Cathedrals - all the commitment you can muster..

The other night I was reading Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, by Joseph Jaworski, my girlfriend loaned it to me.

I came across this passage, after he talked about his marriage breaking up and seeking something more.. real.. out of life, taking his first spontaneous trip ever;

As I was travelling in France, I found myself drawn to the cathedrals there, most particularly the great cathedral at Chartres, the small medieval town lying just southwest of Paris. This cathedral was built in the mid-thirteenth century when high gothic architecture was at its purest, and it possesses a unique symmetry and unity. Being near and in it, I felt unity with all that was around me, a complete openness to the entire world. I intended to visit the cathedral for an hour or so, but ended up spending the entire day there, first sitting quietly and then later reflectively walking all around the vast cathedral, both inside and out.

He goes on to talk about how he felt a ringing, and like he was in a different energy field, and how he'd only ever felt that feeling outdoors before, in the wilderness.

It brought him to the realization that he was developing a new notion of 'freedom', and he says it so well:

...the freedom to follow my life's purpose with all the commitment I could muster, while at the same time, allowing life's creative forces to move through me without my control, without 'making it happen.'

I sighed and looked off into space.

Then I picked up the other book I was nibbling, The Eye of the I. This was the passage I read, from where I left off last night;

If the essential dynamic of one's spiritual seeking is not spiritual ambition (to get somewhere) but the progressive surrender of the obstacles to Love, then that which is called 'spiritual ego' does not arise as an obstacle. A given calibrated level of consciousness is not better than another but merely represents the level that is being worked on. It is the basic building blocks which enable a structure to ascend, and it is the dedication which ensures the completion of a cathedral.

The freedom to make a cathedral of your life - we all have it. It is our birthright. The cathedral already exists.

It was funny to me, the common themes in both of these short passages - the 'cathedral' and... dedication/commitment.

These giants in Cathedral Grove, on Vancouver Island - how did they get this way? Certainly not by choosing to live small - but by giving everything they had to reaching for the sky.

Each time you remove an obstacle to Love, or let go of a notion of who you are or where you are going, or commit to your highest expression - you let another block come into being, another new shoot unfold and reach higher.

Wild at heart

I started this entry last weekend, forgive me if I don't get it right..

There is nothing we fear more than ourselves.

come in, come in, 

come in

This entry started as a long diatribe about why people clear-cut. They do it because they're afraid. Afraid of the wildness. They want to 'break' it, like people break a dog. I had a dog once who wouldn't break. And I'll never have another until he comes along again.

They fear the wildness, and so they clear-cut. Kill. Strip-mine. But really - we all fear it. It is us. Ever walk in the forest alone at night? I went swimming recently, in a little stream in the rain-forest. I was alone, it was dusk. I stood in the river, with the closing darkness all around me, the trees looming overhead in harsh kindness, the icy muddy water swirling about my hips, and I heard wolves - a pack of wolves, in a semi-circle in the woods around me, just beyond my sight. They just made little noises, yips and barks, to let me know they were there. I dove into the muddy water, swam under through a hole in a giant still living tree, got out, dried myself in the rain, and walked further into the forest, wolves, and gathering darkness.

I wanted to know that I belonged to the forest, to go past my own fear. It's not the wildness we fear outside ourselves, it's the wildness within us, the wildness in our hearts.

It's fundamental to being alive. We are all wild (but some more than others (I love those people)).

We fear the wildness in ourselves because we want to stay in whatever comfortable place we're in, in life, where we've shut off our ambition, our passions, our dream, but our wildness wants us to run. And risk.

And the worst thing is; we can't shut it up. We can't kill it, we can't make it go away - it is part of us. All we can do is wall it off, and hope it gets tired of scratching at the door.

And to silence that scratching - we go out and try to silence it in the world. We try to break others who are wild and free and beautiful (at our worst) and even at our best we rarely truly embrace it in ourselves, we rarely just let it run.

Go out in the wildest place you can find, alone - that's one tenth of the courage it takes to truly live your life. But when you really do - this is the flipside - you will (or so I've heard), be blessed, loved, and maybe one day taken, by all living, wild, free, and beautiful things.

Come into yourself, it's wild in here..