Recollections of Connections
Since the London bombing last Thursday I have been having recollections of my experiences in New York 9/11/01. I realized today that since over the last 2 years I have been blogging I have switched my blog from Movable Type, to manual maintenance using html, to Blogger, that means my archives are quite sparse. Mostly I don't mind that, but there was one article I would like to share with you at this time. So I am offering it as a new post below. Those of you who have followed me through all the changes once knew this post as "The Garden You Give." Hope you don't mind seeing it again.
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August 8, 2003
As I sit here looking out at the garden I think of September 2001 when I sat in my living room in New York City trying to think of something I could do to uplift the people around me after the tragedy of the 11th. I thought of giving blood, carrying food or water down to the rescue workers, many things that I knew I could never do. It was all I could manage each day just to show up for work down in Chelsea and be fully present for my clients. They were also under great stress and really needed all the emotional energy I could muster up.
Then I decided to offer the one thing I could create from the safety of my living room. However less it seemed than actually going out into the chaos to reach someone in need, I decided to give what I could. So I wrote an essay called "On Feeling Alive" and distributed color copies to all my co-workers, encouraging them to pass it on to others after they read it if they thought it had helped them. Within the story I inserted a color picture of a beautiful garden.
Not only was the story appreciated, but a year later I was still seeing copies up on people's bulletin boards when I went in their offices. The edges were worn and turning, but that color picture of the garden always popped out at me.
Just the other day it hit me. I now live in a garden that looks just like the one in that picture! That is the first thing I see when I wake up each day, and what I see when I do my writing every day. Last night I was listening to The Moody Blues and there was a line in a song something like, "the love you gave was really meant for you." And I realize the garden I gave was given to the one and received by the one. There is only one of us.
If you want to read "On Feeling Alive" continue reading below.
-- On Feeling Alive --
There is knowing and then there is thinking about knowing. The thing itself can only be lived, experienced. The more full the experiencing, the more fully alive. The looking at, talking about, description, is always one step removed from the actual thing.
Since the attack on my city and nation, I and many others have been in shock. Shock is to be outside one’s body, barely even knowing about the body’s experience. It is to be steeped in even deeper vats of unconsciousness than within normal existence. But this life we call normal here is everyday shock.
That is why when we live someplace where the normal life is not one of shock consciousness, we see travelers appearing to be in shock. They sit in roadside cafes, staring into space, looking so very tired, exhausted. But this appearance is deceiving. Rather than encountering external sources of anguish now, they are actually healing. Their hidden grief rises to the surface and they begin to feel again.
The first thing they feel is the top layer of their experience. Is this the inability to fully respond to the trauma of their existence? Or is it the trauma itself finally being reawakened within experience so that this time a bit more of it can be felt? Bit by bit, more is felt. There remains some numbness that protects which manifests as the dull gaze and inability to move we see on these zombie-like survivors. But there is some feeling beginning to come back. They are no longer able to rush about not feeling anything. They are forced to feel it, forced to be still with the fine layers of pain and the dull coat of self-protecting shock.
Gently their bodies move them back into consciousness. Given enough time and stillness the inner fire is attained and its radiance burns away all clouds. Still witnessing of inner movement naturally gives way to outer movement. Vitality is regained. We are alive again.
This aliveness is something more than our everyday reality. We have become something more than what we were. We have gained knowledge of what we once rejected as “not me.”
Nature is pure presence, pure being. It just can’t seem to lie. If you want to come alive in any moment (and you can’t go to Bali) go out into your backyard garden. If you don’t have a backyard, let alone a garden, go to a park and hug a tree instead. Okay, just sit on its roots and lean your back against its trunk. Make sure the back of your head touches its bark. Drink Nature’s power to be fully present with any magnitude or flavor of experience. Pour out your fatigue, your confusion, your rage, and especially your tears -- especially your tears.
If it’s raining and you don’t want to get wet, enter instead your inner garden. Move within the body of earth you were born into. Move your body. Sway to the sounds of inner music, or if you can’t hear that just yet turn on some music for your outer senses and move to that. Enter into sacred communion with the world of your flesh.
