Mixed experience

Possibilities of enormous joy can be set upon by the negativity of others so quickly you barely have time to blink before the energies hit you. Try as I might, I am susceptible to these energies - although once noticed, I can nowadays filter them through my senses with less power than they once had to "stick".

Three days of possibility, of impending joy, became almost mediocre... I had to re-run my experiences through my own headspace and relive them to understand that I had very nearly given them up for someone else's. What psychic and spiritual sponges we are! The incredible peril of allowing another's perceptions to colour our own can take away from us our very own time of learning, of developing - by ensuring we live through other's judgments, criticisms, negativity. How dare we allow that to happen to us! Other people have a right to be where they are, in their immediate experience and reaction and place of being. We have no right to betray our Selves by letting this affect our ways of thinking, doing, being.

I have at times become overwhelmed with the desire to remain distant from the world of people, to separate myself - in order to maintain my safety, my inner self, my positivity and my determination to live my life without fear of the sponge effect. But what would that accomplish - really..? Certainly I would learn to live with myself, with my own silences, and with the world around me in a way that could bring enormous peace. The temptation is enormous. Life could be so much easier - so much more conducive to growth, both spiritual and intellectual - even physical. But I am in this world, and all else that is contained in it. I feel a deep and strong sense that my place is not to be away from it, but the challenge is to be in it and stay where I am, and who I am, and who I must be - within the turmoils of the existences of other human beings. Yes, we damage, we control, we judge, we hate, we make war....but we are here and we must not abandon eachother, and our hope.

As time passes I find myself more and more drawn to others who have a similar sense of being. The people I have come to feel drawn to are often so different to me and my general day to day way of living my life. They are the wealthy, the young and old, the sick and healthy, the entertainers and the audiences, the makers and the breakers. All walks of life, and all shapes, sizes, colours, creeds.... Yet I find a kinship when I remain open. When I do not judge, damage, criticise, hate, make war - and when I am open to the love and acceptance of myself and others and unwittingly find those who are also open to the same. I find miracles on almost a daily basis in this way. Unexpected pleasures and miracles.

The young woman serving in the cafe in Sydney - so lovely and eager to please, a sense that she saw and responded to someone who saw and responded to her endeavours with appreciation. A man standing in the customs queue at the Airport - noticing my t-shirt from the Split Enz concert - smiled and talked in a friendly and candid way about his experiences at the same concert. We share something and I noticed the light around him become lighter, his shoulders become straighter, as he recognised (as I did also) and felt a kinship with someone in an unexpected place.

I also notice that those who are unable to be open to these connections become more closed as time goes on - to everything and anything around them. "Surface living as a choice", someone said to me recently. It made me sad to hear - can that truly be living? I found myself picturing someone ice skating on a cold hard surface of water, while underneath teemed myriads of species, life, experiences, beauty, colour - sensation. The homeless man who was fossicking for cigarette butts in the ashtrays of the city - who snatched my offered full filter cigarette - lit and ready - with no acknowledgement at all. Closed down from the world. We can live in this world and still feel nothing, I thought. Especially when the pain becomes too great.

In spite of it all, and in spite of the pain I see in the psyche's and lives of others, I still find myself wanting to embrace and risk the pain of openness rather than to never experience the beauty of the other side of that silver coin. Small things, blessed experiences, seem to happen if you want to see them, to feel them. Surrounded by the cosmos of negativity. That I try to acknowledge and then to let go. It, too, is a part of this world. The part that allows me to experience how different the truly lovely moments are. And absorb them into every single fibre of my being.