I come by it naturally, this wanting to save the world business. Well I say that, but then again it is curious. I could have just as easily become focused only on my own survival right out of the gate. I didn’t, because I think I have never imagined that my survival in the womb and through birth was my own doing. I clearly had a desire to be here, but there is no such thing as “self made.” No, I needed forces much greater than myself to complete my transition into relativity. I don’t talk about this often, but while I don’t have a direct memory of my birth, what I have always had is a sense of the field that came to my rescue. Always. I feel like people have always tended to tilt their heads ever so slightly (or not so slightly) sideways when trying to perceive me. And this I believe is the reason why. It’s because there is a part of me that never quite settled into relativity. There is a part of me that remains in the field.
Now I don’t think I am special by any means. I actually think this is true of all people. When I refer to the self, I am referring to the part of us that is embodied in, situated in, and perceiving through relative (embodied) reality. When I refer to the Self I am referring to the part of us that remains in the field (aka The Absolute… which many people like to call God). We all spend most of our time situated in our selves, but we also all have experiences of our Selves. How much we are in touch with the latter depends on how aware we are of the field. Let’s go ahead and capitalize that: The Field. For really my whole life my inner world has tended toward the latter while I have struggled with the former. I think my best friend Micki says it the best when she points out that my struggle is to be human. Of course I am human. Very. It’s the living into it that has been challenging. Another way of saying this is that I have tended to keep the world at arms distance. And that makes my spiritual journey interesting, because rather than it being about any attempt to transcend relativity (being human), it is actually about dropping down into it. The Absolute makes perfect sense to me. The Relative, well, not always so much.
But I am fully committed to this path. Go humanity! Actually, I do feel that way about humanity. That too is curious. As much as I have always tended to hold it at bay, I actually love humanity very much. I think that being here in the relative world is the most beautiful thing ever. And that’s why I have always (and I do mean always) wanted to save the world so badly. I also have a sense that this is not a new profession for my soul. When I was young, let’s say in the 5-10 age range, I had this recurring dream. You know the kind that when you wake up from it, you feel like you just woke up into some twilight zone. In other words, it feels like you just woke up into a dream rather than out of one. It’s super disorienting.
In this dream I was a young child. I recognized myself to be myself, even if not quite the same physical self. I am in a war torn city. Let’s say it was somewhere in Europe. The city is in complete ruins. I don’t have any parents or a family, nor do I seem to need any. I seem to be functioning as a grown adult, even though I am very much a child. I am part of an underground network that rescues people. Because I am small and a child, I am able to navigate the ruins largely undetected to get to people. I, by myself, go find them and then guide them to safety. The dream is so real I could touch it. And that is all that ever happened in it. I would go rescue people. Then I would wake up startled and confused about where I was.
Now trust me, I know that a therapist would have a heyday with this. And that’s fine. It’s all interconnected- one life to the next, each building on every one before it. Some dreams are strictly metaphorical, some are Self-journeying, some are memories, and some are all of the above. Whatever the case here, the effect that the dream had on me was to develop a very strong sense of life purpose at a very young age. My father used to say to me that if I was insistent on saving the world (more often expressed as changing the world), I would be miserable. Did I mention that I am hard-headed?? Yeah. That didn’t deter me, it just spurred me on. But, Dad, I am about to say something that I have rarely ever said to you (if ever!). You best sit down for this. You sitting? Oh, good. You were right. I’m only admitting to this one thing, so don’t go getting a big head or anything! 😉
Now that is not to say that I have been miserable in my life. I would never characterize my life that way. However, railing against what is is painful. It is. Yet, rail we must. Right? If we don’t, all will be lost. Seemingly. Doing the work that I do to address our socio-ecological challenges has taken me into some dark inner places. It’s easy to feel defeated. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to feel hopeless. Squaring ourselves with the suffering and loss that is occurring at an ever-increasing rate is painful. It just is. There is no avoiding that, nor do I believe that we should ignore it. It’s taken me a long time to get this, but the best way to deal with our emotions is to acknowledge them and feel them. Completely. The fear is that when the pain is so incredibly intense that it will pull us under and wipe us out. I’ve had to face that.
