Story of Longing

One word. Two words… Three words… More.

I’m feeling into a dissonant harmony of polar turning around a central still point, like the dervish whirling in the face of the divine; a broken openness of self, turning in its own illusion; a world turning deeper into breakdown; and a cosmos turning always, emptiness into form.

Mind turning awareness into being and awareness filled with radiance and vibrancy yet still as a boundless and timeless perfection.

What is this story of longing, and as I put pen to page, what dance of love might I offer to weave in this song?

In the words of the poet:

When the guest is being longed for, is the intensity of the longing that does all the work. Look to me and you will see a slave to that intensity.

I paraphrase the 15^th century Kabir whose namesake I bear, or rather I paraphrase the translator, the good Mr. Robert Bly.

I feel this transformation working in my body and my bones. It is the sense of spasticity and discomfort, it is the sense of heart opening and joy. It is the sense of grace and acceptance, the sense of loneliness and isolation. I feel this transformation working in my body and bones. It is the sense of grasping, imprisonment, realization, and freedom.

I open my mouth to speak, and the words disappear in the no-thing-ness of the spacious eternity filled with love. And yet there is something I long to say. Not just one thing, but many things. Things to weave together, the tapestry of a moment, the design of a life, a brushstroke in the great gesture of it all.

Little me in this big world; just one among billions; one in the vastness of space time itself, and yet the name I bear, the invitation of constant evocation by those who love me, even myself, “Kabir,” refers to the expense of world and divine, “the great.” And so within, a kernel of spark; the entire cosmos in light erupting loving glory in every space and time.

What is this I wish to share, what words; one, two, three, more, offer a story that meets your heart, a reflection of the scripture living me that might evoke that divine spark in you towards an ever fuller embrace of all there is left to love?

It is a personal story. A story captured in time and space and nested contexts; contexts that diminish into subtleties beyond perception, and contexts that expand so widely that the mind shutters and breaks open again. Therein is the longing! How do we parse such an infinite expanse to just one moment of action, a conduct as fine as flour?

Even were I to digress, and I think I won’t, to the story beyond a person, and into the story of a long arching soul, still the boundaries shudder and fade in the face of an intimate kiss. But boundaries exist nonetheless, this is what makes a heart, this is what makes it beat.

One, two, one, two, a dancing emptiness and form, polarities of endless variety circling one another, an eternal song of longing and resolution, not two, not one, not neither. Beyond words, beyond self, yet existing, one moment of action, conduct fine as flour.

And there I have digressed, the dissonance in the harmony! Let me refrain, and return…

Back to this page, these electrons, this computer screen, a proverbial pen here on earth, circling a star in a particular time, but not just any time, this time, now. Here in this time, the story of longing is bittersweet. A species on this little outlier planet circum-ambulating reverently its galactic center has met a certain milestone in the dance, in a sense it has swallowed its globe and faces an eminent transformational moment, no longer one thing, and not yet another.

We, that species find ourselves now wondering in the fields of identity, not home in who we thought we were, but home on the eternal road of luminance, radiance, and perfect unbroken uncertainty. Again, I struggle to capture the story, but within the infinite ingress, a little closer we come.

From a certain point of view, my question of late has been in the tone of three. At the ground: what is this question, this uncertainty of oneness with divinity, this playful hide and seek with the realized Buddha mind of compassion, what is this clinging to ignorance, and most of all, how to let go? In the walking this ground, how do I circle with you dear world, dear other to self, dear self to this reflection of playful enlightenment; what is right relationship, right livelihood in the turbulence of a time between worlds? Finally, what is the fruit, the flower, the highest service that emerges; a life given over in the greatest synergy of wisdom and skillful means adequate to the greatest order of practical experience; in this time between worlds, where is the true leverage where care brings flourishing in the world butterfly to emerge?

All these words, well beyond the count of three, they whisper the love I long to convey, but still there is a story behind the veil, the thread of connection not yet brought fully into view; what is this me to this what is this you?

The tone of these words, I think, echoes the first of those questions above. Everyday I live and breathe, peering as the surrender into the fullness of feeling; moment to moment this and that, a waking mind gestures light and shadow, resting in eternal bliss, yet still stumbling like the comic clown dressing to go out, but somehow caught in their own necktie. Mostly I laugh, sometimes I cry.

The second movement of this ternary form describes those actions I take day-to-day in the world, not so much the fine moment to moment of conduct, but the greater arcs of initiative in which that conduct flows and finds its ground. This is a different kind of bliss. Each arc presents itself, a gateway of form and structure unfolding a path of learning and the disciplined practice of applying the reciprocal service in each step of that journey.

I have spoken/written in other places of the three tones of that melody, health, relational vitality, and the finance aspects of that economic. These have been fierce, though often loving teachers in this journey of late. My close apprenticeship with these aspects of wellbeing continues to evoke an ever refining self construct as exemplar in the world, a construct that trembles on that threshold of a vulnerable existential humility and the joyful pride of being the unbroken divine manifest.

I will come back to this in a moment…

The third harmonic in this inquiry constituting my person today, is the longing for a new order of wellness in the world at large. The globalizing arc of humanity has cut with increasing impact over recent centuries, and it is no mean thing to say there is a gaping wound in the Gaia-sphere whose healing might be the highest opportunity for care in the world today.

