3P Random Reflections Blog

Six years ago, on May 24th 2013 to be precise, I somehow had a profound epiphany.

I don't really know why or how it happened, but in no small measure, I saw that I was my community and they were me. I realized the intrinsic divinity in life, and in myself, and in everyone else. I saw clearly how everyone's negative behaviours were simply coming from their internal suffering, including my own... no exception.

Some things in my experience of life changed immediately, but most other things have been on a slow, wildly up and down, but ultimately graceful and progressive path, even in the MANY moments when it hasn't seemed like it. And with that type of insight, how could it be otherwise?

And so the path has brought me closer to LIVING more of what I had realized... moving away from giving significance to the personal me (all the stories my personal ego still loves to make up about myself, about life, about others, whether good or bad) and moving toward giving significance to the impersonal me, the unconditional me, the community me, the connected me, the me that is actually not me at all... the me that is you and everyone and everything else.

This epiphany led to a significant change in the focus of my work... leaving a big company full of those who are "the not-so-obvious, but socially accepted suffering", to work in a community full of those who are "the very obvious and socially unaccepted suffering".

Since then I've been figuring out "how on earth" to navigate this new understanding in my own life and how to share it in ways for others to gain a glimpse of it too. And of that, I have been learning.

At the same time, by all the accepted measures of our socially accepted version of society, my 6 years of "learning success" would be considered pretty dismal, and my personal ego LOVES to spend time pointing out all the stories to support it... not much money (although my tax refunds are fabulous! LOL!), not many "obvious" souls saved, and not a significant flock of adoring fans reminding me of my personal brilliance. Poor me.

And so the biggest part of my path has been the agonizing and yet wonderful learning process of letting all that go... remembering, realizing, and KNOWING again and again and again, that all these measures have been made up by the personal me and have absolutely nothing to do with the community me and nothing to do with the deep, profound truth to be found in the simple grace of each moment of life itself, however the personal me and the community me happens to live it.

The personal me and all it's personal-crazy still has many hurdles ahead. It still has a lifetime full of lessons yet to arrive, teaching it how to let go of the personal, how to "just play", and how to BE my community instead of judging it, or thinking I am above it, or unknowingly (and inevitably unsuccessfully) attempting to keep myself separate and protected from the parts of it that I don't like.

The real truth is that I AM my community, I AM ALL of it, and for better or worse, so are each of you, even in every moment when we forget it or don't know it at all. But whenever we are somehow given the grace to know it, to truly know it, we are immediately better just for the knowing. We’re given the grace of love and understanding.

Overview