long as they are not before a camera or walking down the street, then everything is fine. Women are free to do anything they want as as long as they aren’t seen, heard or spotted doing it by men.”

When I read the words “physically invisible”, my heart felt a sharp pain of sadness and despair. I can’t begin to imagine how it feels to be physically invisible. Feeling into what it might be like to be hidden in such a way stimulated a deep sense of compassion for all women who are experiencing this. Obviously, I don’t know what this is like. And, of course, I am projecting my own fears and feelings onto the story here. But, from one woman to another, from one soul to another, I feel for these women.

To read on and see how the internet is bringing them into connection and out of such separation brought a sense of possibility for what might be, how the world could shift simply through the Internet. To shift this way, we have to see that the Internet is the means for connection, something I believe we are beginning to understand more deeply each day.

After sitting with these thoughts, the second article fell into my lap (or I should say, landed in my inbox). The Internet as a Living Symbol of Global Oneness, written by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Ph.D., a Sufi teacher and author, is an extremely important article on Huffington Post. It could change the nature of how we experience, and use, the Internet.

“I believe that the Internet is a gift we have been given. It provides an image of how the energy of life can flow freely in a way that defies the barriers of nationality and geography. Yet sadly because we are so immersed in the surface activity of this technology, in its tools of commerce and communication, we do not realize its deeper, symbolic dimension. A symbol is a connection to the sacred ground of our being which alone gives real meaning to our daily life. The Internet, as a living symbol of global oneness, offers us a direct connection to an awareness of divine oneness (italics mine). But because we have lost touch with the symbolic dimension of life, we do not fully recognize this potential of the Internet: as a dynamic expression of a new consciousness of oneness that has within it access to energies and means that can unify our divisive world (italics mine). If we were awaken to its real potential, we would be truly in awe–and we would laugh, with wonder, at life’s capacity to recreate itself while we are not even looking.

What does it mean to shift to seeing the internet as a symbol of global divine oneness? What does this mean for our everyday use of the Internet?

I can see, now, that all my attention back in 2001 on this notion of connection through the Internet was coming from intellectual and psychological perspectives. The internet as a dynamic symbol? A brand new door of understanding and knowing.

The Internet as this symbol feels deeper and richer. It feels alive. It is alive. It is dynamic. It has energies and means within it to bring about the awareness of oneness that already exists. We aren’t in control here. Yet, we can, if conscious, align with this potential inherent in the “gift we have been given”.

We can see ourselves in connection with others out there, like these women in Saudi Arabia who are now experiencing a new kind of visibility. We can know we are moving within this dynamic consciousness of oneness as we bring our own gifts to the interplay of connection and expression. We don’t have to figure out how to use this. We can’t figure it out. It knows. It is alive. We can trust in its aliveness. We can move with it.

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One thing I do know: the importance of connecting women, in order to awaken the vital energies of healing and nourishment that lie dormant in the cells of our bodies – to awaken the primal sacred feminine nature of women’s creativity. We won’t fully bring to life this force within that is pushing to awaken, if we stay hidden, invisible and alone in isolation. We will awaken in community. We have been given the gift. How will we use it?

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And, you?

How have you already experienced this divine oneness? How does knowing this change your perspective on the Internet? How might you being to move with it?

What if simply knowing the Internet as a living, dynamic manifestation of oneness were the idea that needs to reach critical mass that Marianne Williamson speaks of? How might things shift?

The New

God is always the new. ~Osho

It’s a new year. There’ always so much excitement about the new year. What will it bring? What will transpire this year?

As we approached 2010, just like in past years, I heard and read many comments about possibilities and opportunities, intentions and resolutions, hopes and desires.

I’m struck by how excited we humans get about the possibilities we feel for the new year. It also happens when school starts each year. It happens when we move into a new home, begin a new marriage, start a new job.

It is in the beginnings of things that we connect with our longing and natural comfort with newness.

As I awoke this morning, this first day of 2010, with the fresh scent of new. I came across this post by Nicola Warwick at The Whole Self. Nicola’s post was prompted by a quote I had written on my post ‘Craving Words, My Only Job Is To Serve’. As I read it again, under her blog banner, The Whole Self, a felt a spark of insight.

The quote by Martha Graham, speaks to the blessed unrest, the divine dissatisfaction within us as creative beings. As I mentioned in my comment to Nicola, I used to think this unrest signaled something wrong with me, this constant desire for something new. Usually, alongside the unrest was the unwanted handmaiden to the new unknown, fear. I feared my desire for newness meant I wasn’t disciplined enough, wasn’t like other people who seemed so much more settled into the routine of life.

I have come to discover that this blessed unrest is longing and the yearning to remember our nature, to live our true nature as creative beings. It is my natural comfort with the new. I feel energized and vibrantly alive when I dive into something new.

