Moon musings
What I get out of my spirituality is directly proportional to what I put into it. Always has been, always will be. I've known this in one way or another for a long time, years, but it's an easy truth to turn away from because it puts the burden of responsibility squarely on my shoulders. I have to make the effort. God isn't likely to come knocking on my door, but She is likely to open up if I knock on Hers.
I don't think I'm going to get so caught up anymore in dissecting my motives for everything, because if you're looking for selfishness, even if you're looking for it out of disgust or because it's what you're afraid you'll find, then you'll find it. It's always there, because life is selfish, which is how it survives. If there is a trick, it's to do as little harm as possible, and to nurture rather than tear down. Nurture, rather than weaken. Nurture, rather than ignore.
Listen: Imagine you're at the beach, standing at a tide pool, and from that tide pool you fill an eyedropper with ocean water. You squeeze the bulb until a single drop is hanging from the tip of the dropper. Examine that drop. Now look past it, to the ocean. Droplet. Ocean. Droplet. Ocean. One and the same. Let the droplet fall into the tide pool. Now… You wouldn't do this, so just imagine what if somebody else did it: Imagine if somebody took some motor oil and poured it into that tide pool. Now look out to the ocean again. Tide pool. Ocean. One and the same. Eventually the tide's going to come back in, and the water and the motor oil are going to be washed out to sea. They were always one, but now it's easier to see: The motor oil disperses across the top of the water until eventually you can't see it at all anymore, but it's still there, the only reason you can't see it is because it has spread. Eventually because of winds and tides, that oil will spread very, very far. This person with the motor oil didn't just pollute the tide pool, they polluted the ocean.
The only reason I used the tide pool in this analogy instead of just the droplet is because it's hard to pollute a single droplet, but pretend our bioterrorist somehow managed it, managed to just pollute one drop. Same effect. Droplet, ocean, same thing.
People are like that. Individuals are the droplets, and humanity is the ocean. Individual. Humanity. Same thing. You, humanity: Same thing. Me, humanity, same thing. What we do to each other… how we talk to strangers in the park, whether we yell at our kids or not, whether or not we extend to someone just the courtesy of our time, a smile… it has a ripple effect. It might not carry far, but then again, it might. To illustrate, here is a very short story called Games, by Reinhard Lettau, who made the point much more effectively than I'm managing to on my own:
"Two gentlemen make an appointment, but in addition to that each sends a friend to a given place. These friends of the friends also walk up to each other at the proper time at the given place, peel off their gloves, rejoice in meeting. Immediately afterwards they make a new appointment at a different place, immediately walk off in opposite directions, visit friends and send them also to a given place, where these friends greet each other, in turn make an appointment, walk away, find friends whom they send to a place they have thought up. On their separate ways these two will see gentlemen standing here and there throughout the town, shaking hands, making appointments, walking away from each other, soon many gentlemen know each other, the town is humming, a stranger who is driving through it says, 'This is a friendly town.'"
The Web hums. It must, with all the life popping in and out all the time, all the activity, all the strands crossing and separating and twining and going off in different directions to merge with and intersect other strands. This is why, as my friend Diane said, "It is of great concern to the Tribe which mountains you climb and how you came to find them." What you do affects the Tribe, affects us all. We, humanity, are like a single organism, and what we do to each other we truly, truly do to ourselves. Likewise what we do to ourselves, we do to humanity, and that's the part that even Chief Seattle didn't mention.
This was all much clearer tonight, in ritual, before I tried to wrap words around it. It started with just a vision of a droplet, then the ocean, then a single faceless person on the other side of the world, backing out to an image of the earth with all the people on it connected as one.
We are one. We are a Web within the Web.
The Web itself strives for equilibrium, for balance, because that is the nature of life. Things that draw us out of the Web, out of alignment with it, are harmful to the individual, and harmful to the overall pattern of the Web. My mother's physical pain made her connection to the Web tenuous, which is why my family shed so few tears when she died - when she transitioned she was not only not in pain anymore, she was (is) finally fully reconnected, she had (has) become the Web. In my case, historically it's been drugs and alcohol that I've allowed to pull me out of alignment with the Web, with society, with you, with my own highest self. I've corrected that now, for today, and the Web is elastic, it pulls those who are out of alignment back into it once the countering force is negated. I'm back in alignment now (more or less) but I can't relax and just bask, because I am an alcoholic and an addict of the sort that, if I don't continue a program of maintenance, I'll soon spiral out of alignment again. I know me, I've seen me do it, time and time again. But even if it wasn't for the drugs and alcohol, life pulls people at least a little bit out of alignment all the time, just the stresses and strains and emotional and spiritual conflicts that are a part of being human, they keep us in a constant "vibratory" state such that perfect harmony, perfect serenity, perfect equilibrium isn't really quite possible for most of us. That's okay, though, it's part of what we learn from being alive. The best we can do is be conscious of our discontent, and take steps to exist in as much harmony as we can.
