This sentence resonates like the long note of a bell. Over the weekend I cooked in the discomfort of exile: after ingesting plant medicine, I found myself caught in a rushing river of thought which cascaded over all the events of my life, finding fault with each one and my role in it. Everything I've ever done is a horrible mistake, I "realized," and I am a horrible person for having done all those things.
This is not an unfamiliar experience for me, this shattering, devoid of self-kindness -- usually, however, it is a murky and subterranean unfolding, whereas I found it suddenly crystalline in the light of consciousness and my community's love. This weekend was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and I spent several hours each day praying in synagogue with my community and then several more hours in precious moments of just being together. I found myself again and again in awe of the sweetness of sharing this life with those around me, so open-hearted and committed to growth and joy.
I'll spare you all the gory details of my personal process around this experience, and will just say that I had an experience I'd never had before in this particular go-round, which is that I felt for the first time able to share myself from within the experience and find myself received with unconditional love and positive regard by my friends. It was immeasurably healing, after having found myself guilty in the court of my own mind, to be guided back into the expansiveness of the heart by the love of my chosen family here (with a little help from Big Mama Ocean).
Today, at the Brower Center, there was a blessing ceremony for the building -- it's a new building (we all just moved in a few months ago), and today we gathered together to thank the ancestors for allowing us to be there and pray that our work for the healing of the earth would be good and successful. We stood in a circle as a beautiful Ohlone elder woman called in the directions and asked us each to speak about our work. It was a special ceremony, one that made me feel so blessed to be where I am today.
The photographer for the event was wearing a shirt with a quote from David Brower on the back: "Have fun saving the world or you are just going to depress yourself." It struck me, especially after my experience of going into my own shadow this weekend and then re-emerging into the light of love, that this is really the best thing that we can do. Love the earth, love one another, give everything. I am learning that I can heal myself when I give over all of myself -- in prayer and in action, when I offer my fullest heart, my fullest service to the need of the moment, my own experience is transformed.
I used to wonder what people meant when they say, 'the more you give, the more you have.' Wouldn't giving everything just leave me spent and empty? But I see it more clearly now, as I swim in the chaotic waters of creativity and collaboration, as I discover what it means to show up as a person in the world, being open to loving and being loved. Giving everything, having fun saving the world, is really the only way to go now. The alternative to having fun is depressing yourself. The alternative to service is exile. On this planet -- which could go up in flames soon if we don't all make profound changes, or possibly even if we do -- as scary as it is to be alive and do things and make mistakes and fumble and stumble on, what is the alternative? Safety, inertia, numbness. Exile.
It is a stark calculus for stark times, and the choice to serve requires constant sensing and re-calibration, like a baby learning to walk. But there's really no question about what choice to make, is there?
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