In his book on Courage, Osho talks at length about the new. He writes,

“That is the whole meaning of prayer or meditation – you open up, you say yes, you say, ‘Come in.’ You say, ‘I have been waiting and waiting and I am thankful that you have come.’ Always receive the new with great joy. Even if sometimes the new leads you into inconvenience, still it is worth it…The new will bring difficulties. That’s why you choose the old – it does not bring any difficulties. It is a consolation, it is a shelter.

But, here is the kicker, the piece that pulls at my longing, my blessed unrest. I believe this is why we somewhere deep inside, love beginnings:

“And only the new, accepted deeply and totally, can transform you. You cannot bring the new in your life; the new comes.”

Somewhere within, we long for this transformation. We long to open to the ‘throbbing, streaming life’ (Osho) that awaits us.

So what happens. When does the new year turn into the not-so-knew year? When do we settle into the old complacency of this year as it unfolds? How does what seems so full of opportunities turn into the same-old, same-old where we close ourselves off to this ‘throbbing, streaming life’?

Time. The sense of time takes us out of the new. In the new, there is no time. There is just life. ‘We can only use the present…It is always fresh, virgin. And it has ingress in you.’ (Osho) The present comes into you, if you are open, if you are receptive, if you are willing to meet it and embrace it.

Fear. Fear of what the new will bring, that it will be risky, that it will be inconvenient and difficult. Yet, when was transformation ever easy?

Habit. Our habits were created to keep us from this newness, this risk of transformation, for the habits are solely the not-so-fertile field of the ego. (Habits are different than discipline. Discipline allows for the opening that embraces the ingress of the new).

For me, this embracing also means embracing the blessed unrest as an open-arm desire for the new, a yearning to dance with the mystery that is always longing to dance with us, inviting us into its dance of possibility.

Stay present and notice when the mind turns the new into the repetitive dance steps that are safe, but oh so boring and dulling to the senses.

Wishing you a happy new year, that is no year at all, but rather the constant invitation to live into the transformation of your soul that can only come with the creative emergence of the new.

image ‘Silence Talks‘ by lepiaf.geo, Flickr

“All beauty contains darkness.” ~ Daniel Odier

Learning to see, and then act, outside of the current patriarchal structure has been a journey of ever widening circles, much like a spiral. It is the journey of living the feminine, a way of life that is very different than that which I was taught to know. It means trusting what is revealed in each moment of present awareness, and feeling for what is ripe with the promise of birth. I go in and out of living this way, but as the circles of understanding grow, I find myself opening to the darkness of the feminine to receive Her guidance.

When this guidance is revealed, the only thing that lies ahead is darkness, the darkness of the unknown. The only thing known is that one choice, the one thing that is the most obvious choice. My mind struggles with the darkness, wanting desperately to know what lies ahead, and yet I also know in my heart that this darkness, this unknown, is the mystery of life waiting to be revealed. The divine mystery is the new, is this darkness from which all emerges.

What I am learning to trust in is the strong pull of this knowing. You might call this intuition, but for me, as I live deeper into the cells of my own body, it is knowing.

I found, what I guess you could call the ‘best’ book of 2009, this way. I saw it on a friend’s desk and knew I must read it. The pull was unavoidable. A friend had given him the book, for reasons he couldn’t understand. He had no intention of reading it, but for some reason had not yet given it away.

I would call this book a gift. A gift given and gratefully, and voraciously, received. Not all of the book kept my rapt attention, but the parts that did carried me deeper into the darkness, deeper into the parts of myself that were thirsting for light. I was yearning for gnosis. Through a marriage of the wisdom of this book and my own willingness to allow a new kind of knowing to emerge from within, I began to deepen my trust in this darkness.

The book that has so many dog ears, cracks in the spine, lines underlined, recommendations to others, is Dancing in the Flames: The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness. The authors are Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. In my knowing, this book can be a guide book for the journey into darkness that we all, and most especially women, must take. As Woodman states, “The evolutionary imperative within the collective unconscious is pushing us toward a new level of consciousness.” We must learn to stand alone, in our own wholeness, if we are going to survive. And, learning to stand alone means diving into the darkness, to come to know ourselves again in a whole new way.

As Odier shares, there is beauty in darkness. It is the rich soil from where all of life emerges.

Today’s post is Day 4 (best book) of Gwen Bells’ Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.

To all women, to all men, and to all of Life, I offer you the original Mother’s Day proclamation of 1870 by Julia Ward Howe. Read it and let is wash over you. Take it in and see what comes from it.

I shared this on Facebook, and received many wonderful responses. One response was from my Aunt, a strong vibrant woman. She recognized her own voice in Howe’s and could see this voice in all women; and, she also feels gratitude for all the men in her life that have served when called.

