Settling into myself: not leaping forward, not rushing to solve another’s problems, not jumping out of my skin with anxiety… but rather, feeling myself resting into my belly. Watching the weather systems within, nodding at them and letting them pass.
And lo and behold, somewhere around evening time yesterday, on that 8/8 Lion’s Gate Portal day according to astrology, a whisper of a shift inside and I felt a tide turn, out there in the ether… and then flow in towards me and I was suddenly…
Spiralling into myself
- Like an empty pond receiving its first welcome trickles of water
- Like a maypole when the ribbons start to wrap in again
- Like a fork in spaghetti catching up a good dollop in a twist
- Like the four winds returning to base
- As if my breathing was drawing in not just oxygen but goodness, light and energy.
- As if a juicer had started in me and was drawing in ripe fruit to extract the goodness from it.
What was going on?
Let’s read today’s Tao Te Ching…
13- Both favour and disgrace bring fear. Great trouble comes from having a body. What is meant by: “Both favour and disgrace bring fear”? Favour leads to a fear of losing it and disgrace leads to a fear of greater trouble. What is meant by: “Great trouble comes from having a body”? The reason you have trouble is that you are self-conscious. No trouble can befall a self-free person. Therefore, surrender your self-interest. Love others as much as you love yourself. Then you can be entrusted with all things under heaven. (Tao Te Ching Chap 13)
I love this: ‘Surrender your self-interest. Love others as much as you love yourself. Then you can be entrusted with all things under heaven.‘
One thing has become apparent to me in past days, weeks, years. This planet is undergoing an enormous ordeal. While we are constantly pitted against each other by what ever forces are at play, and while separation and judgment (“Lock her up/Build the Wall/Drain the Swamp…”) are endemic, and while the behaviour of many becomes more and more bizarre, crass, divisive, selfish, narcissistic and pathological… there really is only one answer in my mind….
Radical Love.
And this can be summarised as ‘Love others as much as you love yourself.’ – the golden rule. So, this I guess is the litmus test. If, amidst all the hate, folly and distress, we can continue to love EVERYONE, we can be ‘entrusted with all things under heaven.’ Largely, I imagine, because we are unlikely to try to hoard, steal or spoil them. But more, I suppose, because all things under heaven are created for the purposes of love.
You asked what was going on yesterday, and why the ‘spiralling into yourself’ began. Know that universal love for all has a magnetic effect.
Loving everyone, as you describe above, allows the Inner Judge to step down (phew – she’s exhausted and ready to retire) and in her place steps an Inner Nurse. The Inner Nurse administers care to all who cross her path, however it may be that the person has received their wounds or contracted their disease.
The Inner Nurse has a much more satisfactory job to do than the Inner Judge.
The Judge must assuage her own ‘executioner’s guilt’ daily (‘Was I correct to condemn that person three years ago??’) and work to live with the contradictory knowledge of her own rampaging imperfection, error, sin, shame and wrong-doing. Her world is a binary one (innocent or guilty) which could turn on her and consume her with its own logic at any time.
The Nurse finishes each day knowing she did her best for those who crossed her path that day. The Nurse needs not be selective in her mercy, but delivers compassion and care to all. She is not contradicting herself – but for the times she (maybe frequently) forgets to grant herself as much care as she bestows upon others. Her world is unified: care for all.
And care for all, love for all – that includes the people who are hijacking our politics and syphoning off wealth, doesn’t it?
Exactly.
And the violent, the rampaging, the wildly dangerous…
Would you withhold your love from a howling, spitting, livid wild animal with its foot stuck in a trap?
This trap, in human terms, would be…?
The trap, in human terms, is the confounding trickery of pain, of trauma, of wounding, of off-planet influences which ‘hobble’ the average human. It takes such psychic skill and energy to correct the balance when a person has become overwhelmed by the darkness.
Yes. That is true. I know. I really do. Tell me more about correcting the balance, about staying upright, about healing wounds ancient or new.
When you spiral into your self lovingly, whilst simultaneously projecting true love for all, you gain access to the spirit of high love. So, on the one hand, affirm your love for all humanity and state aloud your summoning prayer for a collective healing. And on the other hand, simultaneously, pull peace, unity, light and love (P.U.L.L.) into yourself, with the gentlest self-care and self-love, and the subtlest, tenderest chiding of yourself towards habits that uplift and nourish the self and the spirit.
Yes. This. I hear you. I really do. What else?
This love for all. It must be stated clearly. It must come from deep within, and be fuelled by words, action and harmonious thought. Harbouring or expressing binary thought patterns of love/judgment (unity/separation) are tantamount to ordering a ‘Diet’ Coke with your Big Mac and large fries.
I do feel it, the love for all. I know that as a planet we are struggling against a typhoon of collective pain and healing.
You’re sure you don’t want to blame and judge the ‘selfish’? You’re sure you don’t believe some people (aka ‘others’) are ‘psychopaths’?
This I do know: whatever I see out there is only ever a mirror of me. Do I have selfish and psychopathic traits? Yes! Can I…
Wait. We are not asking you for a confessional. We are saying, do you believe some people are evil?
Ok. Harsh question. Um… no? I perceive some people are broken, unhealed, karmically over-loaded, wounded, psychically-invaded, energetically-hijacked… I believe that darkness is the absence of light… What do you want me to say here?
We want you to think about how you will align your thinking in coming months and years as individuals seize power and wield it against others.
Oh heavens… Is it really going to get that bad? Like Germany in the thirties?
If it did, how would you maintain an inner balance of Radical Love?
You’re saying, how would I respond to my sense of the moral imperative to condemn people acting with hatred towards other people?
Yes. Especially those you suspect of being highly conscious of what they are doing (vs the unconscious, misguided ‘crazed’ radicals who you see as victims of a larger crazy-making system).
Here’s what I notice. When I think about the individuals I know of, or think I know of, in those positions… I lose touch with myself and of all peace. My whole mind circles around them, and I get hijacked. So, I guess, my response is going to need to be to get better and better at spiralling in, anchoring into myself, and holding a sense of love for myself and for all in equal measure. I don’t need to fixate on other individuals. I need to anchor myself (spiral in, with love) and then focus on my intention of peace and goodwill and loving kindness for all.
Nurse Love-All practices tonglen.
Aha. Yes! That active practice of, in a sense spiralling in the pain of others, and transmuting it, and sending out love and joy. What about keeping the psychic gunk out?
Nurse Love-All has a very high-functioning immune system. She has trained it well and keeps on top of it. This allows her to work in the wards and in the battlefield without contracting the diseases or infections in the environs.
Ah, yes, with practices like qigong and meditation, I can keep up my ‘light chain-mail’ outfit, and remain fully conscious of what I let in and for what purpose. For example, I can set my system to be empathetic to my clients for the purposes of tonglen practice – but not so as to be exhausted or overloaded by their experiences.
Spiralling in peace, unity, light and love, we are able to project it out in equal measure. Anchor in first.
Good. Chat. <3 Thank you.
I am spiralling in
