Tuesday, November 23, 2010

What if....?


I have been trying to write this particular entry for some time now; there is something I am trying to get at, something in my heart that I want to say. Something ineffable which, like a spirit, is following me through these days and nights. Its presence giving me strength as I ride. 

On Friday, as I road home in the dark, the snow just beginning to fall (The streets quiet, my toes and fingers turning into icicles), there was something then, and something now, something of the gift I feel to be alive - how lucky to be here in Nanaimo  – walking and riding in the snow.

And yet – I want to write about my heart, I want to write about the heaviness that is there. Katie and I are making a small, perhaps even insignificant, change. However, it is a change that we need to make, and yet, I wonder if it is the change that will bring about what I long deeply to see.

What I long for, is not for you to stop diving in cars, not even for you to make your own changes - but want I long to see, in my lifetime, is for someone to take the greatest leap of faith...

I want to meet someone whose perspective has shifted radically, I what to know the person who has transformed their seeing from - self and Earth, to something more like - self as Earth. And because it has to start somewhere I am looking for the signs of transformation in Nanaimo, and I don't know what it will look like. But I am hopeful.

And I wonder - What if one person, even right here, what if one person woke up one morning, (this morning even), and saw that she had been living a lie - that in fact, all this time, she had never been separate from the Earth. And in that moment she would know (in every cell of her body) that to harm the Earth is to harm herself, to spit on the ground is to spit on herself.

What if this person, young or old (out of her great care for herself) begin to treat everything, and everyone, with love and a feeling of protection. What if this happened right here in our small town, not in San Fransisco, or New York City; not in Classical China, or Ancient Greece; not even in the monasteries of Nepal or Tibet - but right here, right now in Nanaimo – Wouldn’t the world begin to also change? I don’t know, but something of this notion has been following me through these days and nights like a whisper, a question, a what if…

And I think this is not so imposable. Awaking or enlightenment, comes sometimes in a flash, and other times it is a practice. The possibility of imagination is limitless, we, as humans, have split the atom, we have gone to the moon.

And all of this started in the imagination, one morning someone woke up and said "I wonder if we can go to the moon?" and we went; I wonder what would happen if we split the atom?" and we did. And so I wonder what would happen if we started to practice awakening, that is, I wonder what would happen if we started to practice seeing the Earth (including everything) as a part of ourselves. What would happen if a handful of us, ordinary human beings, started to practice seeing the world as not distinct from us, but seeing it, rather, as a part of our own bodies? What would happen? 

After all, we did go to the moon, surely this cannot be harder then the mathematics that went into splitting the atom. I mean in comparison to Einstein, this seems pretty basic.

What would happen if Katie and I vowed, instead of not getting into a car, but vowed instead to practice seeing the world as a part of ourselves for a year?

What would happen if you did it? 

Where would we be then, twenty, thirty years from now? Imagine practicing awakening, meeting everyone with reverence and love, holding the world in your heart as a part of yourself. Imagine...
 
Just Imagine. It all has to start somewhere. This is something of the spirit which has been following me, whispering in the wind "Imagine....Imagine, what would the world look like then?"





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