I mention this because I feel both are true. Neither sentiment negates the other. We live in a world of paradox. While we can hold firmly to the knowing that we can have a world in which peace truly exists, we also can honor those who have fought for freedom and justice. There is only one answer to it all – Love, unconditional love.

Sometimes that love is soft, sometimes it is fierce, but hopefully we can all find a way to the love that is unconditional, for all that is, for all of life, for the depth and breadth of how Life reveals itself. If it is all One, then Love means to love it all, unconditionally, while allowing your own being to move towards that which you know from deep within your self is True in every cell of your being.
Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

thanks to Jonathan Klate, of Amherst, MA, for sharing this.

“How different it would be if we looked at the earth as our mother. Do you treat the planet with the same love, care, respect and honor that you treat your mother?”— Peter Walsh, from his Oprah Radio show

I came across this quote yesterday and it stopped me in my tracks. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been thinking a great deal about the atrocities that are committed to women and girls every day all over the world and realizing that women are the recipients of the things we hold in the darkest part of our shadow complex.

How many people really do treat their mother with love, care, respect and honor? How many of us treat the role of mother with respect and honor? How many of us treat the female body with care and respect?

I don’t doubt for a moment that Peter Walsh loves his mother and this really isn’t about him. I think most of us love our mother, but do we even for a moment really know what it means to love our mother? Do we dare to look deeper at how we treat her, how we hold her and how much we respect the sacredness of the female body and its ability to bring life into life? I feel the real question is not how we treat our mother, something we pay homage to on Mother’s Day, or the glorified Madonna archetype that many times carries with it the corresponding archetype of whore.

The real question is how to we treat the physical manifestation of Mother, the female body and her ability to support and nurture life into being? How do we treat women and their bodies? Do we honor the female body with love and respect? Do we care for female bodies? Do you care for your own? Do you respect the sacredness and the divinity that it is? And, do we respect all bodies, those of men and boys as well?

For the correspondence between one’s Mother and the planet is about the life-giving ability that women offer. Our planet is alive. The Mother is all of matter. Everything that is alive is the Mother. It is all sacred. We are all sacred.

When we no longer see a distinction between all living things, and we honor all of life, then maybe we’ll wake up to Life as it truly is, not as something to rape and use to satisfy our insatiable appetite for more and more. Look around you and see how we treat the female body.

Look into your own experience with open eyes, but more importantly an open heart. What would it be to love, with all your heart, your mother, yourself, your body, the Earth and all of Life?

I have been intrigued by creativity since I was young, and now it is what I do for a living. Pretty cool. I wanted to share these thoughts with you. Perhaps they will trigger something you know already about who and what you are. Perhaps they will be an invitation to begin turning back to yourself to inquire into your own nature. Perhaps they won’t intrigue you at all. Take a look and see what you feel…

By design, you are creative.

By design, you are, and always have been, whole.

By design, you are unique, yet One with everything in existence.

By design, you are Essence experiencing and expressing through a human body that has a gender.

By design, you are part of the Great Intelligence that creates and destroys, that moves through all of existence that is the creatrix and the created.

As concepts you know this, but do you know this as experience?

Do you trust the uniqueness and intelligence of your design as a creative being?

Do you have faith in your own raw, unmediated experience and expression?

When you trust in your creativity, and unbind your heart and body, a faith in your full expression emerges. Faith in this expression opens up a whole new world to you, a world in which you trust yourself to meet life as it comes to you. Give it a whirl!

Over the past few months, I have actively and consciously been holding both life and death. We discovered my mother was terminally ill in December. Two weeks later, on New Year’s Day, I found out my daughter and son-in-law are due to have a baby…amazingly enough, due on my mother’s birthday. Over the past seven months, I have held this sense of birth and death, living and dying, from somewhere in the middle of the chain of women…my daughter is giving birth to a daughter. It has been a profound experience to consciously hold life and death together, to know that they both exist in every moment and to actively sit with the sense that neither one is to be grasped or pushed away.

An image that is burned in my mind is my daughter standing beside my mother’s casket. Her beautiful full belly was so close, a great-granddaughter and great-grandmother so close, but never to meet. To be a witness to this passing of generations has been as enlightening as anything I have ever experienced. To think the beauty of this reality is available to us everywhere at any time leaves me breathless.

On May 10th, 2008, the we have the opportunity to come together through film. It is Pangea Day. A first.

What is Pangea Day?

According to Pangea.org:

“Pangea Day taps the power of film to strengthen tolerance and compassion while uniting millions of people to build a better future. In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that — to help people see themselves in others — through the power of film.”

Sites in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked live. Programs will consist of film, speakers and uplifting music, and will be broadcast live through the many forms of technology available today: the Web, TV, Digital Movies and mobile phones.

Organizers will also facilitate activities around the world by connecting inspired viewers with numerous organizations that are already doing community building work.

Check out Pangea Day at: http://www.pangeaday.org