My saving grace on this front has been the same thing that has always saved me- The Field. When I revisit my dream, by all accounts I should be scared shitless. I have no parents. I have no family. I am by myself most of the time. I am navigating ruins and ongoing war. I’m just a kid! I mean, come on, I should at least feel a little anxious! But I don’t. I’m actually completely calm and peaceful. That’s because I know that I’m not actually alone, nor am I really handling any of it. This is to say that I am just a concentration of The Field. I am just the Infinite in play.
But let me bring this down to Earth in my life at this moment. There are a few layers to unpack here. I have been called to unpack it at this moment due to my participation in Charles Eisenstein’s course “Unlearning for Change Agents,” which I’ve mentioned before. The course consists of fasts from four habits: 1) watching the news, 2) judging others, 3) judging yourself, and 4) yep, you guessed it, saving the world! Just for the record, I smiled when I first read the prompt for this last one. Actually, I might have laughed out loud, just a little. And, I think Eisenstein is dead on correct on this one. So let’s start unpacking.
The first layer that just really must be brought to light is that there is an ugly underbelly to wanting to save the world. The very concept of saving the world is based on the judgement that it isn’t perfectly o.k. just as it is. “Judgement bad,” in case you missed it. When we judge the world to not be o.k., then we extend that same judgement to everyone and everything in it. We particularly extend it to people. And guess how our wanting to save the world manifests the most- in trying to “fix” other people. Just yuck. And, yes, I am guilty as charged. In all fairness I have been conscious of this one and working on it for some time now. Old habits die hard, of course, so it requires constant vigilance on my part. And I fail. I do. Life has given me ample opportunities to practice though, and I appreciate that. It used to be that I really believed that people needed fixing, just like the world does. And I thought that I could do it! Without going into details, I nearly annihilated myself trying to fix another person. I failed miserably, of course. I had to go down that path, though, to learn that lesson. I am grateful for that life experience. I have known for sometime now that I cannot actually fix another person.
However, that was like, kindergarten, in the school of saving the world. Jump forward and we learn that people don’t actually need fixing in the first place. They don’t. And while it is easy to say that, it is extraordinarily difficult to watch somebody that you love in pain while also seeing how his/her choices contribute to keeping him/her in that painful place. Ouch. It hurts, actually. So truly this is rocket science, in my opinion. The truth is that we all suffer as part of our path, and that suffering is necessary for whatever it is that a self/Self is here to do. So to interfere with that process is, in essence, counterproductive in the first place and unnecessary in the second. Yet that doesn’t mean that we should be indifferent to the suffering of others! Ah, rocket science. You gotta to love it. Actually, it’s more art than science. And I’m no artist on this front! The art is that there are no clear cut rules in how to properly be present for another human’s suffering. It depends. Be that the case, presence is the guiding principle, as I’m learning. Just be present.
Now for the next level of unpacking. How does it sit with you when I say that the world doesn’t need saving? If you are anything like me the response will sound something like this… “Uh… what??!! Are you kidding me??” And actually, if you identify as a change agent this suggestion probably really pisses you off. So let’s look at it. Let’s look at the planet just as we looked at a person above. Let’s call her Gaia. Gaia, just like any human, has suffering as part of her path. To interfere with that suffering would be equally counterproductive. I can hear your objections. You say, “But it isn’t Gaia who is causing all of the suffering, we are!” Well, I happen to agree with that assessment. We, humans, are destroying the planet. It is therefore our job to save it. I agree. Really, I do. AND, there is more to this story.
There are two ways to tell this story. One is through the lens of separation. This is the lens that we, let’s call it post-indigenous culture, have been abiding in since we were, well, indigenous. The Story of Separation, as Eisenstein calls it, assumes that there is an objective world out there from which there is a separate self. From this story, we very much need to save the world, but we are going to fail miserably. Yes, that is my prediction. I am so sorry. It hurts to face that. There is, however, another story that we could tell.
This is, as Thich Nhat Hahn calls it, the Story of Interbeing. This blog is all about my (clumsy) attempt to shift into this new story. Let me give a few concrete differences between the two stories. Separation assumes that there is an objective world that existed a priori consciousness, with consciousness being equated with us (humans). That is to say that consciousness emerged out of the objective world. Interbeing says that consciousness exists a priori the relative world, which is no longer understood to be an objective reality at all but is rather an inherently subjective reality. The separatist worldview gives rise to a belief in the separate self. In the interbeing worldview no such separation is even possible. There is no line that can be drawn that truly indicates where I end and everything else begins. The separatist worldview says that nothing in the objective world is sentient besides humans (although we have had to relinquish sentience to other life forms over the years, but rest assured it was believed at the beginning of this story that only we had it). The interbeing worldview says that everything is sentient. In other words, everything is conscious. It goes a step further to say that, in fact, consciousness is all there is.
