We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

~Martin Luther King Jr.

When pushing through results in expansion, you experience yourself as part of a larger intelligence. You are aware of a non-negotiable wellbeing that exists independently of your circumstances. Then if you’re put on the spot, you look to that larger intelligence and trust that answers will emerge in due time, and you know that you will be okay however long that takes.

–Molly Gordon

I came across this on Facebook this morning; it seems to relate to my thoughts in recent posts that it is possible to surrender one’s small personal will to the “whole.”

The unconscious always tries to produce an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out his very best. Otherwise one stops short of one’s best, one is not complete, one does not realize oneself. What is needed is an impossible situation where one has to renounce one’s own will and one’s own wit and do nothing but wait and trust to the impersonal power of growth and development.

–Carl Jung

It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald

But what if we aren’t meant to do away with our longing at all? What if we are meant, as the poet John O’Donohue puts it, to let our absences enlarge our lives.  What if the longing itself is the calling homeward? Just as grief shows us what we love most, we can follow our longing into the meaningful life we so crave.

A wise teacher once told me that the greatest spiritual practice he knows is to discover what you are most missing in your life – and then give that thing away.  In other words, take your meagre scratch of a life, which knows too little about everything big, and make of it an offering.

Where you long for the friend who calls only to find out if you’re well, be that caller for another. Where you long for eloquent prayers to be made of everyday things, let your own clumsy words bless your meals out loud. Where you wish for ritual under the moons, be the one who holds the heartbeat of gathering. Where you ache to be recognized, allow yourself to be seen. Where you long to be known, sit next to someone and listen for the apertures into what they love. Where you wish you felt necessary, give those gifts away.

Rather than a disappointed wanting to belong, this is the practice to Be The Longing. Maybe it will take a lifetime, or maybe only the young ones who come up around you will feel the benefits, or maybe it will sneak up on you in a sudden moment, as you sit feasting with your loved ones, that you belong to this beauty you’ve made of your life.

— Toko-pa Turner

This morning as I watched the sunrise as a meditation, I found that I was “being breathed” by the whole rather than “taking my own breath.”  It does require surrender and I hope to be up to the challenge today as I go about my life today.

Why does it seem easier to transcend the ego when we are part of a tradition in the performing arts? This is my sense coming from my own experience, particularly in storytelling. It is as if the entire culture and heritage holds one in check when one is representing that culture and heritage; in the face of that reality, one must be humble.

When what one offers is one’s “own” as an individual, it is as if there is no entity looking upon us and reminding us that we had better not inflate ourselves. The ego takes an upper stance and prevents us from accessing that which is “more.” Of course, we know of artists and composers who have entered into a state where something greater comes in, where the whole takes over. But for this one must make great effort, and then completely surrender.

I was especially interested in some of the musicians at the Anchorage Folk Festival who had succeeded in taking a complete stance within a musical tradition and conveying that fully and completely to the audience.  They certainly seemed to have the intention of giving themselves completely to the task and to serving the audience (and also, perhaps, to something greater than the audience sitting in the seats).  There was the sense that they had made a choice and put everything into bringing forth that choice with a sense of joy-filled service.

To me, this is art at its peak. It transcends self-gratification and becomes conscious surrender to something more than one’s small self,  no matter what it takes. The motive, at least for that part of one’s existence, is to surrender to the whole.  When these musicians played, they were, to me,  an example of the part surrendering back to the whole– through self-effort.

I was then, as a listener, able to experience my own inner ecstasy.

At some point on the path of inner evolution, it seems that one does learn to give oneself completely to one’s actions. The actions do not need to be creative or artistic. They can be the actions of everyday life. And, in fact, we must come to the point where we do do this for every tiny action in our lives (if we wish to experience our true wholeness).

When I admit to myself that I am the whole, that I am everything– not just a part, a piece–  I am no longer lacking, bereft, desiring that which I do not have. I am beginning to see that I can make this choice in perception.

It’s not that I am separate and am asking to be whole. It is that I have always been whole but under the illusion that I am separate.

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.

by Galway Kinnell