Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Learning from Life – A Journal

by Miki Kashtan

In the last few weeks, since I returned from Europe, I learned so much through the experiences that I found on my path, without planning to learn anything, that it became clear I wanted to write about the experience of learning all the time. I decided I wanted to expose the bits and pieces below for the purpose of showing, both myself and others, how everything that happens, happy or not, can support our movement toward where we want to go. If you are reading this blog, you know that I am plagued by a fundamental and deep impatience fueled by a deep longing for an entirely different way for us, humans, to live on the planet. The vision is strong, and what I most want is companionship, many people willing to join me on this amazing journey to a profound personal freedom that will allow us to take a stand and, together, turn the tide. I am dedicating this sampling of my learning, these very personal reflections, to this bold vision, without quite knowing what connects to what.



Immersing in Love

 


At some point in the last few weeks, since being back from a month of workshops in Europe, I reflected on what made this trip so profoundly satisfying for me. Yes, it’s always satisfying for my work and offerings to be received enthusiastically, and yet I know that wasn’t it. The answer, when it came was deeply resonant. Everywhere I was in Europe, I was with people who love me and whom I love. When surrounded by love, I can breathe differently. I don’t have it at home, not in this same way. The many people in my life that I share love with are not with me all the time. Some uncertain part within me is still insisting that there is something unusual about wanting it, that this is not how life works. I refuse to believe this part, because I think I know better. I think I know that my experience is accurate to being human. We live, in my opinion, so far from what evolution designed us for: to be in ongoing connection with others. The isolated life of modernity doesn’t suit me. I know that for sure. I suspect fully that it’s not satisfying for others, either. Of course I can’t know, and I want to remain humble about it. It may, indeed, be that I am unusual in not being able to rest in a place of full individuation, living as a separate and unique one person. How ironic, considering how much I feel myself to be different, other than most, and still, I want and long to live surrounded by and immersed in love. I am not willing to give up any more, even if it doesn’t ever happen.