engagement
Jan. 25th, 2006 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonEdited comment made to a post in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yezida's journal:
Living fully is much about engagement, and true, deep intimacy with the world, not disengaging and becoming abstract, distant, and dead from the neck down. Even Bodhisattvas come back down the mountain...in fact, that's kinda the point of Bodhisattvas. It's no mistake that the biblical "knowing" of one person by another referred to sexual intimacy. To know something, truly know it, is to be intimate with it.
For me, I know that engagement can be damn hard, but it's also true for me that it's largely by caressing, touching, banging, sometimes fiercely smashing, against "the other," that I can start to know, not just know in my head, but really know, that there is no other -- not because I've egostically imposed my inner landscape on the world without, but because I've come to really, truly listen, know and identify what is within and what is without, to know they're one and the same.
One of the hardest parts of that process, I've found, is not closing down after the hard smash-ups. It's easy to do, retreat back inside, nursing the wounds, back to a safe place. But those moments of discord and chaos and pain are some of the very best times to listen, when I've learned the most. Learning to enjoy the quiet and calm is good, but ya sure learn a lot more about weather and how to steer your boat (or when to just let go of the steering) during the real tempests ;>
Chop wood, carry water. Engage with the world, and do the work. Just showing up is 90% of the battle. Easy, right? Yeah, right...
yezida's journal:Living fully is much about engagement, and true, deep intimacy with the world, not disengaging and becoming abstract, distant, and dead from the neck down. Even Bodhisattvas come back down the mountain...in fact, that's kinda the point of Bodhisattvas. It's no mistake that the biblical "knowing" of one person by another referred to sexual intimacy. To know something, truly know it, is to be intimate with it.
For me, I know that engagement can be damn hard, but it's also true for me that it's largely by caressing, touching, banging, sometimes fiercely smashing, against "the other," that I can start to know, not just know in my head, but really know, that there is no other -- not because I've egostically imposed my inner landscape on the world without, but because I've come to really, truly listen, know and identify what is within and what is without, to know they're one and the same.
One of the hardest parts of that process, I've found, is not closing down after the hard smash-ups. It's easy to do, retreat back inside, nursing the wounds, back to a safe place. But those moments of discord and chaos and pain are some of the very best times to listen, when I've learned the most. Learning to enjoy the quiet and calm is good, but ya sure learn a lot more about weather and how to steer your boat (or when to just let go of the steering) during the real tempests ;>
Chop wood, carry water. Engage with the world, and do the work. Just showing up is 90% of the battle. Easy, right? Yeah, right...
