Beloved.
Come into stillness.
However that feels for you today.
And close your eyes gently.
There is nothing to maintain here.
Just let your body Find the shape.
It already wants to be held in.
Feel your feet.
Or any part of you that is touching the ground.
Feel your weight.
Being gathered.
We're not here.
To convince ourselves of anything.
Or to transcend something we don't like.
We are here for something much truer than that.
To feel directly.
That are life.
Is already past.
Of something far larger.
Than the idea of a small and separate me.
Because once we glimpse that.
Even.
For just a moment.
Fear begins to loosen its grip.
The feeling of lack softens.
And separation gives way to something quieter and more whole.
Let your body become a little more receptive to its surroundings.
Without searching for particular sensations.
Simply notice what is already here.
With a sense of light attention.
Ask yourself gently.
Am I aware?
Not of anything in particular.
Am I conscious?
Notice how the knowing is already here.
Before any thought arrives to confirm it.
This awareness is not something.
That can be touched by the hand.
Nor seen by the eye.
It cannot be smelt by nose nor heard by ear.
It does not belong to.
Nor is created by.
Your sense of self.
Awareness is known by something entirely different.
To all sense perceptions.
It is known by itself.
It is untouched by conditions and conditioning.
And yet.
It is the reason all.
Can be experienced.
Something this intimate.
This inclusive.
This generous.
Has also been cold.
By another name.
Love borrows this precious body to experience itself through.
Now place a hand over your chest.
And bring your attention to the warmth beneath it.
This warms.
Came from sunlight.
Caught by wheat,
By berries.
By the leaves an animal once ate.
That sunlight traveled through soil.
Through someone's kitchen.
Into your mouth.
And is now radiating.
Quietly.
From your own body.
Your body is borrowing a star.
93 million miles away.
That is in this exact moment.
Living in you as He.
You can lower your hand now.
And turn to notice your breath.
The air moving into you.
Was until a few moments ago outside of you.
Some of it passed through a birch or an oak.
Trees breathe out.
What will you breathe in?
And we breathe out.
What they breathe in.
There is no clean edge.
Where the forest ends and your lungs begin.
The water you drank today.
Was once a river.
Or a cloud.
Or rain on someone else's roof a hundred years before you were born.
On its way to become you for a while.
And your bones.
The calcium in them was once raw.
Then soil.
Than something growing.
And something eaten.
And now it's the scaffolding you're sitting inside of.
Every atom in your body.
Has already been a mountain.
Has already been a notion.
Has already been inside of another creature.
Another life.
Long before it arrived here as you.
Even the thoughts moving through your mind right now are borrowed.
The language you're thinking in.
You did not create it alone.
It was handed to you,
Word by word.
Meaning by meaning,
By people.
Who are no longer here.
You are thinking.
In this very moment.
With a mind built by many others.
This body isn't something you own.
It's something you're borrowing.
It is the Earth.
History,
Ancestors,
Momentarily taking the shape of you.
And if this is true of your body now,
It was true before you arrived.
Your life was being held long before it began.
Your parents carried your possibility.
They themselves were sustained by sun and rain,
By soil and farmers,
By their own parents who were held by sun and rain and soil,
And others before them Long before you knew language,
Another nervous system was teaching you how to settle,
How to fear,
How to trust,
How to love.
As an infant,
You are not separate.
And then related to the world.
Relationship came first.
The sense of me.
Immersed within relationship,
Not outside of it.
So the line does not begin with you.
It stretches back beyond.
Every ancestor.
Beyond every star.
Into a mystery,
No thought.
Has ever fully held.
And this is why there is no end either.
Whatever dies,
Dies in relationship.
We leave traces of ourselves in others as speech,
As love.
As a body given back to its elements.
That then becomes another.
Borrowing life is a sacred responsibility,
When we recognize that this body,
This breath,
And this moment have never belonged to us alone.
Something softens.
We stop asking how to control life.
And begin asking how to care.
For what has been entrusted to us.
We are not owners of the earth.
But indivisible members within its larger living relationships.
And that changes everything.
We don't care because something is ours.
We care because we already belong.
Without needing to understand any of this,
Simply notice the sense of aliveness inside your body now.
Leave every explanation behind,
And just feel what remains.
This life already loving itself through you.
Already breathing you.
Already holding you.
Already belonging.
Nothing added.
Nothing apart.
Nothing missing.
Take a deep,
Grounding exhale.
And when you're ready.
.
.
With no rush at all.
Gently allow your eyes to open.
May this body,
Borrowed from the universe.
Known by a mystery,
Carry you back into your day.
Perhaps not with more answers.
But with a little less need.
To hold everything together alone.
