In the Middle of the Night
Sleep isn’t something I take for granted. Too many nights are interrupted by my inability to turn off the empathic part of me that is tuned in to the energetic pulse of humanity. Tonight, as I found my favorite deep sleep music on youtube, I read many of the comments people posted from all over the world and I felt such a rush of love and a sense of Oneness.
A person from Venezuela wrote how she can’t sleep because of anxiety about her country falling apart, not having food, and civil war. A person from Iran wrote of their long history of poetry…Rumi and Gibran and reminded us that Iran is more than the sum of recent years of political strangeness. A person wrote how anxious and sad they are most of the time and how helpful the music was to them as well as the comments people were writing. There were supportive comments of love and compassion to those suffering. A woman in Turkey shared about her anxiety disorder and her gratitude for the sleep music. A person from North Carolina expressed her gratitude for compassionate people commenting and coming together to support each other. Another person from England wrote how refreshing it was to read such lovely and kind messages.
Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, Algeria, Greece, Australia, Iran, Ireland, United States, England, France, South Africa, Philippines, Egypt, Brazil, Holland….just some of the places people live that commented with such support and love. For the first time in a long time, I felt such connection to a world that seems to fragment more each day. I realized we have much more in common than we know. If we could remove politics from the equation we’d all be in such a better place….mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. We allow the power-hungry few ruin it for the rest of us.
Many of us have various problems but what we have in common is each other. When we set aside the politics and power grabs and focus on the realm of the heart and soul, we really are the same. At that level it seems absolutely ridiculous not to…lend aid, share food and resources, shelter each other.
The ugliness of how we treat ‘others’ keeps me awake at night….the misunderstandings, the pain we think is unique to us but really is a common experience, the feelings of loneliness in a world where electronic ‘connection’ seems only to isolate us more, a world where destruction of the source of life seems rampant. Perhaps the greatest illusion of all is that there are ‘others.’ What if everyone, everything, was simply a reflection of us? What if everything ‘out there’ was simply a reflection of some common creative force….God, Great Spirit, the Universe, the Tao. What if everything we see as separate is simply another part of ourselves?
In the middle of the night these questions come. Perhaps my sleepless sisters and brothers all over the world are all facets in the same diamond light of Oneness and we’re simply all trying to find our way back Home….to each other….to Source…to greater understanding.
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All photographs copyright Simone Lipscomb.
Oneness….
“Just as the heart is hidden in the human body, so is the body surrounded by the powers of the soul because these reach the ends of the earth.” –Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard was a Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary and founder of scientific natural history in Germany in the 12th century. She was a bold nun to write of the mystic visions she experienced. And perhaps even bolder to write of humanity’s need to protect Mother Earth.
This Christian mystic from the 1100’s considered the earth and universe as one being coming to life. “The earth is at the same time Mother. She is the Mother of all that is natural, Mother of all that is human. She is the Mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all.”
The following is a poem written by Hildegard:
I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I call forth tears, the aroma of holy work.
I am the yearning for good.
Should we feel alone or disconnected she reminds us, “God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God.”
Contemporary writer and teacher of Celtic shamanism–Tom Cowan–writes, “The soul is not in the body, the body is in the soul. Our bodies, minds, egos and personalities are temporarily living within the soul and this soul exists to fill the entire universe. My body and mind are folded into my soul, which brings to me, through my senses, knowledge of the oneness of all created things.”
I’ve been thinking about the writings of Hildegard and Cowan lately. The idea that our soul contains the body, rather than the body containing the soul, brings such delight to my wanderings in the woods and along the shore. If the expansive, energetic part of me connected to Source contains this physical manifestation that is a body and personality, it’s not the part of me with an expiration date that reaches into the Universe, it’s the timeless part of me.
As I walked contemplating this today, I felt a greater sense of relaxation and well-being. It’s not up to the flawed personality self to get it all right, right now. This soul, this container, connects the little ‘me’ with the Vastness of time and space. It’s not a tiny seed of Light in this body, this body is a physical expression of that which enfolds me…the enormity of Light within which everything is contained.
I am therefore connected to everything and everyone on a soul level with absolutely zero effort. The effort comes in awakening my personality self to the truth and learning to look beyond the finite illusion that I am separate from anything or anyone.
A morning blessing I adapted to speak to Nature…to Life each morning at sunrise:
I arise today with the strength of Heaven–
Light of Sun
Radiance of Moon
Splendor of Stars
Swiftness of Wind
Power of Fire
Depth of Sea
Stability of Earth
I arise today with a mighty strength, witnessing the Oneness of Creation.
We are One. There is nothing we can do about it…it’s just the way it is. It’s time to stop fighting it and surrender to Oneness.