Exposure, too.

Meredith and Akilesh have shared an amazing dialog begun in Exposure and continued in Exposure - Going Deeper. It was such a lot to try to digest that I found myself responding with quotations and notes in excitement. This is more or less just my response to them, but I as always look forward to seeing how other people will respond.

Meredith made this comment and I understood exactly: "we can chose to be in places and near people that have this resonance for us, that feel good to be around, that have a vibration that harmonizes." It just feels good to be with some people, it's the easiest and most natural thing in the world to be there. Like a favorite well-worn pair of jeans.

They go on to talk about the light/energy/vibration within us, and Akilesh comments "And that energy has no intention to change anyone or anything, yet in its light everything changes, and transformation begins to occur naturally and spontaneously."

This reminds me of quantum physics, of how observation actually changes (or perhaps creates!) the apparent reality that is observed.

I'm also reminded of my first week at my new job, and that's a good way to describe the situation. I remember feeling compelled to be as true and honest to myself as possible - because there was no other possible appropriate response to being in proximity to Peter.

Akilesh, of this energy, that everything we experience as reality is that reflected back to us: "And we may recognize it as our own and make friends with it, and welcome it back home."

Henri Nouwen wrote a book entitled Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. From loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality, from illusion to prayer. At the St. Anthony Messenger online catalog I found this quote: Nouwen says the journey is "frightful as well as exhilarating because it is the great experience of being alone, alone in the world, alone before God." Something about that description resonates, too.

Another concept addressed: "To be helpful from wakefulness." The most powerful thing seems to be presence; just showing up. That presence carries a force of its own; right action in right time moves with it. Trying to understand the direction and cause anything of one's own tends to produce disharmony for the effort. It feels to me like making a great effort (which is really none at all) to keep one's eyes directly forward and to remain blissfully unaware that all the magnificent things going on around are one's own doing - lest ego get in the way, or pride think it was involved somehow. To say I did anything at all is a misstatement (that's frequently necessary). Not I, not I, it is here, I was somehow involved, but it was co-creative at best: the mystery in Christianity that both will and grace are needed. That's also one of the nifty things about playing guitar; the same thing'll happen. A twelve-string with lots of open chords can become very intensely resonant. Again and again I have beheld the most beautiful thing; it can barely be breathed. Any attempt at words has been an eternity short, and better left unspoken. Yet there it is.

"Don't expect God to meet you in the way you want Him to." The speaker would take them back if he'd known what that word would become. Ironically, he was Pentecostal, where apparently God is supposed to meet us in a very specific way (or such was my experience). But that's what all the above and (it seems) the dialog at Graceful Presence is about. Things will not happen in the way we expect them to, but they will happen of their own accord if we just let them. That's the big secret!

Akilesh also has this gorgeous observation: "When we have identified our hearts deepest longing, and clarified it as best as we can, we open up, clear out and pray; we yearn with everything we've got; we put our heartfelt intention out to the universe and ask that this be manifested. If we are devoted to this longing, we water and feed it, visualize it, meditate on it, paint, sculpt, draw, dance and write it every day and we hold it lovingly in our mind's eye, we give it oodles of attention, and sure as day follows night, this longing will manifest. The universe will line up with our intention and it will show up."

So it is! Even when that longing is for the unnamable and sublime - it happens...