I just watched and listened to Miles Davis and his band at the Isle of White Festival in 1970 play, “Call It Anything.” These musicians, to play what they are playing, have to be deep inside the question, “Where am I?” They have to open up to what is happening and what is emerging.
Where we are is never outside of right here. It is the fullness of this moment. To listen to this music, or to listen to anything, we must be both receptive and willing, and also give up our ideas of what it should be or where it should go.
The question “What am I?” is the seed of realization into the nature of reality, and the question, “Where am I?” is the seed of integrating that realization into our moment-to-moment lives. It brings us into alignment and congruence with the movement of life.
This morning I felt a deep drag within my body pinning me down to rest; my lower back tight and chest clasped and frozen. I lay there. I am willing. Yet still, often a part of my experience, is the alternate pull to rise, to attend to things, to make progress with projects and relationships. I felt this. Unlike some mornings, this morning I was able to include this. Instead of following the pull, or resisting the pull, I acknowledged it as part of where I was and rested with it. It began to move, to dissipate, and what was left beyond the sound of rain on the roof and my rising and falling breath was a physical sense of split in my upper chest and shoulders.
Awareness was touching in to a sensation I’d been long avoiding and distancing from, and now it was here beside me in bed. We lay together, these shards of self. Nothing terrible happened. Slowly the sensations burned off like morning fog until all that was left was a sense of weight and texture, movement and breath, the weather outside, the weather inside.
At the moment, the most valuable way for me to explore the question, “Where am I?” is to slow down long enough to find out.
What are you inquiring into at the moment?
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Simple, but interesting question- where am I? I realized recently that too often, if I’m paying close enough attention to notice, I am in a “waiting” mode…quietly wanting something….else. Expecting my life to change. If I catch myself and notice where i actually am and what surrounds me, all is well. But only sometimes do really understand I am part of the vast wholeness. Sometimes is enough, better than never for sure!
When you come into awareness of a sense of “waiting” you are in that moment realizing where you are! You are in the event of “waiting” and experiencing this allows it to move, shift, flow.
Thee universe wants to experience it all, the waiting, the wanting, the holding, the vast wholeness.
Speaking of where we are, where is everyone else out there reading this blog? Send along a comment and broaden the conversation!