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Somewhere during the night or early morning, in response to my recent communion with Brian Swimme, I started thinking freshly about how the ongoing inflammation in my body is part of a great project of the universe moving toward more life through my being. My being, of course, being more than my body membrane but rather the entire entanglement of life within and the the life outside the membrane that is synergistic relationship.

The first thought I had is that the heat, the fire that roars through my tissues consuming bits at a time has created a adaptation that slows me down in the physical realm which allows for more space for types of functionality like thought, contemplation, emotions that have grown additional tentacles into other realms and other membrane bound beings. The medical community likes to say that tha inflammation is "attacking" my tissues. This morning I went a bit further down the familiar road of it being more like "friendly fire". As I did, I became aware that the cosmological universe is manifesting through this body being in a particular way for a particular reason, and perhaps I should lean into that and find out what that might be. Of course, I thought of you immediately.

So going down this road a bit further, I noticed that I had been quietly honing a couple of interesting capacities. I can go deep into a thing by staying with and befriending discomfort, and moving through to new levels of experience. It's not pushing. It's more like allowing the pulling. This inflammation has hoened a capacity for intensity. The universe loves intensity. It's how things get broken apart and made a new in the act of symbiosis which could also be called transformation.

This inflammation has also adapted me to comfort, and even desire, for mystery. In the not knowing infinite possibilities remain for more, more creativity, more life. In the slowing, sometimes stilling, of my body, there is liberation of the senses. The universe is using this pathway of sensual liberation to manifest new ideas and possibilities for our survival through a body that is perfectly suited for the endeavor.

In not being of much use for the great industrial endeavor of material extraction, I have become more available for the larger cosmological endeavor of centration, allurement, synergy, homeostasis, cataclysm, transmutation, transformation, interralatedness, and radiance (Swimme).

I've been reviewing my life in the past couple days, and noticing how all the things to which I've been truly attracted (not the corporate career but stuff like the study of deep ecology or orgasm or liberation or spirituality) have led me in an upward spiral to this present moment where I feel so much expanded and entangled and embedded and in awe and love and am experiencing so much joy and wonder.

There's more but that's as far as I want to go in this writing.

And seriously considering your new course as a location to workout more of this in greater detail.

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I so identify with this befriending of discomforting. Allowing for the companion entanglements that materially make AND unmake us. I so believe that the joy gets bright and bigger and sharper the more it feels itself embedded in relationships neither good or bad, but mostly, as you so accurately identify - intense. I like that intensity is more neutral than pain or extremity or ecstacy. Rather it allows for the messiness, the sheer complexity, to interrupt our constant need for a stable value system. Thank you so Oceana

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