Living with deep intimacy

"I want to live with deep intimacy
every day of my life.
I am guided, sometimes driven,
by an ache to take the necessary risks
that will let me live close to
what is within and around me." (Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

Over the years my thinking has evolved. When I was a child I thought like child and walked different roads now I walk new roads with new sign posts. Not only is the universe evolving but so are we. At the heart of it all is the fact that within each of us is the God seed that cries out to be allowed to bloom to its full potential. 2000 years ago a man walked this earth so that we could have life and have it to its fullness. This is what we attempt to do to each other today. Draw each one to realise their full potential so that each one can truly engage the question ‘who am I?’ and lead others to live that question for themselves.

The problem lies not in finding the answer but in having the will to ask the question, enter its uncertainty and feel its searing heat. But in this ‘quickaholic age’ where everything is instant we too often rush to find the quick solutions curbing our ability to live with the question.

I believe today each of us is inevitably involved in deciphering who we actually are. There are no manuals for the construction of the individual each of us would like to become. It’s about allowing the hard questions to arise, it’s about battling with uncertainty, risking the unknown, for it is by walking roads not yet trod that we discover new ways. Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions. Engaging with these questions is such a wonderful privilege and such an exciting adventure. To grow into the person that our deepest longing desires is a great blessing. The gift of life is given to us not only for ourselves but also to bring peace, courage and compassion to others.

Only in realising who I truly am can I become inextricably involved in the life and rhythm of another. In Southern Africa they call it Ubuntu. I am because you are. So if someone in Zambia has HIV, someone in Darfur experiences hunger and violence, someone in Haiti suffers the brunt of an unforgiving earthquake then so do you and I. For are we not all part of the same elements that formed the entire universe and all of humanity? I need to realise and believe in this connectedness if I am even remotely going to become actively involved in the issues that impact the earth and all peoples. I need to believe that we all came into existence from that singular flaring forth of intense energy from a point smaller than a grain of sand some 13.7 billion years ago. That God seed is in you and me; is you and me! In this I move and live and find my being.

To this I invite you with the words of the Sufi poet Rumi...

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they will never harm another, and they will come to find
they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me,
they would no longer lift anything to your
mouth that might wound your precious land –
that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me,
the power that made the universe will enter your sinew
from a source not outside your limbs,
but from a holy realm that lives in us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities
will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself,
Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.