When we get down into the mud, we realise that we were not safe in our heads.
It can feel like we are in an ivory tower, insulated from the dirt of the world.
It can also feel scary, like we may fall to the ground if we step out beyond our brow.
But when I take off my shoes, when I let my belly press into the soil, when I bring the mud up to the intimate real estate of my face, I realise I was here all along.
We are IN NATURE, we are IN LIFE. There is no insulation, there is no safety zone.
If an earthquake comes, we will be shaken, if a virus comes we will breathe it in, if night comes we will be in darkness.
Yes we can try to avoid it, we can move to a place less likely to quake, we can move away from people who cough, we can buy lightbulbs, pay for electricity and stay inside in the false illumination… but we are not the masters of the elements.
We are the surfers on the wave, the leaf sailing on the surface of the river, the little surface dweller on a mother planet, who, herself is sailing on the cosmic winds as our solar system spirals into the unknown.
I choose to go out into the night, or turn off the lights, sitting in the dark and feeling what life is really like.
I know the virus analogy may ruffle feathers in this present moment, but I’m not debating the right way to respond to COVID-19… instead I am asking, how will we respond to the next virus, or economic crisis, or climate catastrophe, or political meltdown?
I know that how we respond as a collective will not be determined by me, neither will how the tectonic plates shift, nor what the government decides is now ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’. What I do know I can influence is how I surf the chaos.
Do we shrink again and again until we are nothing but prisoners locked in our own heads? And even then accompanied by the bully cell mates of our thoughts which have been programmed by media and our ancestry of pain and slavery?
WE ARE ALREADY IN THE MUD, regardless of the floorboards we insert to intervene. This can be wonderfully liberating or startlingly exposing. Either way, it’s a gentle landing into some semblance of reality that I feel we often spend much of our energy trying to avoid.
The life story we cling to as though it were a life raft is the blueprint of enslavement.
We can sing whatever campfire songs we like while we paddle our canoe, but when the water churns, we swirl.
THIS IS WHY ‘destroying our lives’ is such a key part of the Open World Gymnasium training, as we get to settle our senses to land upon the life that is happening all the time, just beyond the controlled bubble of the illusion of self.
The vital function this serves is that it makes us just a little more prepared when the lights go out, our stage set collapses, our national laws change, or someone decides to take the law into their own hands and attack us in an alleyway.
That’s when the law of the jungle comes into play.
That law is always present, just like the mud, but from our skull cockpits it can feel quite unreal and basically ‘unacceptable’.
I feel it is one of the most grounded and practical ways to both physically and mentally prepare for the many tomorrows which continue to buck under us, as the wild beasts they truly are.
I invite you down into the mud with me… truth is – you are already here.