The World as Process

Dear Friends,

In our continued exploration of intensity and ease, holding and releasing, we will engage in several practices today. 

The process of understanding anything requires a directedness on our part (that's the holding) and also a receptivity on our part (that's the releasing).  So, for instance, if we want to understand a cup, we aim our attention cup-wards, and within that intentionality is also a subtle waiting, or receptivity, for news about the cup to arrive.  I begin, perhaps picturing a cup, perhaps abstractly considering its functions, and something is given into my awareness -- for example, "You can put a cup down and it will still hold its contents, unlike a spoon that has to be held or it will spill."   Where did that particular thought come from?  Not historically, I mean, but right now: from where did the new understanding emerge into my awareness?   Somehow we aim and then somehow we receive. 

A concentrated yet effortless involvement of this kind can lead us into the very process of understanding, into that "where the thought came from" and therefore -- most surprisingly -- into increasingly intimate contact with the very life of the world.  We become less alienated from the earth, less "objective" and separate.  A self-development like this, a change in the process by which we use our minds and hearts to participate in the world, will be increasingly important as we face the disasters of human-wrought climate change and all its attendant troubles. Our hearts and minds can become collaborative aspects of the flow of relationship that is the earth.

And we'll also practice the holding and release of each other -- as we always do, but today calling in more allies and aspects of ourselves to do the holding, and conceiving of the release as widely as possible too.  With how much of the totality can we let ourselves be aligned and allied to hold each other?  How freely, to what reaches of being, can we then release each other?  Let's find out.

with love,

Michael