I love the Kahlil Gibran Poem, Fear. It's about risking everything, even risking disappearing, to become so much more. Risking being nothing, to become everything. Scroll down for the full poem, but this is the part I like best:
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that's where the river will know
it's not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
One of my most cosmically mind altering experiences was after being in a sweat lodge on Cortes Island, BC. I was there grieving the break up of my marriage. By special permission I was able to camp out solo on native land there. I immersed myself into the warm boulders, tempestuous ocean and buzzing of bees while devouring "Women Who Run with the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a must read for any woman on the verge of her soul and spirit awakening. The caretaker of the land invited me to a sweat lodge he and his friend (the only other people on this beautiful and sacred land) were about to start. I was no stranger to the inipi, sweat lodge in Lakota. My ex and I were keepers of a lodge, appointed by a local lakota pipe carrier, on our 10 acres in Roberts Creek, BC on the Sunshine Coast Peninsula north of Vancouver.
This lodge was different. There was no pipe carrier present, no rules or rituals. Just 3 people who happened to come together on this pristine beach off of desolation sound at this very meaningful and cathartic time for me back in 1996.
We sang, we wailed, we laughed, we cried. We prayed, we reflected, we meditated. At midnight, we stepped out of the sweltering heat of the lodge and threw ourselves in to the very welcoming pacific ocean on the edge of desolation sound. Positively steaming, I floated on my back and let the star filled sky penetrate my whole being. In that state of heightened somatic awareness, from the deep heat of the lodge to the silky coolness of the water, I understood with every fibre of my body my place in the universe. I experienced an emobdied understanding of how small i truly am compared to the vastness of existence that has imagined me into being.
All my petty concerns and woes disappeared. How could something so small as i matter in the grand scheme of things, afterall. Thank Goddess, for once I was truly nobody.
Ram dass wrote, "the game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody". No easy feat! But in my experience, the most delicious moments of all are when i disappear to know my connectedness to all that is. Not my superiority, my greatness, my acheivements, my beauty, talent or strengths. But my very ordinary state of existing.
I disappear into oneness with my forests. I disappear into oneness with shapes, colors and textures. I disappear into oneness with the elements of nature. I disappear into the process. I love the end result, but only because of the deep state of connection that gets me there.
How do you remember that state of deep oneness?
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