It Is Good To Be Human – Part 1
“As long as you cannot admit that you are human….you can not be helped in your problems, nor can you form real relationships” from PWG Lecture #106
I am heading to the beach at sunrise. I am hoping for a deepening into my spiritual path. I am going for an all out God experience.
I tiptoe out of our house with my iPhone for picture taking and begin to walk on the beach. It is dawn and only a slight color spreads among the clouds on the horizon. I imagine I have missed the sunrise. I watch what is there and feel the under current of my disappointment.
As I watch the surf come in and make beautiful patterns on the shoreline I feel a deepening expansion. These words fill my head – “I am on the rim of God”.
At my elementary school fair I used to play one of those toss the ball games. My ball would always skirt the rim of the circle, never falling into the center. I never won the prize.
I hate the rim and want more. And I also marvel at the capacity to be this close to God, to have the capacity to expand in human form this wide and deep. A moment later I am thinking about our laundry detergent. Our towels and clothes smell bad. I am astonished that I can move so easily between the great and the small.
I continue walking and notice a small luminous outline on the horizon. I have reached a nature reserve with only my footprints among the birds, sky and water. I realize that this small luminosity is the beginning of the sunrise! I expected to be disappointed. What an interesting way I am wired – my disappointment as a defense against the possibility of being disappointed. The sunrise is absolutely spectacular. The golden globe is slowly rising and reflecting on the water. Am I taking it in fully? Am I making the most of this moment? As the sun gets higher I find a place to sit up on the dunes. I close my eyes and let the sun warm my skin. Then I notice I am hungry. And I begin to think about breakfast. I bring myself back to the moment and am disappointed. And if I am completely honest I am even angry. I am angry with myself for being such a trivial person with such mundane thoughts and pursuits.
Again, I return back to the moment and the sensations of this new morning; I begin to feel full of being right here and now. This fullness leads me to a feeling of tremendous longing, a longing for more contact. I am on the rim again wanting more from God. I remember the last sunrise I watched. I was with my grandson Beckett. I wanted to show him his first sunrise. He was not quite 3. I love his hugs. He presses he cheek against mine and squeezes. I notice I have moved out of the moment and into the past. Again back to the glory of this here and now for a moment. And then I begin to scheme about how to buy a place here at the beach so that I can have more and more of these glory moments in the future.
And I laugh at myself and marvel at this being human with the capacity to be in the past and the future and the present almost simultaneously. I feel the elegance of this design. I begin to speak to God. “Ok God I see we are not built to just stay in the moment. We have evolved into creatures that can conjure up the past and project ourselves into the future. This is your plan.” And I realize there is nothing to be done about this. I feel a moment of complete peace….. Then I wonder if I am having an awakening experience. I fantasize about writing about it.
And again I hear so loudly and clearly the words. “It is good to be human.” And I walk back to our house for breakfast.
