With the body. My body, your body, the body of the earth. All the bodies.

I am attuning to something at a deeper level lately. Attuning to the world as animate and alive and I’m feeling into the vast web of relationality that is us, and that connects us.

I’ve had two state experiences in the last month where I felt myself not as a singular thing, a distinct me with only Robin-shaped edges, but as a node of awareness situated in a vast network of other humans, animals, entities seen and unseen, plants and sky and trees and hearts and minds and it was cacophonous and riotous and almost overwhelming. I was saved from drowning in the vastness of it all by the familiar faces around me, and by the fact that it was all held in this physical, meat and bones and blood and tears and feet on the ground body of mine.

This is coming to me in dreams, too. In the first dream (surely sparked by the recent wildfire just 2 miles from the valley) I was in a village and there was a fire racing up the ridgeline. I watched as the people of the village split in two - half, mostly men, mobilized to move toward the fireline, fighting it with shovels and water and chainsaws and bodies, bodies, bodies, sweating and lungs searing and beating back the edges. The other half, mostly women, formed a circle and joined arms and hands, and flesh on flesh began swaying and chanting and stamping and calling on the Cloud People and the Fire People and forming an energetic pulse of cool blue light that wrapped around the men and the village and it was deeply understood, in this dream, by these people, that both of these actions were equally valuable and needed and formed a bigger whole that linked everyone in holy Life as we faced what She brought us, together.

A second dream with the same theme, in a little house on a beach with the whole community gathered and a storm coming in, roiling the ocean and lashing us with rain, and we joined together and swayed and hummed and prayed and banged drums and stomped floorboards and spoke to the Water People and the Sky People and knew that we would hold this communion until the end came - until we were obliterated by the storm or until she raged over us and away. It was again deeply understood, in this dream, by these people, that these actions were valuable and needed and formed a bigger whole that linked everyone in holy Life as we faced what she brought us, together.

We are linked to the Water and the Sky and the Clouds and Fire and to all of the animate forces here, and we are less individual things and more the space where relationships live. I can feel it in the garden. I can feel it when I sleep, windows open to let in the cool night air, and the forest alive and watching. I can feel it when my friends and I gather to have deep conversations about Death and Life and why we’re here and what we need to do. I can feel that cool blue pulse of energy surround us and expand and join the collective that is bigger than us all, and of which we are all a part.

”It is possible the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. And the practice can be carried out as a group, as a city, as a nation.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

Not out and away and over there. Down and in and right here. In our bodies, through our bodies, with our bodies, down here in the mud and the blood. There’s nowhere else to go. There’s nothing else to do. We are here, we are here, we are here.