Can We Get It Together

From the Jamboree, a 6-day retreat in the woods - from a talk on interdependence, which was one of the focuses of this retreat...

I’m noticing, with this small group and our intention this week, that I'm not tending to start until everyone is here because I feel and love and value our woven-in-ness. To move out of separation would be to say, screw those guys, I’m starting. Natural interdependence is the way of creation. This interdependence is something that many of us have turned away from and protected from, because when we acknowledge our oneness, our weaving into each other, it hurts when one acts as though the others are not vital. Where we are hurt and operating out of separation, we drop each other on our heads, we bail on interdependence and go it alone. We don’t even notice the interdependence any more – it’s as if we actually ARE alone. When we start to open to interdependence, it feels vulnerable, it feels like needing, and most of us have a lot of conditioning and pain around that. To come screaming back into the weave we have to feel things, the things that originally caused us to distract from and pretend that the weave was not real. It is a necessary initiation, to burn through those places of conditioning, in order to soften open to this weave, this web of interdependence, this field.

Within conditioning when we open to and acknowledge this beautiful yin of interdependence, we feel what we call “needy” and many of us go get therapy for it. This is an absolutely beautiful place, to be woven in, to be open to interrelatedness. To be open to the ache where something needed can say “No, doesn’t matter to me to help” and turn its back. We call this openness vulnerability, and yet it is the way creation operates, absolutely interdependently, and to turn our backs on that creates what we have in the world now. Every man for himself, so to speak.

I'm talking about oneness. I'm talking about living from the fact of oneness. We have a little bit of a head start here on most of the rest of our world, which will sail its boat of separation all the way to the brink of death. Most will.

I invite everyone to consider, even if you don't know what it means or what it applies to, "I can't do it alone." You can be talking about a very tiny "it" or a very huge "it" -- the bigger the vision, the bigger the "it" you can't do alone. Just consider that. And anything you've erected in the way of that fact. The beauty of Love! And the sadness of having had to turn away from it. We narrow and narrow and narrow our vision until we find something we can do alone, some way we can be here without that burn of need, and our lives shrink. Forget feeding the hungry, forget keeping the planet healthy, forget moving outside of our conditioned bubble. Let's just have a tiny little track we can run around in circles in and call it our lives because we can do that alone.

It's kryptonite to the "me" to need. Separation's days are numbered when we admit that. And until life brings us to our knees, we're reticent. We don't want to. And yet, we are entirely dependent, at the mercy of, the Beloved. If we could paint a picture of an embodied reality, step one: need. Interdependent. That's how this whole thing was created, beautifully interdependent, oneness!

Can we get it together? Can we operate from something besides separation and fear? Not without a price, the price being “me” and "my" comfort, and “me” doing it “my" way. Want to come? I'm not going without you. We don’t know how, we’re not good at it yet, it hurts, we’re confused, and still, we have to come.