RECALIBRATING REALITY
On the day after the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States
There are times when we are stunned into silence. It can come from perceiving something so beautiful that we gasp in awe and wonder, the “aesthetic arrest” that James Joyce expressed. At other times, the arrest is from the shock of horror and disbelief. The world we knew is blown open, our scaffolding of reality gone. We float unmoored, naked, and shivering.
This gap of unknowing offers a strange gift. We can surrender, willingly. We can soften into tenderness. We can give over to the healing, evolutionary intelligence within us, the inexorable movement of love. We can get curious, allow life to reorganize and transform us. Slowly or suddenly, something awakens ~ a new, creative resilience.
I am here with you in the gap, waiting. Be tender with yourself, with your loved ones, and with this weird, wild, imperfect world.
Here is Sutra 89 from The Radiance Sutras, by my husband Lorin Roche, a meditation on disturbance:
You are stunned, powerless.
You thought you knew
What was going on.
Now you realize
You don’t have a clue.
You are stopped in your tracks.
Everything within your skin is shaking.
Enter this shaking.
Right here, in the midst of commotion –
Get curious, look around inside with wonder.
Unmind your mind.
All the walls have fallen down.
Go ahead and dissolve.
The One Who Has Always Been,
Who has seen much worse than this,
Is still here.
Camille Maurine
9 November 2016
See also: Lorin's article on "The Yoga of Shock"
The Radiance Sutras
On the day after the 2016 Presidential Election in the United States
There are times when we are stunned into silence. It can come from perceiving something so beautiful that we gasp in awe and wonder, the “aesthetic arrest” that James Joyce expressed. At other times, the arrest is from the shock of horror and disbelief. The world we knew is blown open, our scaffolding of reality gone. We float unmoored, naked, and shivering.
This gap of unknowing offers a strange gift. We can surrender, willingly. We can soften into tenderness. We can give over to the healing, evolutionary intelligence within us, the inexorable movement of love. We can get curious, allow life to reorganize and transform us. Slowly or suddenly, something awakens ~ a new, creative resilience.
I am here with you in the gap, waiting. Be tender with yourself, with your loved ones, and with this weird, wild, imperfect world.
Here is Sutra 89 from The Radiance Sutras, by my husband Lorin Roche, a meditation on disturbance:
You are stunned, powerless.
You thought you knew
What was going on.
Now you realize
You don’t have a clue.
You are stopped in your tracks.
Everything within your skin is shaking.
Enter this shaking.
Right here, in the midst of commotion –
Get curious, look around inside with wonder.
Unmind your mind.
All the walls have fallen down.
Go ahead and dissolve.
The One Who Has Always Been,
Who has seen much worse than this,
Is still here.
Camille Maurine
9 November 2016
See also: Lorin's article on "The Yoga of Shock"
The Radiance Sutras