01/07/2024
On emergence and being witnessed:
I recall the nascent years of social media, and how reticent I was to engage with such a concept… for the first 5 years I watched my friends join and become connected with each other and with a larger world while I held myself back and aloof - almost in a holier than though posture against a virtual reality that was only gaining gravity and momentum.
I recall when first I broke down against my prejudices and joined the book of faces, I entered this virtual play ground boldly, and would write rants and updates and soul insights and heartbreaks for the world to see me as I am on any given day. I would share political opinions, and medical opinions, and philosophical debates. I would engage in virtual activism and invite/incite others toward the same.
It was both performative and authentically raw in equal measure, and it felt easy - like spreading the right temperature butter onto bread.
Over the last decade, I have become more of a lurker.
I stay mildly up to date and simultaneously uninvolved in what is going on in the world and in the lives of my friends. The algorithm has refined a curated stream of content that is educational and enlightening on all my favorite subjects, in a lovelu flow of memes and reels that are just so relatable. I get to have passive consumption of content with minimal requirements for engagement.
Truth is, I am so engaged in the life of raising children, and healing, and walking my talk, and holding space for my immediate community - that social media is not a place that I come to for engagement.
I don’t have that capacity to engage with the broader audience, even my various friendships that are separated by large distances or affiliations that are not immediate on my geogrpahical and energetic locale - I love to see that photos they post, or updates on their life. But I don’t have space to comment or engage or reach out beyond the lurking and passive content consumptions.
It has also become equally exhausting to make myself visible, to share of myself and post about the real living that is unfolding in my corner of reality.
I don’t know why, but to be perceived feels like a drag most of the time.
And at the same time, my path of embodied living and learning includes a commitment to exploring, playing with, and hopefully building capacity to expand my reach in the world and to expand my capacity to hold a greater charge for the sake of deep connection, for the sake of compassionate impact, for the sake of building a living legacy.
The upanishads have a beautiful line, that has touched me so deeply over the last several years:
Two birds in a tree,
One eats the fruit the other simply sits and watches.
And we are all at one time or another one bird, or the other, or both, or the tree holding them or the fruit being eaten.
When I take in this phrase, a well of sadness arises in me, because it feels as though I have spent a significant portion of my time on earth trying to become the bird that simply sits and watches for fear of becoming the bird that is trapped by the voracious appetite for tasting fruit that distracts them from truly reckoning with their own mortality.
From my youngest memory I knew that death would come one day, and I was committed to be ready to face it when it comes - which translated to not getting sucked into the world of chasing pleasant sensations.
And the well of sadness that arises in me when I realize this, is that in many ways I’ve managed to coast through life and experiences, a diversity of them for by external fact it can be said that o have lived rather boldly, yet I have managed to coast through it all not really letting any of it touch me.
My commitment in my journey towards embodied living and learning is that I have begun allowing the world to actually pe*****te my aloofness, I have begun tasting the fruit. And I have had to start very small, because I don’t have the stomach for it as it’s turned out. My capacity for contact and for tasting is like that of an infant, on the energetic level.
Three years ago, when I began this lesson, the slightest contact, the smallest morsel of fruit tasted would put me into a coma like collapse.
Like a newborn, whose stomach is the size of a cherry pit, I would taste, and then close in to sleep deeply trying to digest.
This new year, the approaching year of the dragon, sees me beginning to gain a ground of being where in I want to push the envelope a little and see how much more of the world can I stomach, beyond my very small and intimate circle. We will see how much I can keep it going. This post is one step at revealing myself again as I once used to.
And I will see how I can digest the energetic pendulum swing of taking this action, whether I can manage it in an embodied way, with the emotional and energetic integrity I now hold myself to.
And then, perhaps I will feel like I have capacity to do this again, to engage on purpose, and may be even with some regularity.
Hello virtual world. I see you. I feel you.
I am open to tasting your fruits with embodied intention and commitment to living fully so that the art of living may become married with the art of dying.
