Unshakable Infinite Belonging
especially most of all everyone you don't love
Five years ago during this week I was waiting for a baby to come out of my body. My due date had come and gone. The word “week” in summary does not reflect the experience of that waiting. It felt like I sunk into the mud that was each minute, and each minute got deeper into waiting, not closer to birth. What a sensation! In fact I might also define pregnancy as a dissolution of my body’s previous way of measuring time. This week I’m reflecting on that vortex and all that has happened since, and on what I want to do here in this space. They’re so connected even though I didn’t plan for this project to begin at the anniversary of my oldest child’s birth!
A big part of my purpose here is to share the gifts my kids continue to give me, in each phase of their lives so far, to pass on the riches they give me. (I’m a billionaire but I forget and I need to write it to remember it. I’m also morally opposed to being a billionaire so I have to give a lot more away.) I tend to be drawn to futile endeavors, endeavors that are much bigger than what is actually possible, and this is certainly one. My kids are orchestrators of my transformation. I try to feed them and bathe them and support them in making their way in the world. I get the better end of the deal each and every time (most especially when it feels like I don’t).
The image I keep flashing on is the first sight I ever had of original bb when he came out of me. The doctor held him up on the other side of the clear curtain so we could see him. He was so vibrant, red and big and strong and he had so much black hair. She said he came out of my womb with his eyes already open, and that still describes him perfectly. His spirit felt immense, he was so strongly here. He was his own person coming to planet earth for his own reasons, with his own destiny that isn’t about me. But a by-product of his arrival was his effect on me. I felt something people describe in near-death experiences when they die and come back. Like the feeling that death is only love, nothing to fear. But when I saw him I had that feeling about life. That nothing was ever wrong.
No, plenty of things are wrong. That’s not it. So much was wrong for so long, and so much is still wrong. It was the feeling that the cosmic nature of our interactions was so intricate and vast and mysterious, our everyday minds cannot possibly contact it. And that the things that are wrong must be included in that, somehow. Seeing him was touching god even though I have no idea what god is. Touching the fabric of the universe, the material of life itself. All the past hell was absorbed. It was not forgiven or forgotten, it was a part of looking at him, the unshakable timeless belonging of every human who has ever lived. The sight of him reminded my body I’d always known this belonging.
The feeling of trust. It’s not that the misery of my pregnancy made it “worth it,” as if it is transactional. It’s that the only way I could access the real beauty of the sight of him was from deep within the nine months of interminable pain. The two things only arise together, and therefore they depend on each other and therefore one of my jobs is to be curious about the pain, to see what might be accompanying it.
This pain thing is the human situation, for reasons I’ll never know, or by the time I could I probably won’t care anymore, like after I die. Also we want the wild pleasure of our revelations but we want them without the pain of it and they can’t arise without the pain because it is the same matter, the same thing, there is no separate part, separate matter. It’s not that it has to be painful and it’s not that it should be, but when it is, and it often is, that doesn’t mean it’s not still the cosmic infinite belonging. The pain is a guide. The pain is the belonging. The pain is the insight, it’s also the love. That’s not exactly it but there’s no way to say it without it sounding like a koan. I’m seeing now koans were made for this exact situation.
As embarrassing as it is, I don’t have energy or time to do anything other than this - to give language to spirit saying remember me, I never left, I was never anything but you, everyone you love, and especially most of all everyone you don’t love.
I do think life is offering us contact with reminders of this belonging all the time, and I do think there are so many conditions that make it really hard to remember. Those conditions are also part of the remembering, or strangely the conditions of forgetting are a portal toward remembering.
If you’re thinking this sounds like someone trying to share a dream or a drug trip, you’d be right. It’s annoying, there’s no way around that. Because I’m attempting something impossible. But it feels like I’d be avoiding a beloved responsibility to share my riches if I didn’t try.
One day I’ll thank my kid for his gift of the vision of him arriving on earth. I might try to explain how it buoys me. Or maybe not. Maybe that’s too much, not sure. For now I’m going to plan the cake I’ll bake him, which will supposedly be for his birthday but is really a party to celebrate my life taking the billionaire turn it did when he came.
Next week my oldest child will turn five and next week you are invited to be with a group of us to celebrate the beginning of this project Mother Creature with a circle for parents. (If you haven’t read about these monthly circles for parents you can here.) Here we go!!!!! Remembering our belonging in real time, creatures existing together.