The Shimmering Waves of an Endless Sea, Episode 267
Why it matters to build a life of awareness, wondering, curiosity, truthfulness and facing things as they are.
Finding a way to notice when we are letting life itself flow through us, and when we are standing in its way. Paying attention to all inside us that we have exiled or abandoned and doing the courageous, loving, painstaking work of welcoming it back and undoing our inner separation.
Attending to all the outer separations - between us and others, between us and our gifts and contribution, between us and life itself - so that we can humbly participate and contribute. Allowing our lives to join the shimmering waves of an endless sea.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's our source for this week:
The Shimmering Waves of an Endless Sea
Death loses some of its sting if our more modest sense of self displaces the arrogant illusion of being essential: I do, indeed, need the world and living creatures, but they do not need me - at least not for ever.
I need creation as the garden in which to exult, grow, play, work, struggle, learn and sing. As part of creation, there is a sense in which creation needs me, but only to the degree that I am a willing participant of that creation, an expression of its vitality, and a partner in its process.
Once I separate myself from the world, once I sever my embeddedness in creation, then I set myself up against it and creation no longer needs me. I make myself an alien, requiring the reinforcement of concrete and the glitter of acquisitions to hold my delusions in place.
An embodied, emergent vision of the world as a process ... allows us to transcend our crippling fear of death and our deadly alienation from the rest of creation. We are a part of the world, not apart from it, and our lives join the shimmering waves of an endless sea. We flow from it and return to it ... and we leave a mark precisely to the degree that the sea continues, unimpeded, on its way.
Bradley Shavit Artson, from 'Renewing the Process of Creation'
Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash