So much bigger than you

Note:

Matilda and I attended our first Living School Symposium from 24 - 26 August in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the official beginning of our 2 year program at the Center for Action and Contemplation's Living School.

We arrived back in SA on Wednesday evening but were so tired and disoriented after our 40 hour return journey that we had to stay over in Johannesburg for a day before undertaking the 4 hour trip back home. On Friday night we finally arrived back here in the Balele mountains.

It is all so much - the whole process, our marathon trips, America, the people, our peer group where most of our work and study will be done, the Symposium. I am filled to the brim and do not know what to do with it. I would love to dump it all in one go onto everyone asking, "And so,how was it?" I just can't. Just as it is impossible to pass Table Mountain through a funnel down a little bird's throat. And besides, as Richard Rohr said at the symposium, "Don't give away your gold until it is your gold."

I am very grateful for the much smaller peer group and its role in making the gold my gold. Listening to the shared experiences and journeys of others on the contemplative non-dual way is such an important part of my process. On a wider scale, meeting and working with these people from all over the world is an encouraging and very enriching experience. In a very concrete sense I feel myself part of a worldwide community that has discovered this very old new way. A way regarded by many as the hope and future of Christianity and our planet as a whole.

Circle 5 of the 2016 - 2018 intake of the Living School from left to right:
Rebecca Trussell from Atlanta, USA; Martha Morris from Ridgefield, USA; Betty Pries from Waterloo, Canada; Peter Midgley from Perth, Australia; Joan Murray from Wellesley, USA; Linda Stelmann from Henrietta, USA; George Angus from Wakkerstroom, SA; Katherine Gray from Atlanta, USA; Matilda Angus from Wakkerstroom, SA; John Grant from Manchester, UK; Maryann Fulton from Buderim, Australia; Paul Geraghty from Montreal, Canada; Liz Waltz from Leyden, USA.

Matilda and I have been talking much about it all on the way back home. What to do with all this "muchness" and the way forward? On a very practical level two things surfaced:

• Besides our conversations, the peer group will be our sharing space where we will find common ground and understanding, especially when we feel disheartened in not always finding it in our communities. The peer group space is like lying next to the landing strip of an airport and shouting at the top of your voice as an Airbus passes over. You just let go and let out and nobody gets seriously damaged by your words or the volume of your voice (hopefully not. At this stage it feels as if I can shake a Boeing!);
• We have to absolutely trust and constantly return to our daily contemplative practice. That lies at the heart of the alchemy process where "deep is talking to deep." It is as simple and as difficult as that.

~ ~ ~

Somewhere in flatter-than-flat western Kansas,

a patch of sky blue
next to the edge of a golden orange-to-red cloud
reflecting the setting sun

is just so beautiful

that you want to pause,
hold your breath,
soak it in all in,

but it is so much bigger than you,
you can’t take it all in,

so you finally let go,
and breathe.

And be with it.

                                                    - Mark Woodward

George