I have been working with a small group of people online, a laboratory in which we are discovering what genuine connection is, how we can be in authentic community.
I’ve been noticing, for many years, how our tendencies to isolate create suffering and alienation. It seems like a natural and instinctive thing--when I am in pain I want to ‘curl up alone and lick my wounds,’ as one person in this community put it.

Part of this response can be a natural movement to find our own space. But a great deal of the time, this curling up, this movement of withdrawal, only serves to perpetuate the belief that I need to protect and defend a fragile and fixed identity.

A man who lives in Belgium spoke to me about this a while ago. “I can’t live with myself anymore, running away like this,” he said. “I am going to find the courage to stand here, as I am.  I think I am withdrawing because of fear. But it’s really the other way around. I am afraid because I have withdrawn, and made myself separate. ”

So one of our commitments, in our small community, has been to stay present, to stay connected, even when it is difficult. To work with the impulse to move away, instead of going along with it.
I had an experience last week that was a great blessing for me. It was so strong and such good news, that I was hesitant to share it. It’s strange isn’t it, when we are reluctant to share the goodness that comes to us.

Then I read this quote by Annie Dillard:
“Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for later . . . give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.
Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.”

I often refer to this as the ‘reaching-out movement of the heart.’ It’s so natural in all of us, and then we learn to stifle it, to hold back, to be careful, to sit and wait.
So I’m not going to wait any longer. I’ll share with you right now, the goodness that came to me:

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I was speaking with someone this morning on a non-dual coaching call. My client, whom I’ll call Bob, said to me, “I still feel separate most of the time. So I have this idea that something should change, there’s another place where I could be that is better than this. I’m just never clear about whether I exist or not.

Sometimes I lose my sense of separation, but a lot of the time it’s still here. I’ve been wondering about this question for a long time.”

“Okay, “ I said to him. “Let’s stop right here for now. In non-dual practice, one of our main pointers is “What is natural?” Unconditioned awareness is the most natural state of all—totally uncontrived and unstructured. If I really appreciate this, then I can align my practice with something that is quite spontaneous and authentic, something arising from within me, rather than a set of instructions from outside.”

“If you, Bob, are experiencing this as a recurring question, then I hear that life is giving you this inquiry, offering this question to you as your natural koan: ‘Am I separate or not’?

What you can do is really make a lot of room in your being, and in your life, for this question. Welcome it, live with it, engage with it. Don’t try to find an answer with your mind. Take the question and drop it into your body.

Release the energy from the head and let it flow down into your heart and belly. Feel the question: Am I separate? Where do I feel the separation? Don‘t grasp for a thought—just listen with your whole body.”

Bob sat for a minute in silence. Then he said, “That’s interesting. Something just arose in my awareness—a sense that there is this sense of myself, here, and it is distinct, but not separate. Just like the chest of drawers in my room. I see it, and it is distinct, but that doesn’t make it separate.”

“If I just let myself experience the distinctness of things, there is no problem. It’s when I add on the thought, “Oh I’m feeling separate and I shouldn’t be separate, that there is immediately a problem.”

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I’m sharing part of a marvelous poem/writing by Kip Mazuy, passed on to me by one of the participants in the Mutual Evolution online intensive. What Kip describes here, so lucidly, is what we are exploring in our group together.

“One method of meditation
is to simply be vulnerable
to this moment.

To let go of
trying to justify
who you are and what
you know
and really allow
yourself to feel what is here.

This is difficult only
because of the mind.

The mind comes in
and already knows it;
agrees or disagrees with it,
has an opinion about it.

And it is not that you have
to get rid of that,
but rather to give up
taking a position in that,
in believing this is “me.”

You have all of these
thoughts flowing.
It is not to stop the thoughts
or change the thoughts,
but rather to see
the thoughts are flowing.

To see thoughts are
arising by themselves.

You can step back
out of being this person
and watch all of these
processes happening
which make up the idea
of “me.”

And you will see in this
that there is no set
singular “me”
but rather a whole bunch
of processes happening.

