I’ve been thinking for a while now. Oh oh.
About this movement a foot for many years now (and arguably never gone from poetry over the centuries) that points us humans to the fundamental awareness of wholeness.
I’ve given reasonable attention to a few practices over the years. Some of it more therapeutic in nature. Some of it more meditation based. Some of it cognitive. Some of it, well, just nature.
What I’ve learned that seems to align with my belly as a contribution to such a movement to wholeness — an essence of the orientation I bring forward when at my best working with groups — is that in each of us is all. You name the quality. Goodness. Yup, it’s there. Greediness. Yup, it’s there. Kindness. Yup. Courage. Yup. Wound. Yup. Shame. Yup.
What I’ve learned is that I like building exercises around these notions of wholeness. They can be quite simple. A little set up that invites people to a wholeness orientation. A little naming that what we might best do now is interrupt some of the pattern from which we’ve been thinking and working. A little non-brain stuff, even as simple as quiet breath. Or drawing. Or walking.
I notice for a long time now, I’ve been naming the “homeopathic” amount of these human qualities that we have in us. You might be only 0.003% greedy. But it’s still there. If you look, you can find examples of the tiniest bits of the quality.
Why does that matter you ask? Because it creates more of the alternative of compassion and empathy than so many entrained cultural patterns of reaction, judgement, and outrage. Because the homeopathic acknowledgement of the tiniest presence moves us to momentary connection rather than further “I told you so” isolated vitriol.
Our return to wholeness, individually and collectively, begins with the honesty of awareness. I continue to learn that this return comes from connecting the inner world to the outer reality that any of us see. That fundamental separation of inner world from outer world — I mean, come on, we are all projecting worlds into being. It’s just that money, power, privilege, wound, and just plain stubbornness concretize what is one idea, fluid in nature, into a full cultural cement pad.
I’m committed to the “trouble” that we stir together that brings us back to wholeness. I’m committed to some kind of essence in this that I don’t fully understand. I’m committed to finding others, and together reclaiming some sanity that seems to have been lost exponentially in so many forms of institutional thought.
The picture above, which I also used recently for another post, is of buds on a tree in my front yard. I’m posting it again, because I like the feeling of spring springing. These buds seem to know what to do. They come forward in the right timing. They are whole. They are part of a scaled whole. Perhaps they are cheering us humans. Perhaps they are just going about their business. I would suggest it is our business to get back to the whole orientation.
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
I’ve been thinking. About buds. And movement a foot. Here’s to budding and thinking it together.
