Simply
Being
“Beyond
all vindication and blame, the fundamental truth of our existence—the
bare fact of our being—can outlast our doing...”
Mark Nepo
(Our Authority of Being; Parabola, Fall 2016, p.23)
We are such striving
creatures. We have short and long-term goals, we set completion
schedules, we achieve milestones on the way to the end game. We do
and do and do. Myself, most especially. All this striving, and all
this doing leaves us very little time to reflect, to simply be. Maybe
that's the point of it. Perhaps, if all the activity were to stop, if
all our doing exhausted us into silence and stillness, we would have
only our conscious awareness and our breath. And then, what? Would
there be enough substance to feel like solid ground? Would we
experience the authority of our being, the strength of it? As Walt
Whitman described in his poem, Song of Myself: “I exist
as I am—that is enough.” Would
we feel like that?
Somehow or other, each of
us needs to answer these questions. They are existential in nature,
and necessary to feeling securely grounded in reality. When times
are difficult, we can remember that we are more than our striving,
more than a product or an accomplishment. We will know, even if no
one else does, that our singular consciousness and breath are
sufficient for the moment. We can take this certainty of wholeness
into every other moment of our busy lives. Our security lies here,
within the strength of our own being.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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