Tag: humanity

The Wisdom of Slow

There is a profound blessing in aging: the pause for reflection. As I grow older, I find that I think more slowly, thoughts moving through at their own pace, unfolding, flowering. I often walk that way too, step by step, holding the awareness that I may never pass this way again: this moment, this experience, this perspective. I remind myself not to miss the subtleties, the hidden beauty, the wonder. Truthfully, it feels to me like the wisdom of a lifetime.

There is a great push to rush through life in the 21st century, as if we were running a race or trying to escape a predator. Many of us feel that pressure—violence and hatred at our doors, poverty and loss not far behind. Everything, particularly in the current political climate, has become a game of survival. Every film, TV show, and news story focuses on outrunning an enemy, surviving an apocalyptic situation. Death always threatening. Yet, life on Earth is so much more than this, if we pause and remember.

Sunrise and sunset each day. Seasonal changes. The love of family and friends. Since the beginning of time, these have always been present, just as there have always been fears and uncertainties. We came here to experience it all. This century may be particularly challenging, but this is the soulwork we signed up for. To remain calm and peaceful in the midst of chaos; loving and kind in the midst of conflict. Humans are evolving, slowly, often imperceptibly, but if we remember the long view we can take a slow deep breath and continue.

I keep coming back to slowness. It seems the key to so much. If you and I rush, we lose one another in the process. We forget who we are at the soul level and why we are here ultimately. When I listen to my friends, slowly and carefully, I really hear the voice of their inner being, what they want to express, to me and to the world. If I speak without rushing my thoughts, I express my heart’s essence. Together, we share our common humanity. When I walk slowly through a park or sanctuary, I fully experience all of Nature with each step and each breath. I hear birdsong and see every season’s flowering. This is the wonder of being alive, no matter what else is going on in the world.

As the days and years pass, I feel all of this more acutely. Yes, my soul is eternal, but this particular lifetime is unique, a gift not to be wasted or hurried through to an imaginary finish line. Every single moment holds within it a drop of infinity, the spirit of all that is, which I can only receive if I slow down and breathe it in with gratitude and appreciation. It is then that time falls away, and my soul and my humanity are One.

No Where

If you walk or sit in silence long enough, you blend with everything. You are no longer separate from the world around you, gazing outward, because there is no out or in. The mind stops grasping and relaxes into blankness. You are no where—because where ceases to exist. This is infinity. Some call it Presence or universal consciousness. It is pure awareness without parameters or definitions. Just being.

I sometimes find myself there when I am walking in Nature or deep in meditation (and once as I was coming out of surgery). But even there is a misnomer because how can there exist in no where? I assure you I am not trying to trick you with word games. I am attempting to move beyond words to the silence of the soul. Of course, you can’t really find your way to silence with language. To describe the process of becoming completely silent seems almost contradictory.

Yet perhaps it is not entirely impossible to offer directional metaphors, as the poet Rumi did in all his work. Recently, a friend commented that the deep meditational experience of infinity was akin to being in the field Rumi describes, which is “out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,” judging. Remembering the words of that poem immediately opened the door of Presence even further for me. A field that is empty of everything but shared spirit.

That is exactly how I felt within the depths of the profound silence of no where. Separation completely fell away. No opinions, no judgments of others, just awareness without any definitions or language to infringe on the vision of the soul, pure and true. Perhaps this is the purpose of all life: to reach that experience of being completely immersed in the silence of the soul. Because within it there is no longer inner or outer conflict, only peace.

We humans often talk of peace on Earth and aspire to it. Yet it seems to drift further and further away. Maybe that distance is an illusion, and in truth we are moving closer to it whenever we reverse our gaze from outward to inward. Because that is where peace lies, undisturbed and eternal. Our inner vision can direct us every day to living in a peace that radiates outward to all those we meet. In spite of the conflicts of the times we are now living through, more and more people are being catapulted inward by outer discord.

Our souls are guiding us in this direction, to seek the harmony and oneness that lives at the center of all creation. The no where within the where. Perhaps we came to Earth for this very reason. To experience the extremes of separation and then stand in the field of infinity, recognizing all that we see as one heart, one spirit. Humanity and divinity as one. Home at last.