It can’t all be shared

A long detour.

That’s how I’d describe a large chunk of my life.

And before we bypass the melancholy with a reframe, let’s not.

It’s okay to be sad, and to have a sense that some things have been wasted.

Because some things have been.

I like the version of me who doesn’t need a positive spin.

The fearful spin.

The quick re-gripping of the sense of control; the fix.

So what is it that I’ve wasted?

My body, in a way.

I exchanged something of greater natural currency, for something less.

I fell in love with the imagery of what I’d created, and the validation it gave me.

My presentness lived in a more tactical online landscape, struggling to trust in the simple being-act of practice; of movement.

A blessing that many wish for, unaware of the challenge it brings.

My body was not made by the mirror, though I see it in the mirror.

My words were not made for the screen, nor my voice, nor for the video, though these are the places they have been heard.

My riches (riches? lol) were not made through funnels or marketing tactics, but in the hours spent far away from these things, contemplating what it is that I stand for — remembering who I am, and am not.

My relationships bloom and die not only through conversation, but in the various ways we see the silent spaces.

Some will meet me there.

Some won’t.

Some hearts will break together, into each-other’s oceanic love.

Parting as naturally and willingly as they came, aware of neither coming nor going.

And others will let go when we least expect, plunging the arrow of impatience into the heart of the one holding on.

I’ve been both, now.

The impatient and the patient.

The one who hurts, and the one healed from being the hurter by being hurt and… seeing.

That I’d been seeking what I could get, more than appreciating what is.

I’ve tried to fix it, to get it back.

Still getting. Still not appreciating what. Is.

And this is how the outward path seems to go. Deviations from home. Delusions of grandeur, of grander, of better, of best — all existing just a little further away on the horizon.

Spiralling closer, closer, closer, closer. Closer… 

Closer.

Always closer.

But closer to what?

If I must emerge from the peaceful un-being into this world of things, then let me choose my direction, at least?

If I am a body that feasts on other bodies, that builds his floor upon the tender hopes of others, then let me honour the creative act enabled by this innocent animal that I am, so all is well again.

Is it so that there is space for it all?

I will not answer yet.

I don’t know.

So I ask instead, at this point in time:

Let me give back in kind, to that which sustains my tissues and animates my mind.

Let my law be nature’s song, rather than my song, man’s law.

Let me be known as an essence of something that grows the way the forest grows.

Let my ephemeral moments be ephemeral, my impermanence impermanent. Lest that which breathes in me become a pixel-bound fixture in the grid of what never really was.

What never really was, as it seemed.

Yet is still sold as what could, and even should be?

The brand. The mark. The grip.

If this is a sharing economy, then whose soul is being passed around?

If sharing is the point, then what are we sharing?

Little of substance, that is not already shared.

What can we teach?

Something… for sure.

But perhaps only half of what needs to be taught.

How does one sell the idea of listening, to those not quite ready to use their ears?

How does one package the art of listening — without offering an empty box?

Who dares to give less, and ask more?

Yes, I know there is goodness here too.

I know that some whispers + key-codes to growth are hard-earned.

And that we’re all walking each other home.

We.

And yet you ask me.

Where did I learn about the body? What institute? What resource? What is this called?

If I listed these things you’d know not where I learned, but rather where I forgot my body; committed it to dust; reduced a radiant mystery to symbolism, studied on a flat plane offering little but paper cuts to the beholder.

The correct question is who.

Who walked in such a way to inspire my uprightness? Who talked in such a way that I learned the voice was God’s wind-instrument? Whose essence permeated a room such that those inside it felt held within a loving-trust they’d only recognise was real, in the years to come?

Who planted the tree they would never sit under?

If you ask me what, then ask me “what power is that, that needs none?”

Ask me “what makes a teacher?”

I will tell you, I don’t know.

But that power is real, and teachers are real, and we choose not how to use this power or when the teacher appears.

If we are attuned, we simply receive it, and it passes through.

Life makes lightning roads through skies that have no paths.

River-strokes and song-lines, through dry earth.

And unquestionably, love asserts a space for itself — mirroring its resistance.

Sometimes the teacher comes in the form of a flower.

Other times, in the form of hell’s flames.

We know the way only when we are unsure of it.

There is no shelter, nor highway that wisdom needs.

I would tell you not to reverse-engineer your being from the broken fragments of my own, but how else can we be in the world?

So, use me as a lily-pad.

Remember the feet that step are yours.

And remember the lessons are within the steps, between the steps, and in the movement of the feet.