"spirit seeks itself"
The old rainmaker story has a few different variations. In the version I read, a village experiencing drought calls the rainmaker. He comes into town, stays for a few days; sometimes people see him doing something (rituals, altars), and sometimes they don’t. When it starts to rain, everyone thanks the rainmaker. But his secret is that he doesn’t actually do anything to produce rain. Instead, he has an innate sense of where it’s about to rain. He follows that sense, and he is always where the rain is.
I’ve been trying to live with this perspective. I learned the story in the context of physical embodiment on a personal level: that our human body is the right place to be, whatever its challenges, and that we should enjoy and care for it. But on a grander level, I’ve never had a strong sense of direction. It’s a lot easier to follow the sense and trust that I’m in the right place at the right time.
I’ve been learning a lot about myself over the last several months, accelerated in part by some new-to-me self-inquiry practices, and one of the things I’m coming to terms with is my sensitivity.
For ages I’ve always tried to be tough, resilient, power through things — in part because I can summon loads of energy when I perceive that I need to, but primarily because I grew up in a house full of conflict and my only coping mechanisms were either to be silent and deal with it, or to be the friendly peacemaker. I never reacted to things because I didn’t want the parental admonishment that came with being yet another volatile child. A distinct memory: sitting in the car while my two siblings were arguing tenaciously, I leaning my head against the window, eyes glazing over, staring out into the dark. (“Disassociation” is the word I know today to describe it.)
To be sensitive can feel disempowering. All my life I’ve hated being a delicate machine. I never asked to be moved to tears several times a day. I never asked to need more sleep and quiet and nourishment than (it seems) everyone else. A few months ago when I began reflecting on my sensitivity, however, I realized that it gives rise to some of my most valued skills: the constant desire to preserve my energy helps me find the simplest, most efficient ways of doing things. Sensitivity makes me an “expert noticer", as a mentor says. It gives me far-sightedness and other perceptive abilities I can’t quite articulate.
I spent the last week traveling around southern California, serving and assisting with tea ceremonies and other meditative events. I feel raw. It’s a lot of work to keep my shields up against the overwhelming energy of being in groups, and a lot of work to repair them after they’ve taken a beating. It’s only when I go out into the world that I realize I spend most of my day not talking, and I’m almost never with more than one or two people. Pandemic isolation has no doubt reinforced this way of being, but so has getting older, and expanding my interior life.
A few times during this trip, I was able to soften and lower the shields. During a tea ceremony in which I was (refreshingly) just a guest, I had a distinct and visceral feeling of interbeing — that the birds and trees and rain I saw outside the window were no different from the human forms within the room. That we were all made of the same things, just different expressions. I had a similar recalibration sitting in the garden of one of our host homes. Suddenly it was very clear that the ripples on the water, and the sound of the wind in the leaves, were not any different from my own body and self — or rather that I was not any different from those things, having taken form long after they did.
There is a simplicity that comes with this awareness. Preceding all forms, there is just being. Everything else is a construct — thinking about this and that, devising systems and if/then’s, playing games for attention and “success.” The simplicity might be described as a feeling of, “I know what I am,” or perhaps, “I know what I am for,” and everything else is extra.
A phrase that came yesterday is, “Spirit seeks itself.” I don’t know what it means yet. But I think it has a flavor of the Practice (whatever that is for each individual) wanting to grow. In the Tea tradition we say, “As the person seeks the leaf, the leaf seeks the person.” It means that the wisdom wants to seed itself in rich soil. The wisdom takes root where it already knows it will grow.
One species comes to mind — Abutilon theophrasti, known as Velvetleaf. It’s considered a weed where I live, but its complex flowers and seed pods are strikingly beautiful. The seeds are incredibly resilient; they can survive dormant for ages, and then sprout where the soil is warm enough. This is why Velvetleaf often appears in construction sites and roadsides — because they are disturbed by some force that brings them to the surface, and they grow fast and strong, having landed in the right conditions.
A similar concept in Chinese Medicine is “resonance.” Ted J. Kaptchuk, The Web That Has No Weaver:
The Qi of the sun, rain, and soil resonate with the Qi of the seed to bring forth a plant that already contains the germ of the plant and qualities that the sun, rain, and soil touch. […] Resonance is the process “by which a thing, when stimulated, spontaneously responds according to the natural guidelines of the particular phases of vital energy engendered in itself and active in the situation.”* The Qi does not “cause” change; the Qi elicits the propensity of another Qi that shares a similar kind of “frequency.” Things “energize” each other. Through resonance, one Qi evokes another.
*quoting Harold D. Roth, “Psychology and Self-Cultivation in Early Taoist Thought”
There is a perspective in which we are always in the right place, always receiving what we need, and always being guided in the right direction. If spirit is constantly seeking itself, then our only task is to allow ourselves to be found, and to resist the mental exercise of pretending that we know more than what Life is always communicating. We talk about surrender, receiving, trusting — as if we had any other option. You know that feeling when you’re really excited about some new thing and then Life absolutely destroys it? That’s the disturbance that delivers the seed to the soil. That’s the Tao saying, “I already fucking told you!!”
I’ve begun to relax my mental judgments and be open to the signs. I look for birds now. I’ve always loved them, and now I notice when they speak or appear, and I let myself believe that they’re keeping me on the path. My ancestors did the same thing: bringing birds on long sea journeys, releasing them from the boat when they needed guidance back to land.
A few days ago, as I was in the midst of a despairing thought, a flower fell from its stem and landed in my hand. I can’t help but feel it’s significant. Years ago I would have judged myself for such mystical (or “childish”) interpretation, but I’m lowering those shields a bit. Am I any different from the flower, or the hummingbird? Or is the one breath simply winding its way through each of us, expressing exactly as it needs to?
