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What we do to one of us, we do to all of us. (Maybe?)

Kate Kelly, Kairos Level III participant, sent the film by Kate Novak to me this morning expressing, in deep recognition, “This … is the work”. My reply is a bow to her, saying with her “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

In the film Hysterical Girl Kate Novak

(https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000007026836/hysterical-girl.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR3XU7ag8aTrgW5mqju9d-hFvLf3ReKSkxSCEmnHy9OtHts6EW2YCxFJ0VI)

choreographed how the Holy Yes and Holy No of the oppressed, in this case women, are so oft perverted and locked up by desire, privilege, and power across time and space. It’s in the marrow of our collective bones, the breath and energy stores in the mitochondria of our cells, the narrow corridors of our nightmares.

This 13 minute, 24 second film confronts the collective shadow of our times, past and present, and redeems a piece of our collective Heart, our World, our Collective Breath.  Medicine is released in the hearts of those who can hear in the present, past, and future.

What we do to or for one of us, we do to or for all of us. Maybe?

Kate tells her story, your story, our story….of being embalmed by the collective shadow to be placed on the wall or mantle as a trophy, a possession, a lifeless object (ie. statue) or perhaps fodder for a joke. (The image of the ancient Sumerian Goddess of Heaven, Inanna, hanging lifeless on the rack in the underworld comes to mind as does the Irish Selkie whose skin was stolen by the hunter claiming her as “his” to love or kill, whatever suits his fancy). This knowing lies in the depths of our hearts where “deep calls to deep” (Psalm 42.7), in the original fractal, the original Face. In this story the “enemy” lives within until our spiritual sickness is revealed.

I take in this film as the heartache that is the ultimate shofar blow, the ultimate offering of our tears at the altar, opening the gates to the divine will to enter and heal. “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40).

Free will is the most misunderstood, underestimated, perverted, disavowed gift that renders our Holy Yes, No, and Maybe inaccessible, seemingly impotent against cutting oneself off from the lies we tell ourselves and each other that yolk us to slavery, to death itself.

What we do to or for one of us, we do to or for all of us. Said affirmatively, is this bearable? If not, maybe someday. Maybe.

A poem by Robin Gorn

To those who stayed on charred landscape with
Ash on their face
Sifting through bones to make soup
Pointing the way though mute

I am grateful for the heart’s expansion
For dry grass that stayed standing
For the tree in the fence
So grateful for the passion
And the worlds it creates

Feed me your story
Of your time in the tunnel
Show me
The path that you dug to get out
Show me the shape of your shovel
Was it diamond or spade or tooth and nail?
Show me the rage that drove you
and the dreams of your youth
show me the great returning
of your child’s clear truth

The heart is not complicated
Though the path is unclear
Show me the dress you were wearing
Show me the weave of your cloth
Show me the places
Of your tearing
That flounce when you walk

Show me the time you spent staring
At things beyond your grasp
internally preparing
simply to ask

I stepped off the carousel
So used to the spin
The pie cut too thin

Do you remember the park
Of our sharing and the
Dreams left within?

The songs were unspoken
The words were unsung
The voice felt broken
The thread undone

But the silent
Were weaving
Their prayers to the sky
The cycle is returning
Bearing fruit in our
Pie

We’ve always
Been hungry
We’ve always been full
We’ve always been empty
While spinning the wool

You picked up my leaf and
Made it into a tree
Just by bearing witness
To the witness
In me

By Robin Gorn

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay 

Listen not to what is contrary to propriety 非禮勿聽;

Look not at what is contrary to propriety 非禮勿視;

Speak not what is contrary to propriety 非禮勿言;

Make no movement which is contrary to propriety 非禮勿動

 Analects of Confucius from 2nd to 4th century B.C

From what plain of consciousness do we honestly self-assess our own propriety, our own morality? Can we do this amidst the systems we are so deeply and invisibly entrenched? These are the large questions stirring in our collective consciousness on all levels as we grapple with ancient fears of the foreigner embedded in racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia in a polarized political climate and a world pandemic.

