During a ritual to initiate an Elder in my community, a friend said..." Joy and Grief sleep in the same bed." The image bowed through my visual field of two lovers with legs and arms splayed in directions that most legs and arms may not even fold. A spindly bed containing these two energies living and loving side by side.
In the buddhist practice of tonglin which entails- inhaling the sorrows of the world and exhaling Love, Light, Peace and Joy the body becomes the intercessor between these forces of emotional nature... the bed of roses is our body and the waves of intentionally supplied emotion are stimulated by focusing on drawing in an energy that western culture generally seeks to deny, repress or suppress.
The shadow is gravely underrated in our culture and yet it's presence can be seen in all arenas of "civilized life"... from consumption practices to political apathy to climate change... to all of the military industrial complexes web of programing through video games and over-adrenalized props and paraphenalia, to the fact that a gross injustice like the Trayvon Martin shooting, death and ruling could presently take place in the U.S.
How do you sit with and inhabit the gross inequities of life? Are you willing to actually sit in the discomfort... do you feel the discomfort of others?
Are you empathizing with others sufferings?
What do you feel and what do you tune out or numb?
Are you present?
All these questions arise out of years of inquiry into discovering and recovering my humanity.
Many people maintain their humanity through humility and integrity, kindness and respect. I most assuredly step out on all these virtues many times over, and in retrospect often had an oversensitivity to the light of others and to developing the light of consciousness.
I can clearly say, that I have gone through phases of solipsism and unacknowledged narcissism guised in the mask of social anxiety. Just to say it is a leap off the cliff of armoring to no longer stay safe and comfortable in the bubble wrapped and duct tape attire of corraboration with a way of life, I am diametrically in opposition to by virtue of the renewed agreements I now make with Great Spirit.
Can I live my beliefs without condemning or judging others abilities or inabilities to love and be loved?
It's my aim and goal, it's the standard that I hold myself accountable to whether I speak it out loud or Live it.
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This is a time of The Great Forgetting and The Great Remembering...
The breathe that courses through in conscious connected breathing
