Who Are We?
I have no intentions of answering the title question. However, it does beg an inquiry amidst shootings, war in the Ukraine, hearings for the 116th Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, climate changes, and so much more. In fact, critically observing external circumstances is not what this post is about; it is about observing ourselves and how we respond to the incoming information that cannot be ignored. For transformation to occur we need to be present and able to hold the suffering and contentious discussions we observe in a way that can create healing and change, not just for ourselves, but for our neighbors and the world. Environmental activist, author and scholar, Joanna Macy who has been pondering a world in change for decades says quite concisely:
The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.
Ah, to be present. Of course, that looks different for everyone. I’m a contemplative, dancer, and Reiki Master. I thrive in silence! So how I engage in the world is much different than other people and I guess the most important idea to share is that in discovering who we are and what works for each one of us — self-knowing apparently takes a long time.
Feeling comfortable in your skin, absorbing support from those who value your uniqueness, honoring that self-knowledge, and observing others in their various modes of exploration without judgment is essential. It’s not a race with external rewards. It’s a journey, like a walk in a gentle rain, well, okay sometimes it’s a thunderstorm with lots of lightning; the point is to keep walking on a path toward wholeness.
When the feelings of disappointment, irritation, anger, and fear arise from our own personal place of knowingness we can respond only if we are aware of our center. Physically our center is the heart, but on a grander scale our center is something much larger and beyond the scope of our understanding that is nurtured daily—or not, it depends on us— by our behaviors and responses to everything all around us.
I guess it is worth mentioning that I’m referring to a level of consciousness that is cultivated through prayer, meditation, and other practices that we try on and which provide stability and sanity in our personal lives. This level of awareness that occurs in a mind, body, and heart seeking wholeness is what we are all striving for if not consciously, then unconsciously. Often words interfere with the substance of the goal but it is a feeling that a person develops and tunes into from time to time. Cynthia Bourgeault presents this knowing awareness like this:
When a person is poised in all three centers, balanced and alertly there, a shift happens in consciousness. Rather than being trapped in our usual mind, with its well-formed rut tracks of issues and agendas and ways of thinking, we seem to come from a deeper, steadier, and quieter place. We are present, in the word of Wisdom tradition, fully occupying the now in which we find ourselves.
I certainly can’t tell you how to reach the centeredness. In fact, no one can. The whole process is experiential and if we are open the guides appear and affirm your true being. Not to narrow the source of information we receive is important, it could come from anywhere: dreams, a work of art, a seemingly random conversation, an email, an insight that keeps niggling at you until you respond or a passage from a book. Kabir Helminski in Living Presence refers to this cosmic mind in a beautiful and poetic manner as presence.
Presence signifies the quality of consciously being here. It is the activation of a higher level of awareness that allows all our other human functions - such as thought, feeling, and action - to be known, developed, and harmonized. Presence is the way in which we occupy space, as well as how we flow and move. It shapes our self-image and emotional tone. It determines the degree of our alertness, openness, and warmth. Presence decides whether we leak and scatter our energy or embody and direct it.
To wrap this up I can only say that one should never get tired of digging or searching for the diamond, the center within us because it is the very life force that keeps us moving forward and shaping a world that reflects what we all want: Peace, Love, and Goodness.