The Purpose of Connectedness

Here is what I think the ultimate purpose of connectedness is:

This picture has become my inspiration and my reminder of why I meditate, pray, write, reach out, and keep on keepin’ on. Here is what it speaks to me:

1. We are connected in order to help each other rise higher in consciousness and liberation.

2. In higher consciousness we are like children in our openness, curiosity, clarity, and trust.

3. Ascending higher, we begin to leave the baggage of the world behind us. Fears, anxieties, distractions, confusions begin to fall away.

4. In connectedness and higher consciousness we become more free to create beautiful things together which adorns the whole world around us.

Grateful, as always, for you,

~~~S Wave~~~

What We Ought

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garmet of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Today, as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. and allow ourselves to be stirred and ignited by the many illuminated messages that he shared with us, I want to encourage you to acknowledge your connection to him. He knew that he was connected to you. Do you know it?

He strived to be “what he ought.” As you strive toward the same—whether in your attitude, your activism, your awareness, your altruism—allow yourself to feel connected to the great multitude of others like King who have lived before you and tried to be their very best in order to inflict great love upon this world. Their energy, their wave, lives on.

Holidays and Hurricanes

An old friend of mine who lives in New Jersey just said…

“…but holidays tend to soften the striking surprise of hearing from someone from your past that you haven’t heard from in a while. Holidays and hurricanes, it seems.”

Words of wisdom. The holidays are a time to reunite with people you love despite months or even years of not being in touch. Of course! That is part of what makes holidays so special. But it’s also true that an event like Sandy can lead us back to people as well. When Sandy hitting our shores last week, I was struck with how many east-coasters came to my mind…people that I care about despite our lack of correspondance. I saw similar sentiments all over social networking sites and from firsthand accounts: feuds being put aside, postponed calls being made, life and relationship suddenly being viewed from a different perspective.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

When it comes right down to it—-when the storm hits the sand—-it is that abiding care that prevails. A lack of correspondence doesn’t necessarily signify a lack of connection.

So because we all need this reminder from time to time, remember to give yourself moments of stillness to allow your mind’s eye a gaze upon that great “cloud of witnesses” that surrounds you in the midst of your journey…the people who have touched your life for good and, intentionally or unintentionally, been a guide. Send them love from your heart and healing from your hands. And if the spirit moves you, send them an e-mail.

What’s New With Being Old

Note: This is the next in a series of posts contributed by our 90 year-old author, ~~~M Wave~~~. Show her some love! Visit her category “Memoirs of a Nonagenarian” at the right to see what else she has written.

I’ve been thinking about “being old” because in my mind I don’t feel old. I still want the same kinds of things I have always wanted. I am fortunate because some of them I can still enjoy. I still take walks…short ones with my cat. Yes, she goes right along with me and doesn’t run off. I think it may be because she is getting old (for a cat) and appreciates still being able to get out. I enjoy using my computer to be in touch with family and friends. I still play the piano enough for my own enjoyment. I like to read. I enjoy some TV shows. I can visit with friends almost any day.

I would still like to go the pool and swim; I would still like go to France and visit my niece who is there during the summer. I would still like to fly to California and babysit my great granddaughter and allow her mother some time for herself. I would like to have my family members who have left this earth back here with me. I would like to………, but I am not able to have or do everything I would like. That is part of what it means to be old.

But I’ve never been able (for other reasons) to do all I’d like to do. So that’s nothing new.

So what is new about being old?

Of course, I know what you might say. It is that you are hurting. Again, that isn’t so new, either. Life has given me more than a few hurts.

I guess, the new thing is that we yearn so much for the old things that were good. Then the hurting gets worse. Your arthritis hurts more. Your fibromyalgia hurts more. Your hurting from a fall lasts longer. You hurt because you can’t process plots on movies and plays as fast as you used to and you appear dumb to others. You hurt because you can’t see as well as you used to and you can’t read as fast. You hurt because you make foolish math mistakes that you never used to do. You hurt because a friend’s husband just died and you cannot go to comfort her. You hurt for all the things you still want to do and cannot. You hurt because you feel you are not of any help to anyone. You hurt just because you fear you are a burden to others.

So, I guess what’s new about “being old” is just hurting more.

Thus, what you do, if you are old, is what you have done all your life. Survive the hurting. Do all you can to be a cheerful person, smile, think positively and live each day as best you can, realizing that each of us is interlocked with everyone else as all of us age each year.  Then you won’t hurt so much.

Connectedness…on a dreary day

I’m not going to lie. I’m not always a happy person sitting around praying and contemplating love and life. A blog is where, for many of us, we want to just be ourselves. We want to be authentic to a circle of strangers who, through words and common ideas, have come to feel somehow like distant friends or respected colleagues. So although I’m tempted to strictly maintain an uplifting vibe on this site, even at the cost of authenticity, I also just want to be real. Some days are dreary! I’m not Amma or the Dalai Lama after all!

