The Great
Yesterday, during my evening swim, I was contemplating the concept of ‘The great something’, and it led me to the ancient story of The Crossing Shawl. And when I used to teach, I had a deep practice of allowing yourself to juggle, which is in the story of The Crossing Shaw, and not to be defined by the great something.
And ‘The great something’ is “something” that happens.
Whether it is divorce, a betrayal, a theft, a pain, one needs the ability to go into ground but not be covered, to find your way back to shore after a sea storm, to be popped by the fire and not let it burn you, blown around but never lost…
The great something.
Some people, when they are scarred by the great something, you'll have scars that are very visible or in the psyche in the mind in the heart, those scars do not have to be the badge of the great something, but rather that in which you juggled.
A storm you went into and went through.
For if you carry the storm always, you become the storm.
Instead of the survivor, you are a victim. And language is incredibly imperative.
When I taught, one of the deepest layers of the practice is the language one uses in their mind's eye and with others of how they describe experiences, how they move through the world.
Are you a victim of a shark attack, or are you the survivor of the shark attack?
And so not being defined by the great something and not allowing the ‘over culture’ to give you that language or to give you that title, that badge for your scar.
I heard someone say, " When did rape become a woman's problem and not the man who did it? “
And it goes for “when did becoming a single mother, the woman's problem and not the man who left?”
When is it the survivor's issue because of a predator?
That I think is the important component in when enduring and moving through a great something that you do not become the victim for long and find your way into becoming the survivor.
What in you can switch, can change, morph, grow, and say I am not the victim of the shark attack but the survivor.
What in you?
And I spoke briefly about the juggling and the deep metaphor of the crossing shawl, but juggling is important because when you are going through a divorce, when you have had a trauma, when you have lost, when you have been stolen from, when you've been beaten by the ‘over culture’, you will need to juggle.
You must be healing, and the healed, and that's difficult.
I see single moms, and they have to be fully healed because they have to go to work, they have to go to the grocery store, they have to pick up their kids, and then they have to be also healing.
They are both the masterpiece and the artist. And I take my hat off.
I mean, that process of juggling is where one uses tools.
Practice.
You go into the deep reservoir of your soul or self.
That deep underground well water, where on top you might be crusty and dusty and broken.
But there, in that silent space of I cannot get off this couch, and I must get off this couch, I cannot, and I have done it, that space in between is one of the most important connective tissues.
When I teach, I put a great emphasis on the absence of breath when meditating.
Once you have exhaled, and before you take that next breath, that space between, I have exhausted everything, and now I revive myself.
That space is something interesting that happens in the space between breaths.
Which leads me back to, whilst I was having my evening swim, I was thinking about breath. The crossing shawl and great something and how we as a society are going through a global great something and I believe we are at the end of our breath.
And in this moment, what we breathe in, what we choose to do, what we allow to happen in the language we propagate, this moment is important.
And that's just what I've been meditating on this morning.
