a year with my human

Dancing is not just

Getting up painlessly

Life a leaf

Blown on the wind

Dancing is when you

Tear your heart out

And

Rise out of your body

To hang suspended

Between worlds

Rumi

I have dedicated this year to my humanity.
After many years of working with the soul, I am now choosing to focus on the aspects of my human experience that I’ve historically avoided, praying that the love of my soul can bridge the most outcast places in my psyche and body.
It’s time.

Right now, I’m sitting in an airport in London, crying into my oat flat white, doing my best to accept my humanity in this very moment—even though every part of me wants to escape, to deny this experience.
Being human is so damn hard.

There are warnings written all over the box about the fraught realms of human existence—the emotional, mental, and physical experience. And I can't tell you how many times I’ve longed to escape this realm altogether—imagining myself in an ashram or monastery, far, far away from my small self and its never-ending journey of falling into the forgetfulness of its own source.

The pain of this falling is what kept me above my humanity for so long, keeping me detached from the love I know myself to be.
And yet… here I am.

Sobbing into an oat flat white, layers of grief and pain surging through my solar plexus, it’s hard to sense anything beyond this moment. I struggle to feel connected to love, to the source of all things.
All I can do is pray right now—for my soul to find its way to my fretful human,
to bridge my contact with love,
and to remind me that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

All I can do in this suffering is tend to the young parts of my psyche—the parts that I have long denied, that have been overshadowed by my avoidance.
Tending to them through the light of my own acceptance, presence, and love is both ecstatic and agonizing. It is utterly painful, and so challenging for me.

Right now, it feels as though I’m wrestling a wild beast within me—a life and death struggle inside my own body and mind.
There’s so much talk of self-abandonment, yet this journey is teaching me that the deepest form of abandonment is not from others, but from my own soul, in these very moments when I lose contact with the love my human is desperately seeking.
And I confess, I abandon myself a lot—powerfully, painfully, regularly.

I am learning that accepting my humanity means accepting this moment right now, as it is.
It means accepting my fall.
My falling.

Falling.
Dusting.
Loving.

And learning that there is a difference between the love of the soul and the love that is felt by the emotional body within our human experience.
Sometimes, the love that soothes my human body is necessary to thaw the frozen parts of me, to comfort the wounded, to hold space for my pain.

Sometimes, I need to be told to care for my body, to nourish my human, to be held as I move through my suffering.
Other times, I need to be told to pray.
To hold firm.
To stretch and reach into the depths of myself, calling my soul back to the surface.
I need a gaze that does not believe my falling, that reminds me of the cosmos—
The stars, the Earth spinning around the sun for billions of years.
The eternal LIFE that flows through all things.

A voice that says, “You are more than this wound. You are more than this pain. You are love.”

And sometimes, both are needed—the balm and the fire—the soft care and the strong reminder that we are not defined by our pain, but by the infinite love of our soul.

I am learning that love is not always about feeling good, or avoiding pain.
And just because I feel hurt does not mean that I’ve been harmed.
Sometimes the love of the soul is not emotionally harmonious; sometimes it is provocative and daring.
The deepest love my soul can offer yours is to never forget who you are,
even when you forget.

To never look away when we fall—
When we choose to abandon love.
Even writing this makes me want to retch—
The whole “choice” thing. Blah, blah, blah, fucking blah.
Self-responsibility makes some parts of me rage and spit in resistance.
And yet… something inside knows.

A silent gnosis, ancient and weathered, woven through all time, knows that no one and nothing outside of me is the reason I abandon love.
I do.

I am beginning to sense that what is needed between humans is not forgiveness, but support in remembering the power of choice—the choice to return to love, over and over again.

And I want your help here.
I ask that you light a candle for me in times when I fall into amnesia, when I forget the truth of who I am and believe in my human experience at the cost of love.
I ask that you pray boldly for my swift and graceful return to myself.
And I will refuse to look away from who I know you are, beneath all your pain and wounding, beneath everything that has obscured the radiance of the YOU that dances across many realms.

This is my love for humanity.
My humanity.
Your humanity.

To never look away.
But to hang suspended between worlds,
With you.