Portals

The skies have opened to let the light through. The temperature is 67 degrees fahrenheit. Today is Thursday.

The transitions we are experiencing in today's world are happening at a level of intensity that is making it hard to allow us to breathe. New portals are opening and closing very rapidly. Enormous changes are taking place in almost every aspect of our modern existence, whether. you are concerned about the environment, politics, education, technology, financial stability. It is hard to keep up and feel a sense of stability. One small glitch can disrupt one's life for weeks, months, years – think identity theft!

Then there is the portal between life and death. That portal ranges from a very peaceful transition, as in the case of my father whose passing went from one moment of breathing while sleeping and the next, no breath. Just like that, a life came to closure. Then, there are portals like what we are witnessing in the war zones throughout the world. These are frightening to absorb and more frightening to not know what to do. And then, there is the slow and steady walk through portals that extend transitions, making twists and turns that feel like an end will never come.

All of life can be experienced as walking through a series of portals where you enter a place of great joy and light; and then, find yourself in a place of disappointment and bitterness. These are passageways that bring the past, the future, and the present together as we imagine ourselves moving through a linear existence we call "life." But the most interesting of all is the portal that takes you into the simultaneous experience of everything - even beyond what you know to be your own life. It is the portal that takes you into a place where all lives clearly emerge as one. This is what some call "being woke", or "satori" or, "nirvana" – it is a state that calls into awareness the illumination that emerges once we shake ourselves out of the notion of a singular existence called "me.".

Since most of us are pretty numb to the fact that our survival is dependent on an ability to embrace one another - for all our beauty and our beastly aspects - it takes work. That work is very hard and very easy, both. The most common in today's world is for people to jump into a cause that will right a wrong (and to get paid to do so). Or, to engage in advocacy for a greater good, knowing that the process is rotten and the ultimate goal of seeing our common humanity is unreachable in that rotten process. So what is the way, the portal - to realize that which is essential for us to manifest what we know the universe is calling upon us to create in this moment?

Bits of the answer have emerged through the growth of an awareness that rest is an essential part of meeting our destiny. Humility is a part of meeting our destiny. Sometimes yielding rather than confronting is a preservation skill. How to develop these skills without falling into the bucket of being called lazy or apathetic or worse is the trick. So here's a suggestion: allow for "unproductive" time, go into a place of truly seeing your weak and strong points, stop seeking and just open awareness to what is in your life. And finally - coming into an awareness that air, breath, slowing require practice in today's world. The portal: meditation.