The other night I got that inkling. A tickle of spaciousness. One minute I was trying to decipher an ambiguity in the building code, and the next I was alone in the room at dusk, standing beside the window, trying to decipher the ambiguity of a meadow. I relaxed, settled—something moved within me.
Unity, like freedom, is the utter magnitude of being.
Later that evening I witnessed the great truth of our moment: the real pandemic is expertise. Do you notice how delectable it is to seek contradiction? How gratifying it can be to tell some other group of people they’re doing it wrong? To watch someone else tell people they’re doing it wrong, and to do so magnificently?
It even struck me as funny for a time, this endless parade of serious people explaining serious things. Zoom out just a bit and the words dissolve into a luscious cacophony, a pudding of emphasis and evidence and reasons, and then you see it: we’re a plague of trouble-shooters. We just can’t help ourselves. We could be plopped into the center of an alien culture and in three seconds flat describe everything wrong with it, and how to make it right.
There’s another way, of course, but it’s a quiet way—a way that partakes of not knowing as a way of coming to know. It’s not a way of being right, but a way of being true. And this is delectable also, but not cheaply so. The mockery we’ve made of reason is the inevitable result of our belief that appearances are reality, and that thereby we may profit from deceit. So we drown in a world of images and talismans. We compete to be seen and heard, and forget that the true nature of our lives is invisible.
In this way of being true, we quite literally come to life. The reality at the heart of our being takes form and finds authentic expression through us, and as us, in the world. We become conduits for the utter magnitude of being, and it’s enough to simply allow this expansiveness to flow through us into the world. It’s enough. This way doesn’t require white boards or Ted Talks. There are no concepts to learn that will help us do better, no intellectual achievements required, no self-improvement programs to complete; it requires only the acknowledgment and holding of what is truly real within us, a movement from the unnatural condition of fragmentation within ourselves to the cohesiveness of genuine being.
The sense that something is wrong, seriously wrong, haunts us, but this is simply how the world feels when we are fractured inside. The world echoes our pain. The mind is like a landscape and the heart is like the water. Disconnection between the two makes deserts out of us. It makes our culture barren, our thoughts dry, our concepts inflexible. We’re forced to find water and we project this onto the world. And then we go to work, wounded and dis-integrated as we are, to fix the world. We put on the badge of trouble-shooter and enter the fray. This sense that something is wrong drives us, compels us to keep going. It blinds us to the simplicity of the only solution we ever needed.
In this way of being true, we come home to ourselves first and somehow… somehow… with reparation of the once-fragmented elements of ourselves, we reconnect with the Whole, and we sense the grace that permeates and sustains this world. This ethereal nourishment flows through us. The waters return and we sense the potentiality of being, the depths to which movements within time are rooted in timelessness. The chronic sensation that something is wrong is eased, the channels in us open, and new life enters us. There’s nothing we need do but allow this to occur.
There’s a great documentary film entitled Fools and Dreamers about the regeneration of a forest in New Zealand, which contains a beautiful discovery I think is applicable to what I’m trying to say here: the quickest way to regrow a forest is to do nothing. That’s not a direct quote—or it might be—but that’s the idea. Nature will be nature. Life will be life. We can find ways to augment and assist and participate in the natural flow of life, but we don’t need to take charge of it. And I think, perhaps, this is a great fallacy of the present age: that we need experts to show us the way. We need top-shelf trouble-shooters to keep us on track. We need to know exactly what we’re doing at all times, and do it.
But we don’t. We simply need the wisdom of our own hearts, and the rest will follow. I think the regeneration will be swift when we finally let it come. It will not be planned or mapped, but it will come to Life.
Embracing Forever 
Love it Michael.
“a quiet way—a way that partakes of not knowing as a way of coming to know. It’s not a way of being right, but a way of being true. And this is delectable also,”
Wow! Yesss! Bravo!
I can hardly believe I’m still standing to see a time arriving that is so ME!
When I no longer have to perform within the structure to be heard.
When I no longer have to survive the system in order to catalyze it.
Cruising along savoring this past year in pure action as arising from within
from outside, inside, beyond the old structures
from everywhere and from nowhere
from everything and from nothing
from the spaces in between
from infinite possibilities of Indra’s Net of Jewels
from the formless void
from the quantum foam
from the dragons of Sophia Christ Consciousness
It’s been deliciousness itself!
With so much more coming now!
Love you xoxo🌺
Christina
“The only response is Love. The only time is Now. And We are the Ones.”
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Thank you, Christina! That’s a beautiful line-up of descriptions of the time you are living. I am thinking you should be the color commentator in the announcing booth for this transformation we’re all living through together! Thank you for sharing this Light!
Love you also–
Michael
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What a beautiful and insightful view of the world Michael. I sense that you’re right. Certainly in my own life, I’ve come to similar conclusions that I don’t need to fix myself or life, but allow life to unfold. May the restoration come swiftly, beautifully, and mysteriously. 🧡
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Thanks, Brad. Yes… allowing ourselves to be who we are is a beautiful and subtle thing. Moving in time and space without always having the agenda or understanding to inform the movement, which sometimes is just the song from within! I do hope the restoration is swift… or renovation… or whatever it is… Haha.
Peace
Michael
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Your post inspired mine and I linked back to you. Thanks.
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Awesome! Thank you, Brad!
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You’re most welcome!
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Beautiful, Michael and yes, being true is so important.
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Thank you, Vera. It is the starting point… in so many ways.
Peace
Michael
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My best wishes for you.
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So beautifully said Michael. I love the way you essay yourself to the very depth, the very truth of being, sharing it in a way that’s soothing and complete.
Last night I discovered, again, that there’s no one here. This is the truth of which you speak. When we get out of the way of Life there’s only love.
Alison
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Thank you, Alison! Your sentence, “Last night I discovered” reminded me instantly of an opening line of a Rumi poem. It’s that sensation of the timeless uniting with what has emerged in time. And yes… so true, just like the regrowth of our forests, it’s not so much what we do, but what we allow to be. Thanks for being here! Always a pleasure, Alison.
With Love
Michael
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Hi Michael, what a nice post! Hello from Aotearoa! We just arrived in New Zealand a couple days ago and are in managed isolation in Christchurch for a couple weeks, where they are feeding us well and treating us like kings in a four star hotel. Enough time for me to catch up on some reading. 🙂 I watched that documentary too.
I am glad to hear you are well and full hearted. And writing. Stay well. Sending you warm summer wishes from down under.
Kristina
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Thank you, Kristina! Wow, New Zealand!? Would love to hear more about these travels and what is happening for you. Sounds a lovely place to visit right now. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you and I’m sending you best wishes for beautiful journeys and travels down under.
Peace
Michael
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I broke up with my last boyfriend (the one before my finally compatible partner) because he was constantly trying describing everything wrong with everything, and how to make it right. I still think the mainstream media is a strong reinforcement of the idea that we are all messed up. And by golly, I’m gonna fix them. 😉 On second thought, I think I’ll just keep on painting and writing and doing next to nothing in my backyard which is becoming a forest. Thanks for the reinforcement of coming to life.
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Good point on the mainstream media… It’s clearly profits from the notion that someone out there is all messed up! I like your plan of creating and being who you are and sharing snippets as the WordPress muse strikes you. It’s a good way… 🙂 I think this idea of fixing things is a pretty masculine way, too, or can be. In it’s problematic form I guess you’d say it involves changing something external without really listening to it first, which ends up being an attempt to fix symptoms. Which doesn’t work too well! But we’re all trying to do it! Haha. Hope you are well and enjoying your winter…
Peace
Michael
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Of course some things do need fixing, so it’s good to have people who can do that. 🙂
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“it’s a quiet way—a way that partakes of not knowing as a way of coming to know.” Yes and amen!! You’ve beautifully articulated a simple yet utterly complicated truth. Thank you Michael.
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Thank you, Colleen! I’m glad you dropped by and that you enjoyed it!
Peace
Michael
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I found this at once, soothing, Michael. It seems like the more we do the less we get done, and the more we worry…the more we worry. As I get older I know the answer is to let it all go and just be. Not the easiest thing to accomplish when you have been conditioned to “fix” everything…you know…that co-dependent personality that thinks if she can take care of all the problems around her then all the problems within her will miraculously vanish!
I am truly a work in progress but the important thing is I am making progress. And the greatest advancement seems to come when I just allow life to unfold.
I hope all is super in your world…looks like snow for you? Stay warm…stay safe!
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Thanks, Lori! Yes, we got some snow today–not terrible, but it was a good piece of exercise to clear off the driveway. Something like 10 inches, plus or minus, with lots of wind and deeper drifts in all the nooks and crannies around steps and vehicles.
Yes, something to be said for trusting. It’s always a good reminder for me as well. We do our best, but it works out fine in the end when we couple it with trust and wisdom. Trust is like an elixir I think. Everything just seems different when we’re able to cultivate this beautiful relationship to and within ourselves and to the universe!
Peace
Michael
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Hi Michael 🙂 It seems crazy to me that 10 inches would be considered “some,” though it is cold enough here this morning to feel like a flake or two 😉
I love that you see trust as an “elixir!” It certainly feels like a bridge that connects us to the Universe!
Stay well my friend. I hope your writing projects are going well ❤
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I felt the presence of the Divine in your words. The time of the gurus and “self-improvement” is indeed coming to an end. But we needed to experience it to get to where we are now.
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Thank you, Julie! And yes… I’m sure what has been has been what was necessary–as a response given to the response we ourselves gave to the discovery of our own existence… If that makes any sense. 🙂
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It makes perfect sense.🙂
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I often hear the phrase “let it go” and thus see some clearer logic to this phrase in your post above.,
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Thanks USFMan. Yes, I agree “let it go” can be part of getting in touch with the truth inside ourselves, provided it’s a letting go of the emotional manipulation that so much media is designed to entrap us with. What remains after that, if we’re attentive to it, is the arising of who we truly are and wish to be… Thanks for reading!
Peace
Michael
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Very nice Michael! Take care and thank you for following.
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Thank you, Kelly! Appreciate the read!
Peace
Michael
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Peace to you also.
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