All the Undoing
From fire-smoke sunsets and leaky garden hoses to the eighty-four thousand gates of waking up
There is so much unraveling, so much undoing, so much uncorking we must do for ourselves in our lives. Though the corn has a prescribed way to grow, we humans do not. The only prescription is to bear with the challenge and allow obstacles to become the path. There is truly no other way, for if we chose some other way, we would perpetually avoid the learning, the growing, the necessary undoing that enables us to develop.
It is both entirely abstract, this journey of internal development, as well as fundamentally concrete. You know the difference, feeling yourself unravel with the beauty of a sunset, even if that beauty is propelled by smoky skies from endless forest fires. There is no way to contain the conflagration other than to let go into the raging beauty. It is still possible, it is always possible, to see the beauty reveal itself… even when the redness of the moon is itself tragic.
So it is, through the melody of crickets, the whisper of a tiny child sweetly cooing unexpected kindness in my ear—“you’re doing a good job taking care of me, Mama”—and the rich cold wetness of my leaky garden hose as I water the thirsty August garden, so it is, that I unravel the fearful tendencies, the unnecessary clutching, the habitual retractions. And so it is, that I wend towards joy, contentment, outrageous wisdom in everyday life. A long-ago prophecy is finally dawning clear: I embody a confidence that can, in fact, light up the world.
My dirty feet and soft belly proclaim, however, that the journey was long, rough, and not always kind. Eighty-four thousand gates, so the wise ones say—eighty-four thousand ways to enter the stream of awakening. And so it has been for me, at least ten thousand different ways to taste awake, fall off balance, and slowly recover, remember, and wend my way back to center.
It’s the many undoings, like cracking an outrageous chrysalis, that eventually lend us to crystalline moments of clarity. In the undoing of all that we think we know, who we really are underneath becomes again revealed. We may be naked, shivering, and vulnerable, but our true strength shines through and the clarity of what’s truly necessary becomes obvious. Undoing the matrix of what we think we need, we simplify into the bare essentials, we strip away the fluff, and sink down into that which is genuine.
Maintaining a gentle sense of constant vigilance to ensure maximum relaxation, we rouse a mind that is supple, courageous, and resilient. Just today, a cicada landed on my window, the thunk startling mind and body, the awe awakening a pleasure unlooked for—a sudden gift of insect introspection. And so, we learn to bear with circumstance, gaining skills at riding through each wave with equanimity. We learn to see and then embrace our capacity, discerning when to act and when to rest, when to engage and when to take space.
Finally, we begin to piece together the technicolor tapestry of our life experience, seeing how each strand fits with the larger picture, until we can celebrate our totality, savor our richness, and rest knowing center and fringe are complete.
The only thing next is to then keep going and wend our way into all the new sunrises and sunsets, with trust and ease. The path unfurls before us, we masters of undoing, we spiders of unweaving, taking great delight in the mashing of obstacles caught in our web. Our teeth ripping the holes in the fabric to again let the light shine through.
P.S. The complete, wild text of this unweaving—including the deeper reflections on holding one's seat through the chaos—is available exclusively for my Patreon community. If you feel called to step into the shrine room of this practice, click the button below: