We Are Dancing Together
Singing our songs to each other
Early one morning as my friend Peter and I were walking through a hobo jungle beside the train tracks a couple of hobos called us over to their fire. We sat down with them and they offered us some coffee from their “gunboat”, a Folgers size tin can with the lid bent back. We pulled out our “coffee mugs” of smaller cans and gratefully joined them. Peter and Bob.
Peter and I ended up hoboing with them for a week or so. Bob carried a razor and made every attempt to use it every morning, when he could find water. Peter could care less. He had been hit by a car many years ago so both his legs were bent to the side. He wore a striped shirt and plaid polyester pants and his grey hair reached his shoulders. When he smiled, which was often, he showed off both his teeth as though in pride.
Every morning we’d roust ourselves out of whatever ground or railroad car we had landed on the night before and contemplate what was next. Peter, in his ever-sunny mood would stretch his arms up to the sky, grin at the gods, and declare to anyone listening, “If there weren’t for good luck, there’d be no luck at all!” To this day I often hear Peter’s voice and feel the little burst of gratitude it evokes.
Who’s to say who influences us? Of course a life is about constantly being nudged and nudging others. I am keenly aware of the other voices out here often singing a similar tune.
It is so clear that all of us are influencing each other all the time—and that’s a well noted understatement, given current technologies. But what I mean here is that those who are offering our gifts into the arena of a future we can really love are significantly contributing to the positive engine of evolution. Those gifts are both tangible and intangible. They, in turn, come from others’ work, earlier tomes, experience, ancestry, subtle realms, and who knows what else. As a former meta-tribalist with decades of practices and groups behind me, hundreds of gifted people have affected what I offer today. We are feeding off each other intentionally and unintentionally. This is because it takes all of us exploring and dancing on the edge together. This has a personal and a collective outcome.
Personally, I have vastly reformed my engagement with external sources. I no longer spend time combing the ethersphere for stimulation or trying to find my peeps and instead trust that I receive the influences that are right for me at the right time. More importantly, no longer seeking outside has allowed me more of what is coming from within out. And the spigot is now wide open!
Collectively, I am quite aware of the reverberation within this space between worlds. It feels like echo chamber within echo chamber. Great! We are feeding off each other and repeating what rings true. I am also aware of the human desire to be creative, so within this collectivity, we are each feeling inspired and thus creating spaces, models, practices, and such that are uncannily similar to those next door. Nothing wrong with that. We all want to articulate what we are seeing and suggest things we can do about it. We want to be contributory. Awesome. I am right in there, even with this writing.
AND it is a bit nauseating. Get me out of here! We’re descending into a known planetary hell and we can’t stop ourselves from going there or stop ourselves from talking about each step of our way down.
It is a deep knowing that there is something else, something beyond this and a deep hunger to be there, to take the big leap, to Fold the Paper that drives me. I want to feel the profound coherence that comes when we are there, united under this knowing that something beautiful is possible. I want to go beyond this slower, repetitive process of piecemealing our way forward, beyond even my own models and to dos. Sigh. And, of course, I am not alone. Our collective desire keeps me going. We are singing to each other.
And, with that, I appreciate each of you who is influencing me, who is trying hard to make this better world happen, and who listens and stimulates me to take the big leap.
Want to dialogue? Write me at kimmaynard@substack.com