Only Everything
The buzzing of bees;
the rising of seas.
Thousands, illuminated—
worlds of pollen dance,
intimating, your heart:
its vastness.
Our life, this movement
from world,
to root,
and back again.
Light envelops you; again, you rise.
To meet it—
your task.
It will only be known
as everything.
The pebble lodged in my sandal as I paused to furiously flail my foot in an effort to remove it. The flies, of course, gathered in the heat of the summer morning, taking great interest in my now seeming stillness.
Wherever could I go? For all my walking, I am only ever here. Little pebbles and flies interrupt my mind and force me to remember that life is always a dance of forces I can know, and those that I do not. And what I do not know, I often experience as fear, frustration, interruption. My ideas about what must happen, or what I’d like to happen, make me view this event as alien, other, enemy. I hate the flies.
Something within this, though, calls out to me. What about the flies annoy me? Do I view myself as insulated from the world, able to live without perturbation? A wiser voice within me speaks to these flies lovingly, and still protects my space. Can I be this wiser voice?
Light is coming and envelops the day; we are called to be revealed alongside the world. And so, like those parts we do not know and fear as other, what the night has covered and kept revealed can now be seen.
✶ ✶ ✶
So it is with our suffering. Who is not wounded by this life? And yet, it is the last thing we want to acknowledge. To acknowledge it is to realize our meekness in the face of life. To see that the world does not fit neatly into our fixed notions of comfort, and that we are often called into a greater acceptance of this fact by our own pain.
The pain can be hidden or quite obvious, but either way, it is made clear in the way we move through life. Like the flies and pebbles, this pain often comes unbidden, seemingly disrupting our path. It emerges as a word spoken out of anxiety that wounds a loved one, or a sudden pulling away after closeness. Seeing the harm this causes, our tender hearts feel regret, sadness; we long to heal and be whole.
Sometimes, we may not be ready for the work required of us to integrate and heal our pain completely, so we learn how to live with it and make half-steps toward wholeness.
Sometimes, it comes like a cascading waterfall upon our hearts, and all we can do is stay conscious and witness the opening of old wounds as they unwind and resolve.
I remember, several years ago, after some spiritually opening experiences and a lot of time in psychotherapy, the unbidden sobbing and wailing that arose one evening, at the unlived life I had never been able to grieve before. It was not planned, and no technique could have caused its arising. Rather, it was the long and slow process of deepening and unfolding through my own mysterious layers that led to a ripening; ripening enough for the unconscious to reach out and show me what it had been patiently holding in its hands all along:
my wholeness.
✶ ✶ ✶
It is painful, and scary, and feels completely out of our control at first. And, slowly, we begin to invite this old pain in, even to see the sacredness of its place in our lives. Woundings become openings, and their disruptions are opportunities to increase our awareness and move toward wholeness.
Yes, the question becomes: “How can I love this?” instead of “Can I love this?” And that makes all the difference. We come to realize that pain is a part of this dance as much as our joy, and that we want to be whole; to be all the way alive. Mere anesthetization is not life. It requires our willingness to suffer with grace.
So we dance.
And sing.
And love, and cry.
Because every bit is worth savoring. Beautiful, even.
That was what struck me the most about my unbidden wailing years ago; amidst it all, I felt how indescribably excruciating it was, and I also felt how beautiful it was. All at once. They were both true. I could not reconcile one into the other, and I could not turn away from it. I had to meet them in love.
And in meeting them, the beauty and my tears were all the more, for my soul had longed for such acceptance. For such a meeting. To stop running away from the pain of life and the courage it takes to fully live it.
Because, wherever could we go?
The sweet smell of trees in the heat of summer,
the sight of the ocean’s majesty—
only everything is singing
of the wild and infinite
mystery.
You meet it,
again—
it shimmers,
with a thousand tiny
untold graces.
Yes, my love,
your heart is the world.
Your joy and your pain.
As vast as it is,
only everything is.
The Butterfly On My Forehead
I see dragonflies all around!
My ink will run out
before I capture how
rapturously
this Beauty abounds.
