Being-ness Together
We must not be silent even as we speak from the great silence we know so well.
I have two safe spaces I can always rely on. They’re both people circles where I can be my full self and spend time with beloveds who share their own fantastical experiences of being alive. Each one of us, either through our creativity or spiritual exploration or both, have cultivated an unshakable, deeply nourishing sense of inner being.
If there is such a thing as being-ness-nerds then this is ground zero for my being-ness nerd-peeps.
The inner places we frequent are at times free of gender and other markers of identity integral to our culture. It's not unusual for any of us to have had experiences where ways of being we were attached to dissolve into emptiness. We may still identify with the trappings of the lives we’ve built … or not. Things like that just become less important, cloths to wear because we are a clothing wearing culture.
These spaces can also give birth to a deep sense of affection for the most humble creatures and natural phenomena of our daily lives. We become prone to sitting in wonderment, overwhelmed by the simplest natural events, like the symphonic activity erupting from an ant hill. We are stopped in our tracks by the first breeze of Spring brushing aside the last notion of Winter. We are exploring our own inner states and measuring their resonance with the transcendent nature of the outer world. The essence of that transcendent force can be felt as emptiness, an emptiness that reveals the fullness of a sacred presence we might call Spirit, God or Goddess.
The deep experience of inner being is lifelong for us and many others like us. It can begin even before puberty. We are self-aware, self-witnessing in ways the very young aren’t prepared by our culture to be. Others of us are bumped into inner space later in life by circumstances beyond our own control. Death, loss, or the magic of spontaneous awakening bring us into our inner world as permanent, fully invested denizens.
My friends and I are those who have survived this process, come through it whole and excited to participate in the world. Not everyone is so lucky. We are all blessed by our circles of support both in this world and in Spirit.
I think every one of us have felt deeply disrupted in one way or another by the cultural and political shifts we are awash in. Most of the members of my friend groups are women, some of them lesbian or bisexual, some have lived gender queer identities for the bulk of their lives. We all see the cultural changes from different perspectives, have unique insights, but every one of us is aware that the oasis of freedom and discovery we enjoy may be threatened in the very near future, if not threatened already.
For people who explore their inner terrain with depth and intensity, it’s striking how much of our culture is devoting itself to outer performances of conformity. Genders must present a certain way, perspectives on God must conform to more and more rigid standards, we must adhere to a promoted idea of what it is to be an American. We are told more and more who we are, rather than being seen for who we are becoming.
Those who cultivate an awareness of their inner world, and its resonance with our shared world, will always be in conflict with the forces of conformity and the politics of fascism. It is simply in our nature to question, to discover what lies outside the prescribed way of being. We cannot dispense with the value of the inner now or any other time. We are incapable of shedding what we inhabit so deeply.
And we are needed now more than ever, we are the antidote to these times.
It’s easy to get caught up in the latest drama created by the forces of conformity and control. Their conversations are so often irrational, confused and circular, they are traps for our time and energy. The many wizards of lies succeed in ways few others have in recent history. We could spend lifetimes parrying their rhetoric.
Instead we must continue to claim and speak from the terrain that is alien to those who would oppress us.
Our answer must be to go deeper, to make art more loudly, to embody the reality of Spirit in our actions with greater confidence and grace. Our answer must be to continue to claim the space of the inner, continue to act in accord with its company. We must create our own conversation from that place so that its voice can be heard above the rancor of the hollow culture being proffered now.
We must not be silent even as we speak from the great silence we know so well.
I hope you can find allies that resonate deeply with who you are at your core. The more we cultivate that connection the easier it will be to stand in our truth regardless of the onslaught we might face.
May we all have being-ness people to call on during this time of great change.