Where to stand in the assessment of the wound, what pressure to apply, and what medicines in what dosage and order? These questions invite the realization of a new identity of collective physician and healer with new capacities of skill, insights of mind, and methods of practice. Not least of all, these conditions invite much subtler inquiry into the principle of “do no harm.”

How to participate in this evolutionary emergent, what voice, mind, and action to manifest and in what dynamics of reciprocity to bring about a coherent and integrated expression? The work of this inquiry is to drive the practical application of this evolutionary experiment in service to a new Right Story for the human enterprise overall.

Great. So what does that mean?

For those whose interests in these pages waxes more towards the material observances of daily life, let me turn my attentions towards some service to that gaze.

It’s been over a month since I offered an installation in what is meant to be a weekly practice of writing and publishing here. (This excludes the formal “non-post” from almost 4 weeks ago, as that one counts in no way against the intended practice. ;-) This window of time has been quite full in many regards.

The ground of that fullness begins, not surprisingly, right here inside the physical flesh of my body.

Since the ritual launch of Open Field Awakening, the formal container for that work of the third harmonic, above, I have found my footing in a certain degree of enthusiasm to bring that most materially into the world. This, I think, has contributed in no small part to a durable condition of physical well-being.

In counterpoint, this window of time has also played host to transformations and evolution in the structure, number, and process of collaboration with those in the immediate field of my physical daily caregiving. Parallel to that, I’ve undertaken to apply a concentrated effort to pacify the proverbial wolves at the financial door. (The reader may recognize the three tones of the harmonic mentioned above.)

The near instability and uncertainty (read “stress”) of those two domains have contributed, to that “durable condition of physical well-being,” certain elements of required acute care. In short, my sleep has been sometimes disturbed, and I have found pains running through my body on various days that drive the wisdom of an otherwise uncharacteristic rest and recuperation, i.e. turning into bed at 6 PM or resetting the body with a nap midday.

In short, the days have been filled, sometimes paradoxically, with prodigious activity and periods of forced humility.

In the true spirit of spring, I have ventured out of the house for joyful engagements more in the last six weeks, than probably the past year before. I’ve attended a baby shower, a retirement celebration, been a guest in studio for a podcast recording (pending publication,) out to lunch with old friends and new and retreated again as May and June bring their San Diego seasonal gray and gloom.

In the office I have put in hours and hours learning the ins and outs of running a full-scale fundraising campaign (still in process at the time of this writing, your participation is more than welcome.) This is constituted a learning edge of spreadsheets, list management, AI as aid to production tool, industrial communications, and balancing the true heart of community with the impersonal (read “denatured”) tendencies of the predominant social paradigm and “attention economy.”

The intention of this “campaign,” has been to provide enough space for me really to begin with integrity and coherence on the project of energizing, connecting, and elaborating Open Field Awakening into the ongoing world project so many of us are taking increasingly to heart and hand in the face of the intensifying perfect storm underway.

Fortunately for my own sanity and peace of mind, this clinical effort of reaching out has nourished that heart of community resulting in a stimulating boost of directly related and field synergistic interpersonal connections, both over zoom and in person. These continue to develop a span of contextual engagements from the front garden good neighbor relations, to institutional and systemic conversations with ongoing and potential collaborators worldwide.

I’ve been taking in third-party conversations that further stimulate and refine a synergy of wisdom and strategy in service to these larger aims, and I’ve been able to participate in, as well as support, various research and training initiatives that nourish, in reciprocity, a variety of related organized endeavors.

I’ll mention a few of the former here. The first is an interview/dialogue held between the Quaker Earthcare Witness community and Daniel Schmachtenberger. I make it a point to listen when Daniel speaks, and this is a particularly sweet context in which to receive some of the strokes of his global context evaluation. If you’ve got the patience for this sort of thing, I think it’s a particularly rich combination of “facts,” for your own personal sense of orientation.

The second I’ll mention here, I am admittedly only “most of the way through at the time of this writing.” But I’ll happily recommend, as Josh has always come through with quality insights in the past. I’m referring to the latest episode of The Emerald podcast which, for me has helped to contextualize an apparent ongoing global catastrophe in the light of evolution, and life itself as an expression of restlessness, migration, and transformation.

Indeed, this latter has helped to shape this particular post.

Times when I have had to go without formal care support (meaning confinement to bed and limitations to access work) have been lovingly slim and the emerging evolved culture of care among the partners on team Kabir seems to be going very well with increased nourishment, community sentiment, and even probably a bit of flowing throughout. As an expression, or perhaps simply in tandem with this, we have seen initiated a front garden and increased care for the flourishing of the local floral ecology on the property.

The Orioles have returned signaling spring and the landlord has given us the go-ahead for a spiral herb garden and vegetable/flower beds to be.

While this piece now stretches definitely towards the “more” of one, two, three, four, I think I may have managed to say some piece of what I intended to share and it is probably most compassionate to the reader, as well as other demands on my time to bring this to a close.

If you’ve made it this far, I hope I have managed to convey some translation of the great grace I can sometimes, and perhaps even often, recognize arising in the gift of this humble life, and I hope that if I have, you have found a source of nourishment in that for the great gift of your life as well. :-)

May all beings be well and happy…