Last night I had a mind-blowing experience of communion at a Leftover Salmon concert with my new friend David and many other wonderful people. I started thinking about how important a role willingness plays in opening up the space to have such an experience.
Recently I was talking to a couple of friends at the yoga center about truth, and whether or not it’s something we even need to talk about, or really, whether or not we CAN even talk about it. And someone proposed that there is really no need or ability to describe truth in words, and therefore truth is always relative. Someone countered, however, that the reason we still believe it’s there, even if we can’t really describe it that well, is that we’ve experienced it, and furthermore that we’ve experienced it WITH other people. Like when we dance really well with someone else, or when a basketball team is all on the same page, communicating non-verbally with mind and movement to create something bigger than the individual players put together, that everyone is participating in. This is the kind of experience I’m referencing when I use the word communion.
Last night David and I moved our way into a rhythm in which we were dancing in call and response, without words, and continuously giving birth to a third entity in the space between us. Concerts are easy places to have these kinds of experiences, but it occurred to me that we don’t really need some certain kind of event like that to commune with each other in that way. This whole existence is poetry, is music, is a great ballgame and a dance that we get to play at, all the time, even when it seems the most mundane. It’s always there for us to see if we’re willing enough to look and listen with ears and eyes of humility and service.
So I think, rather than fixating on creating “the perfect evening” or “the perfect activity” to have a great time or a spiritual experience or whatever it is I’m looking for, I’ll try saying yes to what is present in the moment, as passionately as I can. I think about all the time I have spent in my life saying no to what the moment is asking of me, and all the experiences that caused me to miss, and how isolated I felt. And for what? For whatever reason we people have this habit of not letting ourselves go into the moment because we are afraid. Afraid that doing some certain thing will make us look stupid, or make us fall short of all the various arbitrary labels we are unfairly expecting ourselves to “live up to,” etc. So we end up with a bunch of people who never “look stupid,” but in the process we become isolated and miss out on all kinds of opportunities for intimacy. And so the cycle repeats itself, with fear in the driver’s seat.
I think that willingness, saying yes, on the other hand, involves trust, openness, vulnerability- all the ingredients needed for true intimacy. And when we can say yes to each other, in a spirit of love and acceptance, more and more deeply, allowing ourselves to go together wherever the moment is calling us, without limit, allowing ourselves to simply become two different yet equal characters in the larger story being written around us, playing together on the grand theater’s stage, there’s no end to what we can do, because every time we go there we enter the realm of magic. These are the places where our souls and imaginations live and breathe, and frankly I’m just not willing (ironically) to suppress that reality anymore just because it’s not convenient for a 9-5 work schedule. I believe the Muse will guide us to salvation over and over again, if we simply open ourselves to it and allow it to come through us. For me anyway, the intimacy of the moment is more fundamental to my humanness than the pursuit of material possessions.