Life is a mystery… a lyric sung by Madonna decades ago, and while she continued to sing Everyone must stand alone, which I believe to be false, the overall feel of this song is about reverence for the unknown and connection.
It is true, life is a mystery. We can make our plans, have our ideas of what is to come, but at the end of the day, we really have no idea. We tend to live in this reality of moving forward with intention towards something that we want, but at any moment any of dozens of things can happen to throw us off course. We have hopes and dreams of what tomorrow will bring, but we really don’t have any idea if it actually will.
We may believe that if we do things the “right” way, if we are a “good” person, that life will turn out exactly as we wish. And reality is that “bad” things happen to “good” people and “good” things happen to “bad” people. We are constantly trying to make sense and meaning of something that perhaps is actually random and meaningless.
So what is the point? Of going on, of trying, of making plans, of having dreams?
Our human brains need to make sense of what seems senseless. We say silly things like “everything happens for a reason” or “it was meant to be this way” to calm our nervous systems and try to convince ourselves that we have some sort of control over our circumstances. This is where we confuse our agency with the ideas of “deserving” or “karma” or “power’.
It is true we do have control over some things. We have control (to a degree) over our decisions, our actions, our reactions. We have control (to a degree) to say who can and can’t be in our lives, what our boundaries are, what we do or don’t eat. But it is all only to a degree - most of life is out of our individual control.
And we “modern” humans, our human brains, sure don’t like the idea of not having total individual control over our lives, our circumstances, our world.
Darwin wrote “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” (Darwin is often misquoted about this). Meaning, the more we are able to go with the flow, to move with and adapt to change, the more likely we are to survive, and in my opinion and experience, the more likely we are to actually enjoy life.
We get so wrapped up with what we want or expect that we can lose sight of the beauty of what actually is. We are meaning seeking beings, yes, but what if the meaning behind life’s struggles and celebrations is (not so) simply connecting with others living life itself?
What if, instead of having five year plans, we focused on being present in the now? What if we focused on cultivating our relationships in this moment, instead of needing to know where they are going or how they fit in some prescribed box?
Being able to be in the moment, to take life as it comes, is something our ancestors had no other choice but to do. And frankly, this is still true for us today, a difference, I believe, is the ways we rail against change, against something going not “as planned.” We struggle to stay present in the moment due to personal trauma and the trauma of living under oppressive systems.
Learning to remain present to the moment, to not become too attached to our plans, to find our ways to robust, nuturing, and nourishing relationships, is a practice. A practice that we get better at over time, and are likely never perfect at.
Not having attachment to outcomes, letting go of our expectations of how things “should” be, does not mean we don’t experience disappointment, frustration, or grief. It does mean however that we are able to process and metabolize these feelings (emotions and the physical sensations that come with them) in ways that don’t overwhelm or completely destabilize us.
Becoming comfortable with the liminal space that is life itself, asks us to learn to tolerate discomfort, to come into our body, to learn to seek connection instead of protection in our relationships. It is an ever growing practice in and of itself.
Life gives us multiple opportunities a day to practice this. To practice letting go, feeling our feelings, being in the moment. Life gives us multiple opportunities a day to change old harmful patterns, to learn new ways to be in relationship, with ourselves, others, the rest of nature. These opportunities, I believe, are our actual karmic destiny - these opportunites to expand, to evolve, on a soul level and the ways that ripples out into our current corporeal experience.
Life itself is chaotic. And yet, chaos isn’t as random as we tend to think it is. There are patterns and there is a kind of order that perhaps doesn’t always make sense to us. The “riddle,” so to speak. The mystery.
This riddle, this mystery, is something we may want to disect and understand completely, but I believe we lose sight of the beauty of the mystery when we are so focused on diciphering it. We can become so consumed with wanting to know meaning, purpose, in wanting to know exactly where something is “going,” in wanting to know how each story ends, in wanting to wrap everything up with a pretty bow, that we don’t see what is right in front of us, what our actual opportunities are, to learn to live in the want and hope while letting go of the expectation and assumption.
Living in the mystery, the riddle, the unknown, the liminal space… it is an invitation and a practice. How we grow that practice is as individual as we are. There are plenty of people out there who will give you a “Five step program to ‘enlightenment’” but I am not one of them.
I believe our liberation is in listening to ourselves. To feeling out our own truth. To being both in our body and understanding we are more than our physical existence. I believe our destiny is to learn to come home to ourselves and each other in ways that let go of demands, of assumptions, of expecations; to be in the what is, while simultaneously doing our inner and outer work to bring change, to deepen our relationships, to experience the wonder and the heartache of this present moment.
Doing this invites us to do a LOT of inner work. It invites us to look at our shadows, our trauma, our pain, and to allow our grief, our anger, our frustation to flow through and out of us. It is messy. Often challenging. And it can also be beautiful and joyful. Our evolution as humas has taken a strange turn in the last few centuries, as we traumaized each other and the land, water, and air. Our ancestors weep at the outcome of their and others actions, and hold hope for us to see a different path, to be in the dichotomy of the riddle and mystery and to hold the hope of the stars in our heart.
The planet is burning around us. The seas are about to boil. The rainwater is undrinkable and the air is become more and more unbreathable. This is not dramatic nor metaphorical - this is literally what is happening as I write this, as you read this. The suffering that exists is only a small fraction of the suffering that is to come. We humans are killing ourselves and each other, and at some point we will no longer exist. I don’t believe “saving humanity” is the riddle we need to solve, the riddle I hope we begin to solve, is how to ease the suffering, not only for ourselves and those closest to us, but for strangers, for people we may not like much, for the animals, plants, soil, and water that are intricately connected to us just as we are to them.
Holding both hope and reality, the mystery and the corporeal, gives us the opportunities to connect. With our ancestors, the planet, each other, ourselves. We need to both have hope and to face the reality of what is, to be the beauty and terror of both the mystery and our daily human lives. We need to expand our definitions of connection, of community, and to begin to not only understand with our minds but to viscerally feel in our marrow, muscle, and skin, our interconnectedness, the very real mycorrhizal networks we are a part of, the quantum entanglement with each other and our cells that exists. We need to see and know in our being how we are a part of greater systems, some human made and others beyond our comprehension.
Understanding and feeling our interconnectedness is not all rainbows and unicorns. It involves grief. It involves discomfort. It involves pain. And. It also involves celebration. It involves being nurtured and nurturing. It involves pleasure.
A step in this process, in coming into visceral contact with our true interconnectedness is our own self awareness and embodiment. It is in learning the ways of being in the now, and having flexible plans for the future, of grieving, and not being stuck in, the past. It is enduring the beauty and pain of the human experience and not dismissing it. It is knowing our personal experience is not universal and accepting that other’s experiences are neither wrong, nor right, only different from ours. It is in the coming together - both the gathering and integrating of our own shattered parts and the gathering and nourishing the interdependence we have with other humans and other parts of nature.
I invite you to consider what your personal next steps in this work of unraveling and dislodging the lies of the oppressive systems we live under from your own system while finding your way home to yourself, your community, and the Earth herself. To consider what your next steps in surrendering to the mystery, while staying fully rooted in your human experience are. To consider what it means to have a soul and a corporeal body. To consider your autonomy and your interdependence with everyone and everyting around you.
This is work that is nearly impossible to do under the systems we live under and with the trauma that lives in our DNA. Nearly impossible. And yet, there is hope, there is possibility.
I meet you in the mess, the discomfort, the confusion, the grief, the beauty, the joy, and the celebration of it all.
In rebellious solidarity, always,
xoox,
gwynn
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