Journey as an Individual Part of a Larger Being
When you enter a city, you become it. What is the aliveness of a city if not the humans, their connections, dreams, wishes, fears, and hopes? The physical structures emerge from that. History writing itself inside this cauldron of physical and subtle. When you enter a group, you become it. What is the group, if not all the beings in it with their connections, dreams, wishes, fears, and hopes? Something wants to emerge from this point. Expressing itself over time.
All this happens, regardless if we want it, if we are aware of it or not.
We *are* the group. We *are* the town. We become it as soon as we cross the threshold. And the group becomes us.
I foolishly thought I could “stop over” in Berlin for a few days between arriving back from New Zealand and heading on to Samothraki, Greece. A brief touch-down between two significant gates.
Berlin did not “welcome me” back. She opened her arms, devoured me, and made me part of her faster than I could say “falafel” three times.
The rumbling of the U-Bahn under the streets was the creaking of my bones. The streams of cyclists and pedestrians the blood running through my veins. The voices of millions of people were my inner council; all my parts talking. Wanting to be heard and welcomed to the table.
My own openness, reluctance, love, connection, and disconnection, hopes, and fears vibrated through the city’s fabric in an instant. Losing the self. The self becoming part of a larger entity. Like an ever-moving pestle and mortar, she ground all the seeds given to her. The dust settled on the autumn leaves and my roadside vegan burger. Meeting old friends and new ones. Feeling which connections are alive, where there is life-force moving, and what is just not right anymore. Any meeting rippling out into the broader web as well as moving parts inside me. Such is life.
There is a lesson for me, moving in and out of cities in the last months. The friction is high inside the town. Density increases manifold compared to the sweeping, sparsely settled landscapes of New Zealand. Different things can come through in the dense jiggle and jumble compared to the stillness and expansion.
The group of souls meeting in Samothraki has been forming over the last weeks. As all of us are arriving here, we are becoming the group. When I stepped off the ferry, I turned into the island population. As I sat by the fire for the new moon with my fellow journeywomen and men last night, our organism took a new shape. The group is us. Density increases as all parts are finding their place in this unique formation. Everyone with their individual point in the web that’s weaving itself.
This is a reminder that what we enter might very well be made up of us. It will not exist without our unique selves as part of the whole.
In turn, what we let inside us makes us — food, thoughts, spirit, emotions, movement, information, other people’s thoughts or emotions.
Where we put our physical body and our energy will shape us, and we will express through this shape.
The larger-than-a-single-person beings are forming and disbanding continuously wherever we go.
This process is quite natural. The challenge to put out to ourselves (and with that, the challenge I put to myself) is to strike our individual note in this vast orchestra of life while playing in synergy with the unfoldment. Nobody wants a cacophony of a thousand musicians pretending to follow the same song while tearing each other’s eardrums apart. It’s work and takes practice to align and act in support of the shared unfolding instead. It requires energy to recognize and dissolve the parts within us that collude to create the illusion of otherness and separation. At the same time, it is also effortless. We all intuitively know that we are expressing through the larger being that is forming around us. We all know that the larger being expresses through us. May it be a city, a partnership, a family, company, or a group of people going on a journey together.
We can choose if we allow this expression and unfoldment, if we support it, or if we contract and put blocks in the way of what wants to happen regardless of our personal will, desires, fears, or hopes.
On that note, I’ll focus my energy on the time and the group field here on Samothraki for the next 8 weeks. Supporting what wants to emerge in and through all of us. Tuning my instruments to play during all the times to come. Looking forward to jam with you and teach each other when I pop into another reality again in November. Let’s ride each grain of sand as it gallops us through our shared hourglass of time!
#journey #sunsetmusings #meditation #soul #group