Drugs and alcohol will not bring me into harmony, I know that (and so do you, if you knew me more than two years ago). My job won't bring me into alignment, no way. Lazy Sunday afternoons won't do it, and neither will vacations in Colorado or nacho chili cheese pizzas or sex or quiet evenings in front of the fireplace with a good book, or falling asleep on public transportation. So what will do it? I already said: The Web itself is elastic, it will pull me back into alignment if I stop kicking and fussing and trying to control shit, and just relax and let it do its thing. (If I relax too much it will pull me into perfect alignment, which means I'll be dead, but we have a strong survival instinct to keep that from happening until all else fails or until we've simply earned the respite.)
"Aligning the sacred within with the sacred without" is key, but I don't really know what that means to me, exactly, or how to go about it, it's just something else that occurred to me tonight during ritual. Namaste, recognizing the likeness of the sacred within and the sacred without is a start, but aligning them…? Karol and I used to do some pretty interesting energy exercises, but nothing that really focused on the sacred per se, and now I wish I had a partner to experiment on that level with again, but oh well I'll make do without.
I knew drugs and alcohol were shutting down connections willy nilly. For alcoholic addicts of my sort, that becomes a sort of self-perpetuating cycle; You see it happening but you don't know what to do about it, and pretty soon you convince yourself it's okay, in fact it's preferable that you limit your associations, who needs a bunch of pesky friends around all the time anyway when you can just associate with other alcoholics and addicts and dealers? Yeah, that's the ticket, just the people I need to have close. And then one day maybe you wake up and you look out the window and you see a whole bunch of people having a picnic in the park across the street and they're laughing and having a good time and that is so many miles from your current field of experience and finally it gives you pause to wonder just what the fuck you're doing with your life, and this time, this one time unlike all the others, your disease maybe doesn't slam the door on that thought and you actually make it so far as to realize that something is critically wrong with the current picture, and you figure you'd better have a drink and a couple bong hits to sort this out.
That my friends, is insanity, thinking the best way out the hole is to dig it a little deeper. Another name for that behavior is "doing the same thing over & over and expecting different results."
So what will restore me to sanity? Well, first recognizing that I'm powerless over the things (drugs & alcohol) that keep pulling me out of alignment again and again and again. Then once that behavior's constructively negated, just letting the Web do its thing. It helps, I think, to have a little faith, but I don't know where I found that at first, I just know that the concept of the Web is astonishing in its complexity and beautiful in its simplicity and fascinating and it fills me with hope because it feels so absolutely right to me, for me. It's Home, and I'm already there, already a part of it, and so are you, and you, and you, and we're all connected, and ever so much more so now that neither one of us is all fucked up almost all the time.
The Web is a power infinitely greater than me, and for today it has (arguably, but I don't care what the cynics say) restored me to sanity. And for that I am truly grateful.
Good night, friends. Happy full Moon.
I don't think I'm going to get so caught up anymore in dissecting my motives for everything, because if you're looking for selfishness, even if you're looking for it out of disgust or because it's what you're afraid you'll find, then you'll find it. It's always there, because life is selfish, which is how it survives. If there is a trick, it's to do as little harm as possible, and to nurture rather than tear down. Nurture, rather than weaken. Nurture, rather than ignore.
Listen: Imagine you're at the beach, standing at a tide pool, and from that tide pool you fill an eyedropper with ocean water. You squeeze the bulb until a single drop is hanging from the tip of the dropper. Examine that drop. Now look past it, to the ocean. Droplet. Ocean. Droplet. Ocean. One and the same. Let the droplet fall into the tide pool. Now… You wouldn't do this, so just imagine what if somebody else did it: Imagine if somebody took some motor oil and poured it into that tide pool. Now look out to the ocean again. Tide pool. Ocean. One and the same. Eventually the tide's going to come back in, and the water and the motor oil are going to be washed out to sea. They were always one, but now it's easier to see: The motor oil disperses across the top of the water until eventually you can't see it at all anymore, but it's still there, the only reason you can't see it is because it has spread. Eventually because of winds and tides, that oil will spread very, very far. This person with the motor oil didn't just pollute the tide pool, they polluted the ocean.
The only reason I used the tide pool in this analogy instead of just the droplet is because it's hard to pollute a single droplet, but pretend our bioterrorist somehow managed it, managed to just pollute one drop. Same effect. Droplet, ocean, same thing.
People are like that. Individuals are the droplets, and humanity is the ocean. Individual. Humanity. Same thing. You, humanity: Same thing. Me, humanity, same thing. What we do to each other… how we talk to strangers in the park, whether we yell at our kids or not, whether or not we extend to someone just the courtesy of our time, a smile… it has a ripple effect. It might not carry far, but then again, it might. To illustrate, here is a very short story called Games, by Reinhard Lettau, who made the point much more effectively than I'm managing to on my own:
"Two gentlemen make an appointment, but in addition to that each sends a friend to a given place. These friends of the friends also walk up to each other at the proper time at the given place, peel off their gloves, rejoice in meeting. Immediately afterwards they make a new appointment at a different place, immediately walk off in opposite directions, visit friends and send them also to a given place, where these friends greet each other, in turn make an appointment, walk away, find friends whom they send to a place they have thought up. On their separate ways these two will see gentlemen standing here and there throughout the town, shaking hands, making appointments, walking away from each other, soon many gentlemen know each other, the town is humming, a stranger who is driving through it says, 'This is a friendly town.'"
