Dear interested fellow human beings,
I am only finding my words in writing today, as I am starting anew in many ways at this point in my life and do not know where IT will lead me...
I only know many things when I experience this one moment - in quiet contemplation, in feeling into my body, soul and spirit, in becoming aware of my inner energy. Then I sometimes sense a truth that I am and that I am not personally.
And that's exactly what I experienced almost exactly a year ago - just before Christmas. Please be careful with the text, as it is very personal - thank you very much.
During Advent last year, I traced two Zen sayings in response to pressing life questions from myself and numerous clients:
The first saying:
"When your arrows are shot, your bow is broken, shoot with your whole being."
The second:
"Listen to the clapping of a hand (meaning "clap your hands")
How can you do both - without tools? And hearing what cannot be heard at all?
WAITING AT THE AIRPORT - THE EXPERIENCE
I waited with countless people in the arrivals hall - general restlessness, waiting with or without a mask, crowded and warm, even stuffy. Great excitement. The "airport" had a cold atmosphere in the semi-darkness of the night. It was after 11 p.m., numerous planes were still waiting - John's, my dear friend's flight was delayed.
Then it happened.
I looked through Zu-Fall at a young couple with a newborn child. The man, the child safely in his arms - literally in tender care.
The little creature - a wonderfully shaped, delicate face, a shock of black hair, asleep, her lips still seeming to breathe the scent of her mother's milk - blissfully still, wrapped in the security of a soft woollen blanket.
The woman carried a placard with the words "BEM VINDA" - Welcome, Portuguese, heart framed. She held a bouquet of red-orange flowers pressed to her chest - her breath fast, her face hot, red cheeks, balancing on her toes - jet-black braid, beautiful.
And there she came - the woman's mother - freshly baked grandmother, searching with her eyes, recognizing - the laugh itself behind the mask wide, open - as if I could see her white teeth, the red mouth.
The two of them, mother and daughter, rushed towards each other in a completely devoted movement, covered in tears - hugging and embracing each other with such intensity, heat and tenderness that tears ran down my face too.
At last! After months of separation, longing, missing encounters, words and hugs... Finally!
And then I saw, felt and heard THE ONE ANSWER to both koans (seemingly unsolvable Zen proverbs!):
It was clearly two people holding each other - heart to heart. And they were ONE body, ONE breath, ONE soul, ONE pulsation - ONE SOUND. Clapping with one hand.
Suddenly I saw a glow in them and around them and all the people who were lovingly embracing each other in the hall - it was a starry sky, more radiant than anything I had ever seen, golden and yet white - I was completely moved in childlike amazement.
And then I just knew:
ONE - UNITY - ONENESS with ourselves, with nature, better than nature, with people, better than human beings - LOVE will simply guide us, will move us, save us. WE SIMPLY BECOME THE TOOL.
Can the solution for us humans, for nature, be so simple? Love - just like that? Devotion - just like that? Tenderness and care - just like that?
Is this a beautiful fairy tale - a eutopia, naive and stupid? Or is this our inner truth NOW and always has been? Are we not, have we not always been IT, EVERYTHING and NOTHING? Is that the reason why - despite all our "being against it" - we somehow keep celebrating WEIH - NACHT?
Could we see sunny fields of grain in our muesli at breakfast, fruit-laden apple trees in the apples, red-yellow-gold in the green? In the coffee, dense jungle, untamed animals, blue birds, indigenous peoples? Bees in the honey? Could we learn to breathe gratitude in the smell of bread - could we learn to really look and love? And then to think, live and act accordingly?
WE DECIDE. I practice becoming my realization, in taking responsibility, in tender awareness of the awareness of myself and of life "around me".
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