Heart Reading … Day 28
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible ~ J. Swift
Dear bee, I want to give you the delicacies of every flower under the sun, with such abundance of succulent aromatics that you might experiment with new honey flavors, that you might find great joy in your daily work and carry with you an abundant peace, confident of your powerful capacity to pollinate every plant that nourishes every body on this great earth.
Dear bird, I want to give you the sturdiest branches in the healthiest trees standing in your favorite stands, standing tall with no threat of being axed or annihilated, with soil below so rich that it holds every form of sustenance you could ever wish for, so that you never need to nest in the air vents of an apartment complex with hired crews sucking the life out of you and all your friends, threatening your already precarious existence.
This is what is on my heart today. I woke to the absence of bird song and, before fully awake, the horror of seeing the air duct cleaning crew outside yesterday crystallized in my brain, connecting together these two observations. Grief like this is hard to carry. We don’t give ourselves the requisite time to feel all that there is to feel. Who else is enraged at our human ignorance and myopic behavior wreaking havoc from sea to shining sea? Yeah, the birds could potentially bring disease to us, but have we at all thought of how much disease we have brought to them?
What else is on my heart today is the beginning of a synthesis of this daily heart reading practice. While I noted yesterday the ebbs and flows of my capacity to hear her whispers, today I am doubling down on my respect for all that goes unseen by our human eyes, every moment of every heartbeat. I am opening my heart and asking her to hold more awareness of this life giving force of creation so that I may feel less pained by the reality of coexistence and more clear about each step I am gently encouraged to take; less sad and more hope. These are the polarities, the two sides of the same coin as I wrote about on Day 24.
Yesterday I had a real sad and painful nervous breakdown, short lived but shockingly unexpected. I had received disturbing news the day before and was grateful for meditating with my weekly early morning sangha community but had needed to leave the dharma discussion early in order to “jump on” another video call. My peaceful state was interrupted like I’d been hit by a train unaware. I kept my camera off and went in and out of states of sobbing and engaging with my colleagues through the chat function. By the next call right after that I’d done sufficient breathing to regain my composure and was deeply gratified to hear a presentation about light pollution and its impact on our brains.
The reason I share this experience is that every one of us has an overloaded nervous system. I desire widespread and immediate understanding and rectification of this fact. And while neuroscientists will reiterate how little we understand about the brain because they come from a “discipline” that holds each person’s discoveries under competitive and jealous scrutiny rather than compassionate encouragement, I do hope for radical change.
I also hope it is not too long before our hearts receive attention by the scientific community for the energetic goddesses they are.