The Web hums. It must, with all the life popping in and out all the time, all the activity, all the strands crossing and separating and twining and going off in different directions to merge with and intersect other strands. This is why, as my friend Diane said, "It is of great concern to the Tribe which mountains you climb and how you came to find them." What you do affects the Tribe, affects us all. We, humanity, are like a single organism, and what we do to each other we truly, truly do to ourselves. Likewise what we do to ourselves, we do to humanity, and that's the part that even Chief Seattle didn't mention.
This was all much clearer tonight, in ritual, before I tried to wrap words around it. It started with just a vision of a droplet, then the ocean, then a single faceless person on the other side of the world, backing out to an image of the earth with all the people on it connected as one.
We are one. We are a Web within the Web.
The Web itself strives for equilibrium, for balance, because that is the nature of life. Things that draw us out of the Web, out of alignment with it, are harmful to the individual, and harmful to the overall pattern of the Web. My mother's physical pain made her connection to the Web tenuous, which is why my family shed so few tears when she died - when she transitioned she was not only not in pain anymore, she was (is) finally fully reconnected, she had (has) become the Web. In my case, historically it's been drugs and alcohol that I've allowed to pull me out of alignment with the Web, with society, with you, with my own highest self. I've corrected that now, for today, and the Web is elastic, it pulls those who are out of alignment back into it once the countering force is negated. I'm back in alignment now (more or less) but I can't relax and just bask, because I am an alcoholic and an addict of the sort that, if I don't continue a program of maintenance, I'll soon spiral out of alignment again. I know me, I've seen me do it, time and time again. But even if it wasn't for the drugs and alcohol, life pulls people at least a little bit out of alignment all the time, just the stresses and strains and emotional and spiritual conflicts that are a part of being human, they keep us in a constant "vibratory" state such that perfect harmony, perfect serenity, perfect equilibrium isn't really quite possible for most of us. That's okay, though, it's part of what we learn from being alive. The best we can do is be conscious of our discontent, and take steps to exist in as much harmony as we can.
Drugs and alcohol will not bring me into harmony, I know that (and so do you, if you knew me more than two years ago). My job won't bring me into alignment, no way. Lazy Sunday afternoons won't do it, and neither will vacations in Colorado or nacho chili cheese pizzas or sex or quiet evenings in front of the fireplace with a good book, or falling asleep on public transportation. So what will do it? I already said: The Web itself is elastic, it will pull me back into alignment if I stop kicking and fussing and trying to control shit, and just relax and let it do its thing. (If I relax too much it will pull me into perfect alignment, which means I'll be dead, but we have a strong survival instinct to keep that from happening until all else fails or until we've simply earned the respite.)
"Aligning the sacred within with the sacred without" is key, but I don't really know what that means to me, exactly, or how to go about it, it's just something else that occurred to me tonight during ritual. Namaste, recognizing the likeness of the sacred within and the sacred without is a start, but aligning them…? Karol and I used to do some pretty interesting energy exercises, but nothing that really focused on the sacred per se, and now I wish I had a partner to experiment on that level with again, but oh well I'll make do without.
I knew drugs and alcohol were shutting down connections willy nilly. For alcoholic addicts of my sort, that becomes a sort of self-perpetuating cycle; You see it happening but you don't know what to do about it, and pretty soon you convince yourself it's okay, in fact it's preferable that you limit your associations, who needs a bunch of pesky friends around all the time anyway when you can just associate with other alcoholics and addicts and dealers? Yeah, that's the ticket, just the people I need to have close. And then one day maybe you wake up and you look out the window and you see a whole bunch of people having a picnic in the park across the street and they're laughing and having a good time and that is so many miles from your current field of experience and finally it gives you pause to wonder just what the fuck you're doing with your life, and this time, this one time unlike all the others, your disease maybe doesn't slam the door on that thought and you actually make it so far as to realize that something is critically wrong with the current picture, and you figure you'd better have a drink and a couple bong hits to sort this out.
That my friends, is insanity, thinking the best way out the hole is to dig it a little deeper. Another name for that behavior is "doing the same thing over & over and expecting different results."
So what will restore me to sanity? Well, first recognizing that I'm powerless over the things (drugs & alcohol) that keep pulling me out of alignment again and again and again. Then once that behavior's constructively negated, just letting the Web do its thing. It helps, I think, to have a little faith, but I don't know where I found that at first, I just know that the concept of the Web is astonishing in its complexity and beautiful in its simplicity and fascinating and it fills me with hope because it feels so absolutely right to me, for me. It's Home, and I'm already there, already a part of it, and so are you, and you, and you, and we're all connected, and ever so much more so now that neither one of us is all fucked up almost all the time.
The Web is a power infinitely greater than me, and for today it has (arguably, but I don't care what the cynics say) restored me to sanity. And for that I am truly grateful.
Good night, friends. Happy full Moon.