“In each and every cell of my being lives the power of the Universe. Also, each cell in my body is permeated by the drive of being this power. And by being it, I allow who I am and what I do to unfold and manifest in an intentional and conscious way. This is the way towards harmony with and care for myself, others and nature – mySELF”. If these words resonate with you, then you are awake in your BEING journey.
For me, “being” means to be alive and to experience all that is part of the path – no duality – all of it. It also means impermanence, evolution. And greatest, it means the insight of “interbeing”, as the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh explains: “To inter-be and the action of interbeing reflects reality more accurately. We inter-are with one another and with all life. The whole planet is one giant, living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis.”
We humans carry many existential questions hidden in our minds: who are we? Why does everything exist? What is life about? What happens after death? At the same time, our daily life also brings many important questions: how to live a worthwhile life? How to become all I can be? How do I satisfy my needs? How to best develop as individuals and communities? How to love, connect? How to be happy and fulfilled? How to positively impact others? How to care for nature?
More and more, with the results we have been achieving as humanity, to get in touch with these questions becomes essential and less an option. These results, as Otto Scharmer, (founder of the Presencing Institute) describes, relate to three “divides”: the spiritual-cultural, social and ecological divides. We got disconnected from ourselves, from others and from nature. What we experience: depression, loss of meaning and purpose, ignorance, inequality, hatred, depletion of natural resources, loss of biodiversity etc., becomes the symptoms, a landscape of issues and pathologies caused by these disconnections.
We all do not want to create these results, but we are all manifesting it. What do we do to change it? You might ask. I believe that is not the primary question. The one we must ask ourselves is who can I be to change it – Myself or MySELF?
If your heart is called by this question and you take it seriously, you might consider the primordial human purpose: self-realization. The realization of our big SELF. The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, father of deep ecology, speaks of this topic in his text “Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World.” He reminds us of the journey that many “special” individuals throughout history take, with the case of Gandhi: “What I want to achieve—what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years—is self-realization, to attain Moksha (Liberation). Naess explains that Gandhi speaks of realizing the supreme or universal Self—the Atman. “Paradoxically, it seems, he tries to reach self-realization through selfless action that is, through the reduction of the dominance of the narrow self. As he understands that through the wider Self, every living being is connected intimately, and from this intimacy follows the capacity of identification and, as its natural consequences, practice of nonviolence”. In the words of Gandhi: “I believe in advaita (nonduality), I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, of all that lives”.
We live in extraordinary times. Times where we can’t count on or afford only one special person having this insight and ‘Self realizing’, we all need to ‘Self realize’, all of us. To create loving communities. To heal. To care. “We are here to embrace rather than conquer the world”.
Still, according to Arne Naess, “Self-realization involves experiences of the infinitely rich, joyful aspect of reality. It is about the realization of fulfillment—of the potentialities of oneself; your nature. Looking for happiness, you will not realize yourself. I think that to look for self-realization is a better way. It is to develop your capacities”.
What is this human nature he talks about? What are this potential and these capacities we have? Our interconnected nature, our potential to love unconditionally and our capacities that allow us to live in community and harmony with ourselves, all other living beings and nature.
We have our lives as an opportunity and journey to remember and realize our true nature, potential and capacities. A journey to widen and deepen our self. A journey to be. To transform our realities by looking within and contributing to the world through a deepened perception of reality and of our own self.
It is in our hands! We are our own hopes, active hopes to realize all those potentialities and to manifest the results we want: wellbeing of all.
It is time, we all need to choose. As we become what we practice, let’s practice:
- consciousness/awareness
- presence and deep listening (to our inner wisdom, to others and to the future that wants to emerge through us)
- contemplation
- sensibility to the beauty of life
- emotion and capacity of emotional response (specially pain, to feel our inadequacy and impact in the world and compassion to respond adequately)
- questioning and reflection towards comprehension (of life and of our impact in it)
- positive actions based on the vision of the future we want and contact with our Self.
This is an invitation from life to all of us: If not you, then who? If not now, then when?
We resonate and believe in this and that is the reason for the existence of our programs to develop conscious individuals, leadership and communities). To hold spaces where people can practice together to be ourSelves, as alone we won’t make it, we can’t make it, as “I am” is always “we are”.THE CORE OF WHO WE ARE AND WHAT – OUR BEING
