Today I invite you to consider the larger view of Life as movement; as a continual flow of events. I use the word "larger" view to encourage you to expand your awareness beyond your own personal experiences, or current events, to the vast field of life forms that fill our planet, and beyond that, the Allness of Cosmic movement. For me, the spiritual life is multi-modal. Human consciousness cannot grasp the totality of Life. Hence, we have filled the world of knowledge with varying stories, perspectives, models--interpreting Life from different angles. Insights, sometimes in split-second realizations, may shape and define a life-long path. Faith grows as we nurture it, as well as through Grace, as an awareness that something outside our own doubt and confusion sustains us. This sense of Life as movement, takes us beyond our understanding of ourselves as separate, unique entities. My friend and teacher, U.G. Krishnamurti, put it this way, "You are not one thing and life is another. It is one unitary movement and anything I say about it is misleading, confusing." (The Natural State, compiled by Peter Maverick)
Years ago I took short trip to Palm Springs, to visit U.G., who was living there for a few months. That afternoon, I sat with him and a friend from Germany. It was a warm, rather lethargic day, but outside the wind was picking up. U.G. began to talk about cause and effect as one movement--not two. He repeated a familiar example: There is a knocking sound at the door. You stand up and walk toward the door. Human logic insists that that the knock and the action of walking to the door are two separate, sequential events, and one caused the other. Yet, why assume these are separate happenings? Rather, here is the movement, the flow of Life. We cannot say one specifically caused the other. "The stimulus and the response are one movement." He often gestured as he talked, and as he was speaking of of the flow, his arm fluidly moved upward. Then he paused, arm up, watching the swaying palm tree outside the window. He quietly added, "that tree out there, that branch moving is responsible for the lifting of my arm." Silence filled the room. In a momentary flash of clarity, I knew "oneness" as actuality. We had let the framework of talking about human interactions; the dancing palm tree was with us in the room.
My point here today is that this movement of life is not just about your unique personal life, and yet, your unique, personal life remains a vital component of the whole. We cannot understand that through logic. Logic has it's place, reasoning has it's place, and mystical wonder has it's place. Life is rich with mystery and wonder. We are not separate from "Life", and we are not separate from events happening down the street or across the globe. The task is to open to the larger world of connectedness, when it is time to move with the larger world, and act within our personal framework as we move through our daily tasks, accepting that our lives impact the whole and the whole impacts us. We don't manage the world, but we are in movement with all Life. That expanded life runs in the background. Take some time today, or through the week, to consider it: your life as the flow of Life. Consider the movement you bring to the world and Life's daily exchange. (Susan Nettleton)
for poetry: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/157587/i-cannot-dance-o-lord https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/51061/the-decision-56d22e8fc2b07 https://poets.org/poem/treasure/print