Who do you move for?
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Who do you move for?
Movement is central to all we do, without it we would be considered catatonic. We would soon starve if there were not a movement of food through our digestive tract. In fact, movement sits at the very beating of our heart, yet how often do we ask the question, what do you move for?
Some move to get through the day, to survive and arrive home at the end of the day to strike off another box in the calendar of life, wondering what it is all for.
Some move with the suffering of the pressure of life, feeling like one step forward results in 2-3 steps backward.
Some move with the striving to make things better for themselves, the community or the world.
Some keep the same movement, year in year out. In fact, without this regularity, they would soon think the world has gone crazy.
Some move knowing that there is another way to be with ourselves and each other.
The fact is we all move through life in our own way, but while we may think that we think and then we move, the reality is that our thoughts follow our movement. Try and feel grumpy while standing up in a right posture with a smile on your face… try and sustain joyful thoughts and feelings while slouched over.
We are taught that if we change our thinking we change our actions, and this is true to a degree and true for a short period of time. But the ongoing effort required makes sustained change difficult. Affirmations sound like a good idea, but once your body has moved into stress and anger, saying you are a calm and happy person all seems a bit too late.
What if we have it back to front and what if much of our thinking and emotional state is governed by how we hold our bodies?
Go back to the grumpy stance, happy stance example . . . how do our thoughts change in accordance with those different postures?
Again, affirmations appear to make sense because our minds filter the reality we have already determined we wish to see. Start looking for a house to buy and notice how many For Sale signs crop up; buy a certain model of car and magically they appear all over the roads.
But where does that filter come from in the first place?
Those caught in survival will only ever see the things they need for survival, but what holds that thinking in place? What holds the focus of those burdened by life’s pressures or those asking if there is something more to life?
For those asking, “is there something more”, there are thousands of theories out there, but which of them asks you to consider “who am I moving for”?
Which one is asking you to consider if your questions are driven from desire to relieve a pressure, pain or issue? Or if you are looking for a distraction to how things really are in the world? Or if you are looking for something to support you to more honestly understand life?
“If I have a solution for my problems, I don’t have to deal with them. If I have a true understanding of me and of life, there will not be any real problems.”
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume I, ed 1, p 188
To be clear, it makes sense to want to solve problems and ease pain and it is an illusion to think that the only path to understanding is through suffering and martyrdom. Yet there is a cruel irony that for most it takes a certain level of discomfort to motivate a deeper exploration of life. But this is not how life needs to be.
The fact is there is a cavernous gap between asking deeper questions to find a solution to a problem and being open to understanding life in full.
In reality, most of us seek answers to a certain point of comfort. Would a priest throw away years of practising one religion if another was found to be true? Would a nationalist that is dedicated to ‘peace for their people’ renounce nationalism if it was found that nationalism sat at the heart of much global unrest? Would we all change our diets to the foods we know are healthy because feeling vital can be a natural way of being, or are we more committed to the drudge or buzz any given food or drink can deliver – or – do we only change our diet when we are sick?
There are much deeper questions to be asked and answered, BUT are we willing to go there?
Even the statement, ‘are we willing to go there’, implies movement.
Going there is acknowledging that we have got it back to front up until now. Going there is about understanding the fact that how we move affects how we think.
There seem to be four main reasons why we move:
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To confirm that which we know is right
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To improve our physical and material lot in life
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To help others improve their physical and material lot in life
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To acknowledge the fact that we are so much more than human
Movement one is not interested in anything that does not confirm what it already knows. It is the fixed routine that gives a sense of confidence that life is sorted, understandable, predictable and known. It is not really confidence, it is the comfort of knowing what to do in an environment we tightly control.
You see this in the dominance of a scientific model that limits answers to life’s big questions to a certain band of acceptable forms of evidence. It is the philosophical and/or religious doctrines that offer books full of answers, that promote notions of guilt, disempowerment, lack of worthiness and a dependence on the clergy to determine what is and isn’t true.