Your body is a part of nature. It cannot help but to be present. Do you wish to be present with it? Are you ready to awaken to your inner dance and radiate your inner fire? Be still and let the body answer when it is ready to move.
Wishing you peace, love, and healing,
Indigo Ocean, MA
Sept. 14, 2001
----
August 8, 2003
As I sit here looking out at the garden I think of September 2001 when I sat in my living room in New York City trying to think of something I could do to uplift the people around me after the tragedy of the 11th. I thought of giving blood, carrying food or water down to the rescue workers, many things that I knew I could never do. It was all I could manage each day just to show up for work down in Chelsea and be fully present for my clients. They were also under great stress and really needed all the emotional energy I could muster up.
Then I decided to offer the one thing I could create from the safety of my living room. However less it seemed than actually going out into the chaos to reach someone in need, I decided to give what I could. So I wrote an essay called "On Feeling Alive" and distributed color copies to all my co-workers, encouraging them to pass it on to others after they read it if they thought it had helped them. Within the story I inserted a color picture of a beautiful garden.
Not only was the story appreciated, but a year later I was still seeing copies up on people's bulletin boards when I went in their offices. The edges were worn and turning, but that color picture of the garden always popped out at me.
Just the other day it hit me. I now live in a garden that looks just like the one in that picture! That is the first thing I see when I wake up each day, and what I see when I do my writing every day. Last night I was listening to The Moody Blues and there was a line in a song something like, "the love you gave was really meant for you." And I realize the garden I gave was given to the one and received by the one. There is only one of us.
If you want to read "On Feeling Alive" continue reading below.
-- On Feeling Alive --
There is knowing and then there is thinking about knowing. The thing itself can only be lived, experienced. The more full the experiencing, the more fully alive. The looking at, talking about, description, is always one step removed from the actual thing.
Since the attack on my city and nation, I and many others have been in shock. Shock is to be outside one’s body, barely even knowing about the body’s experience. It is to be steeped in even deeper vats of unconsciousness than within normal existence. But this life we call normal here is everyday shock.
That is why when we live someplace where the normal life is not one of shock consciousness, we see travelers appearing to be in shock. They sit in roadside cafes, staring into space, looking so very tired, exhausted. But this appearance is deceiving. Rather than encountering external sources of anguish now, they are actually healing. Their hidden grief rises to the surface and they begin to feel again.
The first thing they feel is the top layer of their experience. Is this the inability to fully respond to the trauma of their existence? Or is it the trauma itself finally being reawakened within experience so that this time a bit more of it can be felt? Bit by bit, more is felt. There remains some numbness that protects which manifests as the dull gaze and inability to move we see on these zombie-like survivors. But there is some feeling beginning to come back. They are no longer able to rush about not feeling anything. They are forced to feel it, forced to be still with the fine layers of pain and the dull coat of self-protecting shock.
Gently their bodies move them back into consciousness. Given enough time and stillness the inner fire is attained and its radiance burns away all clouds. Still witnessing of inner movement naturally gives way to outer movement. Vitality is regained. We are alive again.
This aliveness is something more than our everyday reality. We have become something more than what we were. We have gained knowledge of what we once rejected as “not me.”
Nature is pure presence, pure being. It just can’t seem to lie. If you want to come alive in any moment (and you can’t go to Bali) go out into your backyard garden. If you don’t have a backyard, let alone a garden, go to a park and hug a tree instead. Okay, just sit on its roots and lean your back against its trunk. Make sure the back of your head touches its bark. Drink Nature’s power to be fully present with any magnitude or flavor of experience. Pour out your fatigue, your confusion, your rage, and especially your tears -- especially your tears.
If it’s raining and you don’t want to get wet, enter instead your inner garden. Move within the body of earth you were born into. Move your body. Sway to the sounds of inner music, or if you can’t hear that just yet turn on some music for your outer senses and move to that. Enter into sacred communion with the world of your flesh.
Your body is a part of nature. It cannot help but to be present. Do you wish to be present with it? Are you ready to awaken to your inner dance and radiate your inner fire? Be still and let the body answer when it is ready to move.
Wishing you peace, love, and healing,
Indigo Ocean, MA
Sept. 14, 2001
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