Letting the Currents In

I believe Gandhi spoke of "letting the currents of the world in, but trying to stay on our feet." I like this image. If you've waded in to your ankles or knees on a beach, you've experienced how strong the tug of the tide can be. Some days, I want to shut the currents of the world out. I am afraid that too much world news will knock me off my feet or pull me under. But we can't live that way, can we?

What helps, I think, is finding that centered place within each of us that is not displaced or dragged down by the constant changes in the tides. I am practicing this, but I am practicing with the small things, not the atrocities of war or racial injustice. The driver in front of me is driving 30 in a 45 zone. I feel irritation. It is a current, pulling at me. If I am lucky, I notice, and if I notice, I can watch that wave roll through, watch it from that centered place inside. I know it will pass. Other waves will come . . . the delight I feel at the hummingbird outside my window or the worry when my flight is delayed . . . and they will pass.

It is extraordinary, this humanness: that we can experience a full pallette of emotions and thoughts is a gift beyond price. Perhaps even more precious, however, is the still place at the center, our essence, that makes room for all, for the highs and lows. I do want to experience it all, but I don't want to be hijacked, or swept away. I want to receive it all, wave after wave, without closing my heart.Yes, this means letting it in, but not being swept off my feet.

My hope and my prayer is that if I practice more and more with the small things, I'll gradually ease myself into a way of being in the world what responds from essence rather than being knocked off my feet again and again. This is not a shutting away of emotion and thought, but finding a new way of being in relation to it. It's living with EI, Essence Intelligence. This is a conversation I'd like to have with any who will join me: What is it like to live from essence? How do we recognize it? Cultivate it?

Here, on a Sunday afternoon, letting the tides roll through, and trying to stay on my feet.