It is an education system that determines what aspect of history, philosophy or science we get taught, thus shaping the views of what happened and what is possible. Our natural love of wisdom and understanding becomes conditioned and we start to think a certain way about life, with paradigms that foster compliance over self-care, regurgitation of knowledge over critical reflection and competition over self-awareness. North Korea might be our most extreme example of a conditioned society, but let’s not pretend our own western education systems, media and corporate manipulation of government policy don’t elicit similar results.
The second movement is one that is driven by a fear of survival. It is one that seeks to improve life and our sense of security. If we have struggled to pay the bills, the week we don’t struggle is a good week. It is the quest for the bigger house, car, the better education, the more advanced drug treatment. It is the movement that becomes temporarily comfortable and content once that next step of better has been reached.
To feel secure is not a bad thing and living with social, emotional and financial hardship is not an easy place to be in. Some people face very real pressure and stress to put food on the table or even to have a table in the first place. This is not about judging this kind of movement. In those moments there is very limited capacity to consider anything but what will put food on the table or where you will seek shelter that evening! The point being offered is that within this movement, once we have achieved security in whatever format we desire it, we tend to stop our exploration because this outer security has been achieved.
The third type of movement can come with the previous two. It is the selfless act for another, it is the mother that gives their all for their children, the community worker, aid worker, environmental crusader that becomes so involved in their cause that their own wellbeing suffers. If not their wellbeing, their own awareness.
To be clear, we are on earth to evolve together and support each other, but the opposite of selfishness doesn’t need to be selflessness. The opposite could be ‘we’-ness. It could be the understanding ‘we’ all need to get there together, which includes US!
If we move to support those that are marginalised in society but disregard ourselves in the process, we show these fellow humans that we are not important enough to look after. Consider this deeply for a moment. If someone gets some functional support, even some deeply caring emotional assistance, and the person offering the support is not living to the maximum degree possible a level of deep self-love, then the subtext of that support is that the person receiving support is more important than the person giving support. Which means, when a person moves from needing support to going back into their lives, the message they have gotten is that they are only worth caring about when they need support.
Is it any wonder why so much aid work and community services don’t shift the dial on the issues we face?
We have no control over another person’s choices, but we have 100% control of our own and the more we love and cherish ourselves, the more the people we assist see someone reflecting the fact that we are all important and that everything starts and finishes with self-responsibility, even in those moments that we need help from another.
Self-responsibility is not a stick for self-flagellation, or selfishness for that matter. It is simply the start and end of any real change. There is a reason airlines say, ‘fit your own mask BEFORE helping others’.
Which in many ways brings us to the final form of movement, which is a movement for all. It is a movement that knows that our human forum, human issues or human condition as it is called, is but a minute fragment of who we are.
It is a movement that places our responsibility for the collective development of humanity in our own hands. It encompasses the personal standards we live by that includes a deep care for ourselves and others. It is the choice to stand up and say no to abuse, both overt and subtle, it is the decision to express what is needed without adding to the emotion and drama. It is about being willing to see even the most oppositional person as an equal.
Fundamentally, it is moving in a way that says, ‘we can do life on earth very differently to what is currently considered normal’. It has the audacity to suggest that even the most perfect solution to improve life on earth is NOT the full answer or the end goal.
We are souls, first and foremost. This means while we are here to learn, we are not of this earth. Yes, we need to learn to be in harmony together and that suffering need not be part of the path to awareness. We are here to bring a more loving way to every aspect of life, which will by its very nature improve things, but we are not here to settle in. If we are more than our human form and if that more predates human form, then human form has a use by date from an evolutionary point of view.
Harmony can only come from love and the soul is comprised of a light that is otherwise known as love. That love can be nothing else but love and love’s natural expressions of joy, truth, stillness and harmony.
How would you sit and breathe if you connected to that fact for a moment?
Or, said another way, how would you sit and breathe TO CONNECT to that fact?
This is the offering and the starting point. Thinking about life differently makes sense, but it starts with a new movement.
Filed under
Connection, Conscious presence, Livingness, Self-love
