Embracing Paradox

For our Species' Evolution/Transformation and our own Equilibrium

The following words from my journal are recent and essentially unedited …

New Moon in Scorpio … XOXO to all the tender psyches getting bruised and battered. May angel wings surround those whose bodies are getting beaten, burned, bombed, raped, and mutilated, who are living in heartache and dying in pain. It is incomprehensible to my human self that even all this is held within the Essence and Source of Love. And, yet, the deepest part of me trusts, and, yes, knows that it is so, without knowing how that is possible, or why this is necessary here on this beautiful, abundant Earth, how all this grief can be but a drop in the ocean of the largest Chalice of Joy—that is too much to ask of myself, so I do not. I simply hold the promise of its Truth as a sparkling seed of Spirit’s Ultimate Awakening within us all, of humaneness rising within human beings fully grown into our authentic, compassionate, interconnected selves.

I keep this sparkling seed in a medicine pouch tucked into the very center of my heart. It nourishes me 24/7 during these dark and dire times when all that is cruel and uncaring, greedy and corrupt, hateful and fearful, seems to be holding the reins, running the show. It reminds me that this is not so. These powers-that-be are temporary whereas this Love is eternal, and evolution is inevitable. Awakening is occurring. Communities are gathering together, rising, acting, in some cases risking everything, and we are continuing to create this world with every thought and action. We are tasked with holding a vision of the best possible future and acting in the present to bring it into being.

I’ve been thinking about that morning’s journal entry:

My first wise teachers told me, over 40 years ago, that in order to become free from within, I needed to recognize and embrace all the contradictory aspects within me , for example to make a space for the brave part of me and the cowardly parts to co-exist, the generous and the greedy, the (co-)creator and the victim. You get the idea? They helped me bring passion and humor into the work of self-acceptance. I’ve been dedicated to it ever since. When the plants came into view for me, about ten years later, they brought my inner healing into direct physical relationship with my kinship with the entire world.

One of my wise plant teachers told me that human beings can’t hold two opposing viewpoints at the same time. Even if it’s the hardest thing to do, we must. We are in so much confusion and suffering over the polarization, the “othering” increasingly going on around us. Yet, duality is the nature of life here as a human being on Earth. We need to look for the both/and, rather than the either/or to see ourselves, others, and our mutual, mounting challenges more truthfully. What is good and liberating for us, is good and liberating for the Earth and all upon her.

And So It Is.