non-action in action
It is getting harder in all directions
It’s harder to speak
And harder to stay silent
Being pressed into corners
To maintain the cooling body of a worn world structure
Covering everything in plastic
Our faces in plastic
Breathing old air
Bleaching our palms
Murdering microbiome
Inhibiting the natural immunity we develop through interaction
Interacting instead through visors and screens
Everything disposable
Apparently “cleaner”
In the name of “health and safety”
But health does not thrive in isolation
Health is WHOLEness
Health of the individual is health of the collective and vice versa.
Health is compromised by fear
Health is compromised by staying silent
By attempting to keep a peace that was never really there in the first place
A sense of standing on the edge of a precipice about to tear down a lot of the illusions i have of myself, as a peacemaker. I have often held my tongue for fear of upsetting, or for fear that I might be wrong. Often driven by a form of spiritual bypassing, wanting to allow ppl to believe what they wish, and live as they wish, for they are in their own processes and will figure things out for themselves when the time is right. There is truth in this, in that I can’t truly know what is “best” for another, and “advice” tends to be unhelpful / fall on deaf ears.
But now i recognise a laziness and irresponsibility that has developed in me from taking this attitude for too long. The principle “non-action” (terribly translated from 無為) taught in Daoism is not about staying complacent in the face of major devastation. It is a principle of balance, of not forcing, but this isn’t about sitting back and watching things unfold when there is action to be taken.
Now our every action more evidently affects one another than ever before. Coexistence isn’t enough. We need to communicate and it’s not pretty or easy. It is a struggle. I vow to listen to others and their experiences, but equally no longer at the expense of my own.
It has been a journey to acknowledge and give validity to the realisations that i have come to over the past few years, and moreover to share them, and moreover now to actually assert them, possibly against the will of resistant individuals. Resistance is the first and last reason for ill health. Disease is dis-ease.
Through experiences of my own health conditions (both emotional and physical), and exposing myself to a variety of experiences, I have been blessed with an understanding of Health and Life that might not have been otherwise afforded me. I recognise the enormous privilege to have navigated my ailments through the media of so many healing modalities and environments. I am now grateful for my suffering for it has brought me to this perfect place.
And with privilege comes the responsibility to share the lessons I have learned. To be clear, healing doesn’t end. Life is infinitely nuanced. But i have received messages and insights to share that i pray will resonate with some, whether now or in the future. I am no longer available for muting.
A lot is about to come collapsing down. More than we might dare to imagine. Structures long dead now finally decaying. The corpses of patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, globalism, are about to receive a mass burial.
And i have to ask myself, and we all do, what do we want instead? In the void, anything is possible. But we must have the courage and boldness to imagine, visualise, and create. To step into a new reality. A lot of discord, a lot of dissonance, a LOT OF discomfort for the next few centuries but if we begin the grieving and healing processes now, if we can face with more honesty what we mean by Life and Death and Health and Love, then we might stand a chance of finding meaning and joy in this waltz as Everything That We Ever Knew (in this lifetime) comes crashing down around us.
