Hold On to What Holds Us

Somebody down here loves us

I dedicate the year that starts today to holding the awareness that I am being held.

I don’t know what to call it, but I am comforted by it, this thing that know how to make water from hydrogen and oxygen, and circulate it throughout the world and throughout my body.

Sometimes I can almost feel it smiling at me, as it takes care of all the business of keeping me alive, all the processes that I would have no way to navigate. Like breathing, and making sure every cell of my body gets its delivery of oxygen, and the carbon dioxide garbage service makes sure to collect it all and take it out of the body.

That my eyes are tuned to sunlight and shadow, to colors in their harmony and sparkles dancing on water, is the work of genius. That seawater is lifted into the clouds and goes about distributing rain and snow across the lands, is a feat of exquisite engineering and design.

Something is going on here that I can no longer take for granted as just the way things are, which is a ridiculous non-answer to any child’s valid “Why?”, as ridiculous as the excuse for slavery for 200 years in America.

The way it seems to me now is that if I weed out “Just the way things are” from my experience of existence, it leaves space for countless discoveries to bloom in the otherwise pre-occupied GMO ground cover of uninspired, unquestioning belief.

For a New Year gift to myself I am going on a quest into the Great Unknown, where there are no maps and no cell coverage, just my own senses which number much more than five, and which have been waiting to be used to their fullest potential, like the wings of caged birds waiting for a chance to get out and fly.

I read once that science cannot explain how the body heals a cut finger. I feel like there should be a meeting of the United Nations to discuss the implications of this exciting fact. The intelligence of the body in organizing the delivery of certain chemical compounds, the timing of processes and design of new tissue, is awe-inspiring. Why do we not see it as being conscious and driven by intention, just as a surgeon, say, has the intention to heal. Who has benefited by promulgating the mechanistic concept of how Nature’s elaborate life processes are designed, carried out and maintained? I don’t see much difference between this accepted view and AI/ robotics.

In Tibetan medicine, one of the categories in which medicinal plants are placed is Intention. I was shocked, years ago, when I heard that they actually believe a species of plant has the intention to help humans and animals heal certain illnesses. But Tibetan medicine has an astounding track record of curing things that Western medicine can’t. Bach Flower Remedies operate on the same principle of intention. I am ready to finally take responsibility for thoroughly de-brainwashing myself of the “Just the way things are” mentality. With the few decades left to me, I intend to re-discover the world complete with its intentions, giving all of it the respect it deserves, and looking it in the eye, so to speak, with gratitude.

These past few weeks I have been sensing a presence that reminds me of what some cultures say about gravity, that it is Mother Earth’s love for us, holding us to her, so we don’t float away into space. It isn’t gravity I feel, but some other ubiquitous force at work, or not a force so much as a lap. Or arms. Like I am a small child being held by a warm and loving mother. Or father. It’s that very subtle presence you feel when you step into an empty house but you can sense right away someone is there. Or if you are on the phone, and you can hear that in the silence, someone is listening to you. (Sorry that both of those images are slightly creepy, but you know what I mean.)

And most of all, I want to share with you the feeling that no matter what is falling apart in our world, what terrible things may be happening, there is at the same time this truth, that we are being held, and held together, and kept alive by myriads of systems so beautifully designed, with the intention to give us this gift of being alive.

Happy New Year!