willing

Quiet. The moments where my heart beat and my breath are no longer taken for granted. Where my body relaxes and I am more aware of my toes and fingers, more aware of my eyes moving behind my eyelids. Where I find my thoughts to be passing through a broader more open space while observing them and not being a full inhabitant of the thought itself (with no external awareness to it). The ability to be with myself and not need to move in any direction. A body at rest. The subtle sounds that emerge in the quiet. The chair creaking. The breeze flowing through the open window. The brushing of the leaves against one another. Rest. To open into that feeling of belonging. Here. In my body. Today. To celebrate it by being quiet. Movement comes after. Directed energy found through living from a space of presence.

The wider world has always been teeming and surging and suffering and constructing prisons for beings to inhabit. Violence transferring itself into more violence. That violence is in me. A rage that rises in me like bile, burning my throat and clouding my vision. The swell coming in. It’s good to be angry. I think about how power has (for as long as humans have been around) been using violence in an attempt to force other beings to inhabit their lives in a way that a structure of power dictates. This of course never can go (fully) to plan, because beyond everything, the seeds of freedom has been sown in our hearts and we know that there must be more than dogma out there. Even when one is fully asleep and carrying the sword of the empire, murdering sacred siblings and imprisoning others with harmful laws in the service of “the greater good, morality, democracy, or whatever the fuck the empires new line of bullshit is”. Broken and violent, struggling with addiction, self destruction and ashamed of what was carried out in the name of malevolent power.

Abundant life can only be offered. Never forced. Would i be healed? I was having a moment where I was thinking about when Christ said greater love has no one than this than they lay down their life for their friends. I think about how I want to love my friends. Like all I really want to do these days is love my friends so well that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I love them. And then I think about the space and time we are entering in this reality. How much violence and terror I see being wielded against the sacred beings that inhabit this earth (i think technology has increased our collective awareness of this exponentially). And death in the service of love doesn’t feel like to far of a stretch to imagine at this point.

While right now, sitting in a lovely space, typing this on my laptop that feels fictional. The heart position isn’t fictional at all. The heart position is that the way to conquer darkness is to love and great love requires willing sacrifice for the sake of the loved. I think maybe the most revolutionary thing i can do at this point in time is tell the people i love that i love them and share what i have (time, resources, privilege) generously and without expecting anything in return. May peace be made through the work of my hands and that which is blossoming in the soil of my heart.