But thank goodness that it also takes some thought to put together a blogpost because trying to write about feeling down got me to thinking….maybe the darker days and the less hopeful moments are just as important as the positive days in respect to being interconnected. After all, isn’t the challenge to maintain some kind of elevated perspective even through those times? To believe in hope and a greater love when there seems to be no hope, especially in “love”?? (Sheesh, I’m sorry but doesn’t love just deserve sarcastic quotes sometimes??) To hold each other up when that is what’s needed and to be sensitive to the energy of others?

The other day I cried. Just a few years ago I used to cry A LOT. I used to be quite sad quite often. Not so much anymore, except that last Sunday there was a familiar dark cloud over me whose presence felt like an old frenemy. And since my grasp on hope and optimism was already slipping that day, I willingly (and I would say, weakly) invited that old friend to come on over and stay for a while. The familiarity of something destructive is sometimes more comforting than all the (mere) potential good that the unknown holds.

The downside to inviting gloom to hang out is that it isn’t a friend who knows when it has overstayed its welcome. Hence, here I am on Wednesday night still entertaining my guest. If I had to counter that with an upside, I guess it would be this: letting gloom settle in for a while is a great way to get a lot of tears out…which feels so good sometimes,  especially when it’s been a while.

So point is, on Sunday I was crying a lot. Not that anyone saw that. I was supposed to spend part of the day with my sister and 21 month-old niece, two of the most luminescent lights in my life. But I called to say that the day was rough and I needed to be alone.  I didn’t think being around my niece who is pure joy would be the best place for me to be…like I would “contaminate” her with my energy. So instead I went for a long hike (and cried), I went to a matinee (and cried), I gave extra attention to my two cats (and cried), I talked to a few close friends on the phone (and cried), I cleaned the house (and cried).

And then something amazing happened later in the day. My sister sent me a short video of my niece, who calls me Momo. She was just sending it to say hello, but my niece surprised us both. On the video, my sister asked my niece, “What’s Momo doing?” My niece didn’t give her typical response of “sleeping,” “playing,” or “home.” Instead, she paused, her face became worried and she said, “Cry.” When my sister, perplexed, asked, “She’s crying? Why is she crying?” my niece responded with, “Tears on it,” in the same worried tone.  Then, as my sister prompted her, my niece went on to tell me she loved me, missed me, and that I should feel better. At the end her two little hands flew into the air, her smile broke out and my sister exclaimed, “All better!”

In talking about the video later that day, my sister told me that she hadn’t said anything about crying to my niece. We have no way of explaining why she would say that. That has to be a living, breathing example of interconnectedness right there!  At least I’m going to believe it is. And believing in anything right now is not something for me to scoff at. My niece’s video has been more than enough to get me through these last few nights anyway…and I’m beginning to think that, in the end, that is part of the purpose of being connected at all.

 

 

But Which Perspective is RIGHT?? (mine of course)

“For some reason she was committed to robbing a bank–the only truly reliable explanation for which is the simpleset one: people do rob banks. If this seems illogical, then you are still judging events from the point of view of someone who’s not robbing a bank and never would because he knows it’s crazy.”

–Richard Ford, in Harper’s Magazine, June 2012

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Someone we’ll call Mike and I used to fight over things that to him were “small” and to me, “big.” We used to find ourselves spewing things like, “Ugh! That’s not how I said it at all!” or “How can you think that?!” I would reenact something I said with the gentle voice of Snow White–how I remembered saying it!–while in his reenactment I was more like the Harry Potter’s blithering, hateful uncle. We could go around and around that hamster wheel until we collapsed. One time I thought I was very keen as I explained himself to him with, “If something doesn’t make sense to YOU, then you just dismiss it!” to which he countered, “No, not if it doesn’t make sense to ME. If it doesn’t make sense to the WORLD!” dramatically flailing his arms in the air (I imagine…the debate was over the phone…widely agreed to be the best way to argue, right?? ) Not one of our better moments. All in all, though, a sound example of our norm…a good number of our conflicts were tied up in a simple and unavoidable difference in perspective. That’s all. Just like Phil said.

When two people are interacting in the same time and space but from completely separate vantage points (namely, our senses, our brains, our memories, our souls), it’s really miraculous that understanding, compassion, and putting on of the proverbial “other’s shoes” occur at all! In one of my recent posts, Stir Up the Love, I suggested that recognizing our connectedness is key to transcending perspectives and moving on to understanding. We are all part of each other’s experience, right?

But then I had a second thought about that. I think loving your enemy is also about being able to recognize our separateness.

“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Don Miguel Ruiz

I am not Mike. He is not I. And when I can surrender to the fact that his experience is just as valid as mine….that he is trying to do his best with what he has, just as I am….that my reality is just different than his, that it’s just like that 30 Rock muppet episode where you get to see the world through Tracy, Jack, and Kenneth’s eyes…

… then I can actually feel the compassion begin to quell my anger.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe’ —a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

–Albert Einstein

So in some strange and beautiful way, my compassion seems to rely both on connectedness AND separateness. I haven’t gotten it all straightened out yet, and I’m probably reinventing the wheel with all these words, but maybe it’s that honoring our separateness lets us disentangle our emotions enough to feel compassion and acceptance for the Mikes in our lives from a safe distance, while honoring our connectedness to Mikes compels us to not forsake them altogether and infuses us with gratitude for sharing a time and space with them at all. For whatever grander purpose that encounter served.

To be continued of course…

Connected By Breath

