Everything we do is sacred ...

Thanks in part to a recent visit from two of my favorite teachers, I have been thinking lately about the ideas of Wholeness and Completeness as being analogous to the concepts of Freedom and Enlightenment.

With this particular perspective in mind, I am now looking at En-lightenment as a process of completing our personal Karma, AKA - the work that we came here to do, or what Rumi calls "The one thing." In this model, as my yoga teacher puts it, the people in our lives are simply the "bringers of our karma" ... which is to say that they show up in our lives to trigger the underlying issues and challenges that already exist within the matrix of our being. This idea is totally consistent with the commonly accepted notions that "our greatest enemy is also our greatest teacher" and that "we are all mirrors for one another." Therefore, when we have completed a particular piece of karma and resolved the pre-existing condition or difficulty within our own soul, then almost magically, the other person ceases to be "the problem." In truth, the "problem," if indeed there is a problem; lies not with the "other one", but more accurately within ourselves.

In readying myself to attend the June Olympic Men's Counsel Gathering in Port Townsend, a song came to me while I was offering up some prayers in my office. This song continued to sing itself through me as I drove to the Edmonds ferry landing. Gradually the song became the words that follow ... and once written down, the song was lost; apparently gone back to wherever it came from to begin with. I give thanks for that. Here is what remains of the song:

I came here today to be with all of you in a sacred way.

To nourish my soul on that which is Godlike in each one of you ... both the sacred and the profane. For those things that are in you are also in me. We are mirrors for one another like that.

When we gather together in this way, in a circle, with an alter at the very center. When we come clean with sage and smoke and our good intentions to share our journey from the heart of our own experience. When we come together as conscious men; then everything we do is sacred ... Sacred joy, sacred tears, sacred laughter, grief, fear and anger. Our wildness, our silence, our agreements and our confrontations; everything is sacred.

We are all here on this Earth to have a complete experience. We are all here on this Earth to have an experience of wholeness. Not a mere musing mind you, not some fancy notion, not even a really, really, really good idea; but an actual, honest to God full body experience. We are already complete, in tact, round as this circle is round, with no empty chairs, nothing lost, nothing absent, nothing broken ... Because even the lost, absent and broken pieces of ourselves are part of what makes us whole. In fact, we can not be whole without them.

This is not about perfection, whatever that may mean to each of us. This is not about fixing ourselves so that we might be different than we really are. This is not about looking good.

This is about being honest with ourselves and resting in the truth of what is so for each one of us.

There is no magic formula that can do this for everyone. There is only "The Way"

And inside of this Way, there is room enough for all.

The truth of the Way is simply this: When we have accepted all the lost, absent and broken pieces of ourselves,
then there will be room enough for everyone to enter into our hearts. When we become less constricted, we have more room for others .. and when we have more room for others, then we ourselves move closer to wholeness.
The air around us becomes easier to breathe. There is less struggle and less energy wasted trying to change things. In fact, the less we try to change others, the more we ourselves become the change we wish to see in the world.

This is a beautiful, hard and very inconvenient teaching ... and there are few who find The Way.

We often say to ourselves, "This person is in the way. That person is in the way" ...

When in truth, that "other" person is The Way.


Shanti,

Dharma Jay Lewis (Michael Scott Brooks) - Summer 2009