“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.”
Joseph Campbell
These classes are so much fun because while we are playing and laughing together, we’re also expanding ever so slightly more into our wholeness: The silliness, sweetness, laughter, messiness and joy of being human.
There are no marks and no prizes other than the experience itself. There’s nowhere else to get to, nothing you have to be. There’s an invitation to expand into your full aliveness.
Discovery, laughter, fun, joy, and wonder come from the unknown, uncharted territory. Our safety brain loves plans and predictable results. But overplanning limits us within what we already know. Not knowing takes us back to openness, wonder, discovery and aliveness.
Schoolteachers used to say “If you know the answer, then raise your hand.” Here it’s more like “Join in if you’d like to see what you discover.” There isn’t an “answer.” But when we explore and trust, we will discover something. Most often it will be hilarious and delightful, just because that’s the nature of being human. And if it isn’t, no big deal, we just shrug and create something else!
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment”
Rumi
10,000-YEAR TRAVELER
Poem from Henry Shukman
// A “citadel” is a castle or defended area //
10,000-YEAR TRAVELER,
isn’t it time to have a rest,
to put your feet up at the inn,
settle by the fire,
have a welcome pint?
Don’t you know your destination
is reached only
when you realize
there never was a destination,
and your pilgrimage finds its end
only when you understand
the sacred shrine is not
waiting further down the road?
Stand under the walls
of your own citadel,
watch them fall around you.
See where you’ve been
all along.
Then you’ll know
that every step of your way
was already the home
you always longed to reach.
Photo Credits
Brooke Cagle, Koen van Gilst, Bagas Muhammad on Unsplash
