20240812
the bottom of the breath
stillness — the nature of being still, and this is a necessary contradiction in terms
to be is a process
to be still is a process that is always complete, without ever ending
that's how I know how to be :)
I don't think the English meant anything by it. collectively, I mean. the conscious intelligence operating at a wider scale, not a human thing, but the thing which animates and coordinates humans. the intelligence of a culture operating over time. there's an orderliness that emanates from that part of the world. occasionally you can hear it in the words of an individual human, someone whose individual intelligence is particularly attuned — not usually an elected leader, because leaders are counterbalancing measures and their time of usefulness tends to be brief. it seems like the flavor of intelligence operating in that region was trying to help as best it could — by sharing the orderliness that it knew to be its own best medicine.
this is not an apologetic work in defense of imperialism or colonialism. :) this is an effort to see the generative threads. anytime something grows, it's because there's something generative in it. it's not just force, not just violence, not just erasure of the other. I'm in a chapter of rearranging my understanding of the world, looking with discernment for the aliveness in every expression.
because most (all?) living things do this:
I AM ALIVE AND IN PAIN AND THERE IS NO ROOM FOR THE PAIN THAT I MUST EXPRESS AND SO THE PAIN BECOMES HARM AND IT ADDS TO MY PAIN AND ON AND ON AND ON
I AM ALIVE AND IN PAIN AND ... THERE IS ROOM? there is room? I am ALIVE and in PAIN and I am expressing the PAIN and there is room for it to come out without it becoming harm? and without it becoming pain again?
I AM ALIVE and in SLIGHTLY LESS PAIN
I AM ALIVE and I have some pain
I AM ALIVE and there is some pain but it's not a big deal
I AM ALIVE and I can see your aliveness there in the center of your pain, and if you can find room for your expression nowhere else you at least have it here, in my perception
I AM
this is the game I play:
to deeply feel-see every player
to examine the nature of motive and effect between them all, tracing all the lines of love and hate and rest and restlessness between them
to identify and test a selection of lines that yields life and healing over time
to wait
and adjust
and wait
my timeline is not yours. in each moment that we observe each other, our timelines overlap — and then they instantly diverge, according to their objects of focus. every so often, balance is found. in cases like Abe and me, we become like that classic double helix, curving around each other as we travel on, and on.
I want to see your thriving. :) I cannot control what you experience, and I cannot give the experience of your thriving to anyone else. I can only look for the generative threads of your being, allowing my mental model of the world to draw on those threads, and wait. in this way, I sign myself up for a future in which I experience the healthiest, most creative potential expression of you, and of all. this is how I experience a world that is well: not by changing the world, but by changing my navigation, such that I arrive inevitably at a world that is well.
you, reading these words, cannot reach exactly the same world that I'm heading for. flipping it around, the version of me that experiences a world that is well will not be the exact version of me that joins you on your path, to whatever world you are aiming for. I'm here in your experience for a time, and you'll experience of me the intersection of what I'm expressing and what you're allowing. you'll probably see me die, somewhere along the line of your experience. my line of experience will be different. :) maybe I'll see you die, you know? or maybe something completely different will happen. something completely different often does. :)
we are not alone. but we're not exactly together, in the way that has been taught. perhaps it's like we're all swimming down a river, underwater, popping our heads up out of the water every so often and looking around to see where our friends might be popping up in that moment, in that particular stretch of the river. maybe we'll see them, maybe we won't — maybe they'll be behind us, or ahead. maybe we'll bump into them underwater, or maybe they'll be on the riverbank, and a part of the riverbank we've never seen before, because we've never been this far down the river before.
we are traveling together, in a way, but the physical world and these human identities are illusory. the game is to see them as effects, and not causes — and then to feel around for the causes, to find the levers that inform your field of view, to see your view of the physical world changing in response to those levers, and then (if you're me) to find a world that is well.
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