I remember a day, many years ago, where I decided to attempt “manifesting” an idea into reality, a notion I had gathered from the book Illusions by Richard Bach. In the book, the main character, Richard, is taught by a retired messiah that, as long as he wishes and believes with strong clarity, and then lets go, his vision will come.
Richard chose to manifest a blue feather, which did, indeed, manifest synchronistically for him, exactly how he envisioned—just on a milk carton.
My idea: white butterflies. The ones that lilt about in summer. Every time I saw one, I’d smile at my foolish belief that such things were possible, but hid a secret satisfaction that it really did work.
A year later, however, I started regularly encountering what seemed like flocks of them, and spotting them as signs and paintings and tattoos, all in the same two-hour walk. My rational mind said it was selective perception, but then one day, it was too much to ignore. They were everywhere, in several flocks of four and five across a bridge in the small town I grew up in, and I had just passed several houses with them as decoration. I laughed uncontrollably. “What is this?” I thought.
“No. This is too much for me… It’s a little… eerie.” I had said. And I sort of stopped it right then and there, perhaps.
✶ ✶ ✶
My point is not about manifestation, or even synchronicity, though they are beautiful and mysterious events that, regardless of their origin (spirit, chance, psyche), bring a sense of joy and wonder to our lives. Rather, my point is about what I did when the Universe gave me confirmation that it was listening, that it wanted to help. Because I think we all do this, to varying degrees, with that which causes joy.
There is a shutdown; a laughter that we cannot control (a deep joy), and the following fear that catches our breath. “What just happened?” “Am I not in control?” and, subtly underneath, “I don’t trust myself to hold this beauty, or joy.”
Some don’t have such a response, or at least not as directly. I applaud them. Indeed, it takes great courage to open to Joy, though we might not think it at first. Especially for those deeply wounded by life, or who have had their joyous hopes and wonders crushed by the waves and rocks of existence.
It takes time. Patience. Eventually, we come around and can begin to open to joy and the many ways the Universe surprises us.
I find it helps to breathe. To take it all in: my joy and fear, both. And to have compassion for the one who learned it was wise to armor against the possibility of gladness rather than accept.
In time, it shifts.
✶ ✶ ✶
A few weeks ago, as I was biking around my town, zipping underneath the hot summer sun, I noticed the white butterflies again. My mom was in the hospital, and life had found a precarious new meaning. It mattered more, how I embraced myself and this life.
So I decided, then, to open to them again, and let their fluttering abound in waves of joy and delight. And it was subtly scary, like invoking an old magic that I had forbidden myself to use. Perhaps that’s exactly what it was.
But not too long after, one flew right into my (probably too fast) path, and though I swerved my bike to avoid it, it slammed right into my forehead, between my eyes.
It was a somewhat poetic event, I guess, laced with a cosmic humor and an internal fear that it was the Universe now telling me all my hopes and dreams were dead. I thought I had killed them in my haste.
But I do not think it so.
If any meaning must be assigned, it was more likely a psychic rebirth, the death and subsequent return of my deeper self, of my willingness to open to the mystery and stand in my power.
This is what is required of us if we are to return to joy. That we choose to open, to be afraid in the face of the Universe’s intelligence and still see the wonder and beauty inherent in it—perhaps because of its wonder and beauty, we are afraid, you see?
I like to think the butterfly kissed me before it died, blessing me and my choice to open again to life. And that its power gives me wings, strong enough to take me to heights where I can hold all with grace, my fear and doubt, my love and joy.
✶ ✶ ✶
Beyond all this, these are just moments, coalesced into a crystalline story of remembering that we are bigger than our fear.
Life is just a series of such moments, where we get to choose, again and again, to remember the sacredness of that truth.
And one day, soon, perhaps, we will hear it reflected in the chorus of birds in the morning, in the jarring sound of crow calls, bringing us to presence.
We will feel our joy made manifest in the grass beneath bare feet, and the breath of the wild heart that is our nature.
And perhaps it is not we who find this vision.
It is this vision that finds us,
sudden as
a butterfly
slammed upon your forehead.
So quick!
Before your ink runs out—
paint the sunset Eternal!
Suddenly,
you are;
Beauty,
abounding.