…in [the] primal way of looking at things there is no difference between what you do, on the one hand, and what happens to you on the other. It is all the same process. Just as your thought happens, the car happens outside, and so the clouds and the stars.
It’s weird, bobbing along the river of life — I haven’t quite got over the wonder of it all, nor have I mastered the rapids by any stretch of the imagination. The newness is still there, and it feels odd to just shrug shoulders and say “it is what it is” when you feel that heat of anger rising up within because you start to suspect that things are happening to you, instead of just happening. But, I’ll capture that sense of injustice and I stroke it until it calms down and then turn my attentions to the happening at hand.
Sometime I succeed. Many times I don’t.
But occasionally, the current takes over and the cloud of calm descends like warm rain over me. I feel my body lifting skyward, I feel lighter and my arthritis falls to the wayside. There is just the happening and I am swept along for the ride — and it feels good to not have to steer myself as I ride the rapids. I wish I could capture the sensation with words and share it with anyone who’d care to read or listen, but I am finding that words are lacking for the feeling.
There is calm.
There is abandon.
There is me and the river. No…. There is me and I am the river.
It’s part of the finding the spiritual in whatever work you do (see yesterday’s post), same sensation. When you find that spiritual moment at the workplace, you are the job, you are no longer perceiving yourself as doing the job (or having the job do you).
But when you try to analyze it, reflect on it, capture it — you miss and you are separated for the happening.
There is happening, am-ing, be-ing. And there is intellectualizing it.
Not the same thing at all because, in reality — we’d all rather happen it than think about happening it…