Resting in the Grace of the World.
This dewdrop world
Is but a dewdrop world
And yet, and yet —
~Issa
Today is my birthday. I’m 59. You’d think I’d know a lot by now, after traveling 59 times around the sun and all - Yes and No. The truth is that there was someone I thought I was or was trying to be all along that kept me from believing and acting in ways that let me be myself.
What I do know after 729 tides shared with the moon and 21,535 days spent with “day-blind stars”, is that the motion of life (time and space) is a great purifier, connects us to the cycles and attitudinal filters which help us process life inter-dimensionally. When we see eternally through wisdom we respond infinitely through love. We are, after all, a heartbeat of noble intention serving the greater good. I know this to be True, because I feel it with all my being - my breath, my body, my thoughts, my mouth, and the touch of these fingers on the keyboard transcribing what my trusted sources want to say,
“Be True”.
However, when I seek this truth from someplace outside myself, I mute these expressions from the immediate world.
The thing is, I got into the habit of assuming I had to be the catalyst of change, and expected that something was going to sabotage my deepest desire to serve which caused me to believe that I was creating for a Source outside myself.
I became lost in creating community curriculums that were not acknowledged, joined a committee whose vision I did not share, dropped my “guru” whose ethics I questioned, and cared way too much about how my programs landed with all the friends I admired instead of trusting my process.
There were all sorts of reasons why I failed, like COVID, my mother’s death and father’s health, the squirrels in the attic and the cluster flies in the bedrooms, and not enough trees on the streets - everything was to blame. It all seemed to get in the way of mastering the ability and authority to take a step forward, which ultimately forced me to take many steps back to repair, restore, or redirect the failures that preceded.
I appointed a lot of power to the people around me, which displaced the power I needed to value my time and concentrate on the purging, sorting, and sifting necessary to reveal what was waiting to be created.
And so, when the really hard stuff started to hit the fan this year, I was knocked off my steady, seeking grace and hoping in ways that distorted the reality of what I could effect:
I hoped that somehow the darkness of winter wouldn’t come - that somehow the flying squirrels will leave on their own - that somehow my father will survive rehab and go back to his old life - that somehow the tumor in my dog Henry’s lung won’t cause him pain or that I will be able to survive his death - that somehow all of my family and friends and their children are staved from any illness and the suffering of disease.
Somehow, it became clear that everything I believed about what was true (and who would be here today and not be here tomorrow or next year or whatever) was total bullshit, and was keeping me from these pillars of wisdom:
Life is fleeting: Change is constant and living a “dewdrop world” means recognizing that life is fragile, transient and can vanish in an instant. Buddhists call this Impermanence. We are challenged to Learn How to Remember the Truth, when we can be grateful, include all planes - spiritual, physical, psychological - as sensate guidance and completely surrender to our True Nature and Self (all that you are when worldliness and identities fall away).
Suffering is Grace: As human beings, pain is inevitable, however, suffering is optional. This optionality offers us the grace to recognize that this is what life feels like when we believe we are separate. We are challenged to Understand Ourselves, to recognize the tendency to seek meaning and make sense of everything, even in the light of impermanence. To make room for these emotions (rather than enflame) and offer them comfort and TLC.
There is Enduring Beauty in Everything: Everything in life is included in the spectrum of experience. Good needs bad to exist. It is when we prefer one over the other that perception and beliefs limit what we see and receive. Gripping to one, means pushing the other away. Avoiding means removing. Forgiving allows what is useful, integral and enduring to repair and restore.
That’s it.
Sat (the Peace of Truth), Chit (the Love of Consciousness), and Ananda (the Understanding of Bliss).
This moment, this breath, this thought, this intention, this will, this word, this action, this world.
Wishing you all rest, remembrance and resilience in the next year around the sun.
Love,
Annette