O.K., I know that’s a whole lot of theory-schmeory. Time to get real about it. In my last post you may have noticed that I talked to the forest, meadow and mountains as if they are sentient. Incidentally, I am not making all of this stuff up- there are no original ideas here. I am simply synthesizing what a whole lot of other people have said throughout time. When we are indigenous, we know that everything is sentient and we treat it that way. We don’t pretend like everything is sentient. We believe it and we behave accordingly. That is to say that we act as if everything has consciousness. When I asked the forest, meadow and mountains for their wisdom, it was a serious inquiry. And they answered. No, I don’t hear voices, nor do I see dead people (which isn’t to say that some people don’t). Communication comes through The Field. When we are indigenous, we are able to pick up on these signals. We don’t rely solely on our five senses, which emerged to pick up on signals from the relative world rather than from The Field. (The distinction between relative/embodied and Absolute/Field is a simplification for the sake of understanding. It’s a way to meet us where we are at. At the end of the day I would argue that there is nothing but Field.)
So now we are ready to get back to why we don’t need to save the world. This isn’t about ignoring the fact that we are destroying the planet. We are. It’s simply recognizing that nothing short of a plot twist into a new story is going to do the trick. In the first place, to be “saved” is to abide in a state of interbeing. We don’t actually have to do anything to abide in this state. In other words, it has nothing to do with what we are doing and everything to do with what or how we are being. Shift the being and the doing will follow suit in the direction of our saving. For as long as I choose to understand myself as a separate self, I will be part of the destruction of the planet- in spite of my best intentions. So the second part of this is that once in a state of interbeing, there is nothing to be done. Mission accomplished. Wait a minute, hold the phone! How can we be sure?? All I can say in response is that nothing less than a deep inquiry along with a deep practice will reveal why. What we find there is The Field. The Field is the great Fixer- not us. In order to tap into It’s healing power, we have to abide there, in The Field. Whether we do that or not, in fact The Field is using us in ways that we will most always be completely unaware. We actually have no idea what out of all that we do will have the greatest impact. I suspect that most of the time, it’s the little things- the things that we are the least aware of- that are the most important.
O.K., all the way down to earth now. When I run in the morning, as mentioned I run through Forest and Meadow in the Mountains. Thich Nhat Hanh would advise us to speak to these beings as they are – sentient. That is a great step forward, but it’s still, say, high school. I say this because the implication is that they are still separate beings from me/us. Another trick that Thich Nhat Hanh gives is to shift our understanding from beings doing something to simply being something. For example, as I run rather than thinking I am Shelly running, the shift is to think that I simply am running. In other words I am being running rather than doing running. Again, this is very helpful and in and of itself takes a ton of practice to truly abide in that shift. In my practice of running, one day my inner dialogue naturally shifted from noting that I am “Running in the Forest” to I am “Forest Running.” Which of course made me laugh out loud because Forest Gump was the very next thing that came to mind!
But I digress. In this last shift, I am no longer a separate being running through the forest. I am Forest, and I am furthermore the vehicle through which Forest expresses running. If I zoomed this line of thinking out I would actually be Gaia Running. But it’s good to start small. Now when I run I meditate on the observation that I am “Forest Running.” And you know the very next thing that came to mind after this shift happened? My very next thought was, “Don’t step on your roots.” So I as carefully and as lightly as I can run-tip toe along so as not to tread on any roots. After all, I don’t want anybody stepping on my toes. It hurts.
Public Service Announcement: There is a whole lot that goes into what I am saying here- complexity theory, metaphysics, quantum theory, morphic resonance, and on and on. It’s a lot and I know that it can be overwhelming. I’ve been studying these things for many, many years. If you want to know more on any of these topics, you can always email me with your most burning questions and I can give you reading/viewing suggestions. Just please note that I am not here to be any kind of expert. I am here to share and connect. For now, one good upcoming source is a new course by Eisenstein called Metaphysics & Mystery that I believe will be a good dive into these topics. All of his courses are pay what you can if anything. You can find his courses and a trailer for the new course here: https://charleseisenstein.org. Happy trails, and don’t step on your roots!