To begin, we might consider how conscious we are of the roots of capitalism and their promise to feed us, empower us over others (enemies included!), and free us from the natural laws of life and death. When we are hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, cold, and/or without shelter, these promises easily become our masters and terror of the foreigner in all its forms abounds.

These roots (promises), when invisibly held in the realm of innocence, easily become our jailers, keeping us yoked to Plato’s cave, afraid to leave, afraid of our own shadow and insatiably thirsty, hungry, wanting for more. Paradoxically, we can be profoundly comfortable in this agonizingly uncomfortable situation because we are simultaneously held in the womb of the Maya Illusion. Wandering, aimless, powerless, empty, we are obsessively caught in our own rituals of purification, attainment, and worship. We believe we are in control when we are not. Our will for good is activated but suffering and sacrifice cannot be reconciled in this naive, immature position. On this plain, “propriety”, what is right and wrong, is solely determined by the dictates of pain and pleasure, life and death. Intentions of seeing, hearing, speaking, and moving with “propriety” lead us further in the wildernesses until adversity wakes the seeker, the student, the follower or kills us. On this plain we are essentially orphans, regardless of our chronological age. Lost sheep in need of a shepherd, a shepherdess, a teacher, a friend. It is our choice to seek or deny him or her or them. It is always our choice. May the student arrive.

As an animal lover, I was immediately drawn to the three splendid, strong, graceful beasts. The experience of extended silent time to simply touch and stroke the horses began the establishment of trust and acceptance that was necessary for the work (play, to them) at hand. As a musician, I am well-acquainted with performance anxiety, and the finesse of looking and sounding as cool as a cucumber while my kneecaps are shaking and my heart is pounding. “You look so relaxed and comfortable!” I am often told, while thinking to myself, “Guess I fooled them again.” There is no fooling the survival instincts of the constantly vigilant prey animal that needs to identify and follow a trusted leader. These highly-trained retired thoroughbreds are highly attuned to energy, moods and cues. The learning in this workshop provides some basic communication tools to relate to and lead the horse appropriately. In order to succeed in gaining their trust to follow, one must find and feel a calm centering. The experience of finding this point is both exhilarating and humbling, but most of all grounding. This is a unique feeling that I hope I am able to somatically recall and know better over time.
– Karen Klevanosky

Years ago I participated in ACTT Naturally’s Hearts and Harmony program at Long Shadows Farm in Cambridge, NY which gently guided me home, back to the ground of my being, into deep experiencing of instincts I had somehow lost…. and forgotten.  Through engaging Natural Horsemanship principles,  these amazing Thoroughbred horses have been retrained by Valerie Buck from being the sport of kings to literally being dancing partners, humanizing what the modern world routinely dehumanizes as a matter of natural course.   It was in that dance, through the lens of the horse’s instincts, that the mind-body-spirit insight into the primal “Yes” of God woke in me and I have been dialoguing with and teaching from this point ever since.   Inside the dance something deeply fundamental in the mystery of our being is confirmed and resurrected.

In the summer of 2019 I began partnering with Valerie,  blending the spiritual practice of Natural Horsemanship and Kairos (holy time) contemplative practices to guide participants into accessing deep interior resources.   Participants are invited to leave the city for a restorative retreat that will enlarge their vision, imagination, and leadership in any context, in any role we play in this great theatre of life.  

Learning to engage the spirit of a horse opens our hearts to listen, lead, and reconnect to our core instincts, our bodies, our voice, our spirit, our truth — all that lies on the axis of personal authority —  with a form of intention and grace that only nature can summon. These beautiful creatures help us remember our natural, best selves and hear our deepest calls into wholeness which is too easily suffocated by real survival needs and worldy demands.   Meeting them at Long Shadows farm in Cambridge is a real return and with each meeting, I bring something back with me to this world.  

As a student of Kairos Center for Change, I was excited about participating in this retreat. This approach of combining the ACTT Naturally practice of natural horsemanship with Kairos’s contemplative practice was intriguing.