Thinking is happening,

And it is not to take a position
to say “I am not a separate person,”
but rather to stop taking a position at all,
to stop justifying any sense of me
and simply feel what is here
without using the intellect
to interpret it, to label it,
or justify it in any way.

To be completely open
to what is really here in this moment
beyond thinking.

And then throughout the day
to become aware of all of the
ways you justify yourself
and to let go of that,
to be vulnerable to what is here
and what is happening
rather than trying to fight it,
trying to control it.

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Some friends and I were doing a ceremony this summer, as a way of coming to completion with our past, in the best way we could. We were intending to open a clearing, an unconditioned space in which a compassionate and generative response to our future could emerge.

Part of our ceremony was devoted to examining, with discriminating wisdom, the spiritual practice we had all been engaged in for many years. It was a practice that no longer served us, and what became clear and vivid in our time together was this: despite long years of meditation and inquiry, we had never really learned how to live in relationship, with ourselves, with life, and with each other.

This dilemma is not limited to one teaching or one particular practice. Many of the spiritual practices that emphasize the absolute or transcendent aspect of life treat all relationships as illusory, since the idea of an ‘other’ is a construction of the mind.

It struck us during this ceremony that excluding the whole field of relationship from our practice creates an incredibly huge gap in the teachings, since our life on earth, our life in a human body, is nothing but relationship. These kind of practices and teachings do not give us any support at all in learning what it is to be fully human.

The indigenous teachings, on the other hand, are deeply grounded in a view of life as a vast interconnected web of relations. They call us into the living experience of who we are when we are open and accountable for an unending relationship with the whole field of life. Some of these practices are solitary, but many are done in the context of community, in a spirit of deep intimacy, where we learn to be fully present and engaged, without our habitual barriers and defenses.

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‘Each friend and lover represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive. It is only in this meeting that a whole new way of being presents itself to us.’ Anais Nin

This new way of being is revealed as we come out of isolation, our of hiding, and into the warmth and aliveness of presence. Our capacity to stay consciously connected during each contact increases. We realize that we can let go of our own points of view and enter into the reality of each being we meet.

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There is a lot of talk these days about the power of awareness.

What I have noticed is that awareness practices can often be quite limited in their power to really transform the way we live.

Unless it is clear that the deeper nature of awareness is love.

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Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find within yourself all the barriers you have built against it.
Rumi

There is a vast difference between what we believe love to be, and the truth that we discover when we investigate deeply and fearlessly. It’s the difference between a nightmare and waking up. It’s the difference between blaming, bitterness and overflowing gratitude.

Let’s face it, friends. As far as love goes, we’ve been sold a bill of goods. We’ve been taught that we have to earn it, struggle for it, modify ourselves in order to receive it.  And that the people in our lives have to behave in a certain way in order to receive it.

What if none of this was true? What if love is something that has nothing to do with gaining or losing? Something so basic, so fundamental, that it is our very nature?

What will bring us to the place where we are ready to discover the truth of love for ourselves?

Where we are ready to encounter directly these barriers that we ourselves have built?

I have a sense that many of us have grown very tired of the old stories about love, intimacy and relationship.

That we are here, on this edge, willing to open to a whole new life. Bit by bit, stepping into the water that is here: fresh, cool and vibrant.

Please join me, if this possibility is bubbling in your heart, tugging at your mind, or knocking on your door.

All it takes it the willingness to inquire into what is really going on.

The ‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’ 8 week online intensive begins Oct. 18 and goes till Dec. 6.

To learn more, or to register, Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together ‘Mutual Evolution-Waking Up Together’

The Free Telecall is on Thurs. Oct. 6 at 5:30pm pacific ‘Mutual Evolution ‘-Free Telecall

This photo and Rumi quote come from Rumi Wall Photos

love
Shayla

Showing up as we are is not how we have been trained. The idea of it can be terrifying-to commit to this kind of transparency. But this willingness, to allow ourselves to be as we are, and to be seen as we are, is the foundation of freedom and of love.

“Unconditional love is not so much about how we receive and endure each other, as it is about the deep vow to never, under any condition, stop bringing the flawed truth of who we are to each other.” (Mark Nepo)

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