The Pagan Yogi

It’s all connected.  Every breath you take has been breathed by another first - every morsel of food and sustenance was once another living tybeing - every cell of your body only exists because of the network of life that supports and sustains it - and has done so on this gleaming, breathing, interpenetrating green and blue bubble of life we call ‘home’. Every molecule of oxygen, every atom of Carbon, every proton and neutron and quanta of your existence was born first in the heart of a star - as energy transforms into matter and matter is converted once more into energy in an endless and almost infinite unfolding of potential - reborn over and over within the endless death and rebirth of the material Cosmos over millennia of time... Now, tell me again how your life has no ‘meaning’ - or that you don’t feel ‘that’ person deserves your acceptance because they have more melanin in their skin than you - or dress a bit differently; tell me again how their right to life and happiness is not

You forget what’s real when you’re stuck in Depression. You get caught up in your head, looped in your thoughts and mired in morality and metaphysics - “Who am I? I feel unworthy... Why am I always unhappy? What’s the point of living, without Hope...?” But in all that rumination and suffering, we forget that although the momentary energy of the thought is ‘real’ - flickering across the billions of neurones in our physical brain - the thought itself is not: it is fleeting, a moment in time, a projection into a future that does not exist and cannot be accessed...  And just as the thoughts in your head are but passing waves that rise and fall within and between cells, so the ‘thinker’ who ‘thinks’ them only truly exists as an idea: a projection of the ego and a composite of previous, ego-filtered experience, compiled into an idea of ‘me’ and jealously guarded against the possibility of dissolution... The only ‘Truth’ - the only ‘reality’ is this physical moment - these cells, these quanta

Two quotes came up today on my Instagram dashboard - synchronous with the slow insight that has been dawning in my own Work and meditation practice: is there any great ‘purpose’ than to be fully and truly conscious and alive - fully embodied in the unfolding Divinity of this Living Moment...? I think these words from four of our Century’s Great Souls can say it better than anyone: “Through the practice of living mindfully, we learn new habits. Walking, we know that we are walking. Standing, we know that we are standing. Sitting, we know that we are sitting. Practicing this way, we gradually undo our old habits, and develop the new habit of dwelling deeply and happily in the present moment. With mindfulness in us, we can smile a smile that proves our transformation.” - Thich Nhat “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” - Alan W