Through the teachings of Dr. Rachel and Valerie, I learned how to find that peaceful, noiseless center within. There is an instantaneous response when you are one with these gentle giants…a mirror to your soul. I have continued to gain the tools necessary to find my voice and energy within me to face those challenging times and to appreciate the peaceful ones.

I am so grateful and blessed to have had this experience. I cannot thank Kairos Center for Change and ACTT Naturally enough!! When is the next retreat?

Marge, Retired Teacher

If love and life itself constitutes the totality (dark and light) of the divine feminine and consciousness itself constitutes the totality of divine masculinity, conscious femininity is the marriage of the two where the rapture of being alive is first conceived and creativity and wisdom is birthed, our capacity to own our responsibilities finds a container, and our choices become conscious, steadied, and brave.  The forces of prosperity and decline, honor and disgrace, praise and censure, and pleasure and suffering lose their quality of permanent struggle and annihilating strength along with their powers of identification, gratification, despair, and infatuation. Proclivities toward their infinite snares and pathways leading toward spiritual death or hardening heart are severed, rendering them obvious, painfully lifeless, boring, and trite.  Energy is made available to seek life-affirming change.

Our need to be seen, come into or awaken to “being” through consciousness, is the spiritual ground of seeking this divine marriage.  When the mirrors of achievement and accumulation seem to have apexed, failing to reward or abate an ache that only poets know how to relate, the call toward the spiritual bridal chamber is happening.  The orientation toward revealing and persuading yourself and society of your personal worth is gradually withdrawn and redirected toward the search within for your essence, for the only mirror that can reveal self-understanding, generative love, and equanimity.  Messages from society will sway and block attention from discipline of  inner work with convincing arguments built on your own unconscious doubts and fears, promoting greater dependencies on social networks  either through indifference, blatant disregard, or misidentification of the call as “sickness”, “bad”,  “wrong” or “less than”.  The “opposing call” is to return back to identifying with the ordinary features of your life, ordering myopic attitudes and blind obedience toward traditional social roles and expectations, and attaching to sensate pleasures or dictates for comfort.  Sweet escapes are offered and multiplied by the myriad addictions at our disposal (familiar habits, sex, food, intoxicants, affirmation, competition, power, glory, material wealth, social media, film binging, etc.), serving only to annihilate or sedate ego consciousness for unconscious forces to rampage through your house.

Joseph Campbell, in Hero With A Thousand Faces,  goes to the ancient roots of modern understanding of the unconscious, delivered in visions and dreams from the depths:  Myth.   He explicates the patterns in his Monomyth, laying out the stages of the hero’s journey to awakening, explaining myth as “spontaneous productions of the psyche, each bearing within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source” designed to guide  us through the labyrinth, provide the “skein of linen thread” to anyone with a  “curiously disinterested…hero-heart….that is gentle, kind”. He connects us to the arch of our own mythos through dream symbols and helps us discover “secret openings” to the mysteries that lie within.

Somewhere within the void of not understanding lies a seed of knowing that which is not “I” — not “my” identity, not “my” story.  At times it may intrigue, excite or even overwhelm.  Other times, it may be missed altogether or perhaps overlaid by what we do understand, thus distorting the information and lending to a true misunderstanding.  This is the beginning of an illusion of sorts, a blind path in the Daedalus labyrinth.   What happens when we are fortunate enough to be aware and wait longer, without asserting meaning and write it down so it registers in the mind and lies suspended?

Daily, we traverse the unconscious ocean in the dark, facing the winds and variant precipitation, often with faulty navigational equipment.  The lighthouses in our life come in endless form, guiding us through the night for safe passage.  Of course, the creatures of the deep may capsize our ship at any moment, if we are lucky, regardless of the best circumstances.  In an instant, we are propelled high into the sky or pulled deep into the core.  There is a momentary awareness of the need for mercy concurrent with a surrender to the forces in charge.  The capsized ego must rest and rebuild toward a new horizon that can only be revealed in the light of surrender.  The seed of mercy awakens, ready to be planted in the world.