Worldview
Long, long ago, before time itself, there was only light. This light had a single desire: to expand. Its longing for expansion was so fierce that it churned itself into an ever-expanding space filled with billions of expanding stars. Among those stars was Earth, the planet on which you and I lie, stand, and walk.
We, like the star we are on, and the many above us, carry within our cells an impulse to expand. It is what drives us to explore unknown frontiers, to effervesce with new ideas, and to open our hearts to one another. We do not, however, always feel it.
I believe this is because our lives today are infiltrated by a system that, through its hold on family values and social norms, has led us to mistake expansion for accumulation — a misperception that has conditioned us to accept, and sometimes even to take part in, acts of aggressive greed and insensitive hoarding, which, by their very nature, stifle genuine expansion.
That, and the fact that the system has spewed out tragedies that render the very notion of quiet expansion almost incomprehensible. For example:
Peaceful individuals are becoming marauding gangs. Stable homes are dissolving into endless wanderings. Hopeful students are hardening into vengeful terrorists. Mighty rivers are swelling into silty floods. Clean air is thickening into poisonous gas. Diverse rainforests are turning into perverse plantations. Open fields are growing into plastic mountains. Predictable weather is becoming just another disaster. The list goes on.
Thankfully, though, activists, scientists, and artists among us – brave rebels of the system – are fighting to address these heart-wrenching tragedies. Only it is not enough. For, as tenacious as they are, their efforts are often hampered, sometimes even blatantly obstructed, by power structures that we, in our misguided desire for more, unwittingly reinforce.
In the name of conscience, we must change this. We must, at the very least, support the good fight. Not by suppressing our material desires – that would only stir up storms of frustration within us – but by learning to help our bodies make reflected decisions and take conscious actions.
One way to learn this – one that Tiny Instruments teaches – is Embodied Awareness: a practice that frees us from bodily conditions that are not fully ours and creates space for those that are truly ours. It is also, as it happens, a way that can help us find our way back to ethereal expansion.
For the space that Embodied Awareness creates is one that makes us porous to the light we essentially are: that light which shines far brighter than the diamonds we were taught to foolishly revere; that light which lets us see ourselves in everything else; that light which does not accumulate but expands.
