Unconditional Fulfillment
It’s been too long since I’ve written! I didn’t mean for that to happen, and I’m in this season of feeling the farawayness of words for what is happening. Apparently this is the pace at which something arises to share!
This phrase, the title, “unconditional fulfillment” comes from Rupert Spira and it’s been with me a lot lately.
Last night, for example, I was feeling so sad. My conceptual mind was working really hard to decide why. Looking for a story to attach to it. And it just resisted a story. This is an experience I have frequently, where there’s an emotion that arises, and it takes me a while to even identify it, because if there’s not a story with it, it’s just noticing the sensations of it, it’s not as familiar to me! It’s like I could put any story to it - there are so many reasons to be sad! But somehow this (seemingly inseparable) tether between the feeling and a story just wouldn’t connect. A psychic habit of connecting these things that would no longer work. And then I had this flood of realization - ooooohhhhhh! I’m here on planet earth to feel sad right now! What an absolute miracle, to be through a human body, standing in the kitchen, feeling sad! This is a thing that humans do - they feel sad, in a rhythmic way. The emotional body is an activity, and it moves through sadness, among endless other flavors, in a circle. The sensation in my whole body was incredible, a wave of gratefulness to be alive and feel that sadness.
One of my earlier interpretations of equanimity and awakening was to not be “burdened”, to not “have,” difficult emotions. To somehow experience life less. This was my conceptual minds’ imagining about what it feels like to not suffer. Not sure how conscious that was but I see it now. As I write this, it sounds sort of absurd, but I think the desire that leads to any philosophical exploration is sincere - we want a way out of suffering, and that desire is to be trusted! So maybe it was the aesthetic of how and from whom I was learning it, and maybe it was my interpretation, probably both, but what I experience now is still such a surprise. That all of the feelings and desires are still present, but they are infused with appreciation. They are floating in a pool of gratitude. Wow! I cannot believe that I am a human being and get to experience this! It’s not loving everything I’m experiencing, it’s a flood of awe. And awe feels bigger than love, more including of what might be “negative,” or maybe awe is a better word for what love really is.
It feels like a visitation in the sense that it doesn’t feel like “I” am thinking up this perspective. Because I couldn’t. Or my mind couldn’t. My mind is obsessed with making sense of things. So it feels like an infusion of spaciousness, an offering of seeing everything as if for the first time. Like: this precious sacred “difficult” emotion is perfect as it is. There was never any problem with it in the first place. Something like that. (Every sentence here could be followed by: something like that.)
This offering I’m being offered by life is something I want to share with you in more ways, and I am crafting those ways this summer as time appears. I’m very excited to share more with you soon.
For now, I want to share this REVELATION of a conversation hosted by the ever-bright Point Reyes Books, between light beam Ned Buskirk and other light beam Stephen Jenkinson. Holy smokes Stephen Jenkinson’s use of language yall! Just the brightest light of inspiration for being exactly only in the center of life itself as it pours through us.
I’m ever-grateful for your presence with me in this exploration called a newsletter to you / with you / being “each other” - what a gift!
with love,
Sarah
PS Summer of Bogs and Chop is going great - it’s a microcosm of all of life to be so intensive with my kids. Everyone is cycling through all the activities of life and feeling together. It’s everything. It’s beautiful. I’m hoping I’ll write more on that soon.