~~~A Wave~~~ is a special contributor to this blog. Follow his Category, “A Wave: Connected,”  to follow his thoughts and discoveries of our connection to each other, to the world around us, and to the mysteries beyond. …

“Breath is the bridge that connects life to consciousness, which unites our body to our thoughts” — – Thich Nhat Hanh

The breath, taken from our planet’s atmosphere, is free for all of creation. No being can hoard air and try to get more than their share and neither can we buy, sell or trade the breath. If I hold my breath because I want to “own” the air.., I will die, but if I let this breath go…, it comes back to me in abundance without any conditions.

This fluid motion of breathing, however voluntary or involuntary on our part, allows precious oxygen to travel thru the trachea into the bronchi, which connect to the lungs. The lungs then divide into even smaller bronchi, called bronchioles. These bronchioles branch off into even smaller passageways called alveoli and each lung houses between 300-400 million alveoli. This vital, life giving oxygen, finally immerses itself into our blood stream through the tiniest blood vessels known as capillaries. The journey of the breath completes its purpose, allowing our one of our body’s most essential process to occur and breathing is the root process that all of the other essential processes of the body depend on.

This complicated process happens every second, of everyday, for every living thing on this planet. Breath is a symbiotic interconnection that we all share in every moment with our planet. It is so seamless and essential but yet, it is something that goes by overlooked and unnoticed each day. The relationship between all living things and our atmosphere/planet has been a central factor in the evolution of our physical, mental, and spiritual awareness. This exchange between plant and animal has occurred in every moment of everyday for hundreds of thousands of years before we ever came to exist. Its almost as if “we” are but just one singular expression of this unseen force, without which we would not exist.

My point is to emphasize that this life is a process of seamless, symbiotic interconnections, which humans take for granted each day. This breath travels to our very core each moment and yet we aren’t held accountable for ignoring it, or even polluting it. This interconnection has sustained our ancestors just as it sustains us, and all who will come after us.

The negligence and ignorance of the human being is a direct cause of the degradation of our health, which has been happening incrementally yet persistently. The byproducts of our accelerating industry, technological advancements, and modern conveniences are slowly destroying the very force that has given us life for millennia.., the air that we breathe, in every moment. All systems are affected by our inconsiderate ways, including our water supply, our farmlands and the protective biosphere that protects us from the sun.

I firmly believe that we as humans are capable of restoring balance to this system of interconnectedness that we are all tied to so deeply and we all must come to this realization, if we are to preserve life on this planet. The damage must be reversed in order to keep all systems and life in harmony, and the protection of our air, water, earth, atmosphere and organic way of life is vital, not just to us but to every living thing that exists now, and all that will exist after us.

“When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world” — – John Muir