The Task to Uncover Ourselves
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I kept doing something I was asked to do because I called it a growth experience. And it was. After several repeated growth experiences, I was predictably asked again. It seemed like we had an agreement, they asked and I said yes. The last ask I asked myself, do I need to do more of this?
I said no. I don’t need to repeat this growth experience. I’ve grown.
How many times does it take to get the lesson?
If I don’t move along and stay in repeat, I end up like a plant in a greenhouse pressing up onto the ceiling and against the walls. It’s impressive growth but it needs to move on, expand.
I signed up for a workshop, “how to live a life of expression.” I’m not sure what a life of expression is but I know that I have to do it. Mark Nepo, the leader of the retreat, says personal expression is more about self-nourishment than creating a product. He says to live creatively is about being in relationship and conversation with life and the unknown. It is to lift the veils above and around us and get in touch and closer to our own original spirit.
The task is to uncover ourselves. To unburden.
Last week in the clinic, a person told me, I feel like I have rocks on my chest and also on my back. I’m weighted down with rocks.
Can you see yourself taking them off and throwing them back into the river?
Yes, I can, thanks!
A couple months ago, I noticed the habit of vagueness. Generally, we communicate in shades of vague. “I’m fine. Not too bad. Busy.” I’d love a challenge where for a day people can’t say how tired or busy they are.
It’s sort of safer to stay logged into and under battened-down hatches of taupe. It is easier to keep it nonspecific, noncommittal while sounding as if it contains substance.
My wondering is when is vague a necessity or a form of zen? When is it a dodge?
The time that people do get specific is describing medical issues like MRIs, what hurts where, and why no one knows what is actually wrong. This is oddly very personal and yet oddly more generic than you can imagine.
The other day I decided that what has form does not have substance and what has substance does not have form. What I really mean is things without form have more substance than we think.
If I read something that lifts me and shifts me, I can’t spit it out into a brief summary to anyone. Sometimes later I can’t even report it to myself. I think the material that lifts our soul or whatever it is within us besides our brain is without form. So, it often gets ignored or does not register when scanning it with our brain.
It’s nearly impossible to pass the unformed yet very impacting thing along to another- if you do, it becomes thin, disorderly. It dissolves the moment you try to shape it. If you manage to shape it and hand it off to another seeker, it isn’t the same thing. It seems like the best route is direct experience. It works to share notes or impressions to have it as a conversation piece, which encourages the experience in general, the shared openness.
by Mary Ann Peterson, Eugene Friends Meeting (11/24/2022)