Everything Matters; Nothing Matters

 "I saw, also, that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings".  George Fox

 

"Eventually you will understand that there is an ocean of love behind all this fear and pain.  That force will sustain by feeding your heart from deep within."    Michael Singer

 

"Nor is the God-blinded soul given blissful oblivion but, rather, excruciatingly sensitive eyesight towards the world.  The sources of suffering for the tendered soul are infinitely multiplied, well-nigh beyond all endurance.  I recently had an unforgettable hour with a Hindu Monk.  He knew the secret of the paradox “Nothing matters; everything matters.”  It is a key of entrance into suffering.   The one who knows only one-half of the paradox can never enter that door of mystery and survive."

Thomas Kelly

 

"God give me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot and the wisdom to know the difference."

Serenity Prayer

These 4 quotes come together in an interesting way for me.  As a life long Quaker I have most of my life had an outsized sense of what we have the strength to change - ie Quakers lead the Abolition movement and the suffragette movement, etc. so it seemed possible to change BIG things.  

As someone in my 20's I was very much an "everything matters" person and as Kelly describes with excruciating sensitive eyes to the suffering of the world.  I worked hard on the disarmament movement and through most of my 20s did not intend to have children as I thought they would simply be blown up in a nuclear war.  Somehow in my 30's that shifted enough to have my beloved daughter, and now I live with the irony that instead it maybe climate change that will destroy her and her peers life.  In my 2o's I also took that famous Fox quote as a powerful affirmation that love wins, that love has the power to overcome the darkness.

However, through my life I have seen much personal suffering as well as watching my clients suffer and much of the social justice gains of the 70's and 80's dismantled by the Bush and Trump administrations.   I began to feel some what disconnected from the power of love....it seemed hard to locate it in the face of so much suffering.   

It is helpful to hear Singer, a mindfulness teacher, slight twist on the ocean of love, that it is "behind the fear and the suffering.  Jampolsky famously said it is not hate that is the opposite of love but fear...it is fear that causes us to shut down and disconnect from that Divine Ocean of Love.   Recently I heard a podcast with the author of Eat, Love, Pray.   And she described her daily spiritual practice of decades - she writes a letter between she and Love.  Just hearing it my mind turned towards Love and started talking and I was amazed by the ocean like wave of Love that rushed towards me with compassion and encouragement!  It is important to me to realize that it is a Presense that is always there - and that is quite divorced from whether it "overcomes" hate or darkness or fear.   In other words - this is not a competition where one is winning.  Both suffering and Love are constantly present - it is simply how we learn to live with them.

A decade or so ago I heard a famous mindfulness teacher.  He was talking about observing our emotions, observing suffering - from a position of "just noticing"   He described his wife who he was happily married to coming to him upset and angry and being able to just observe and hear a voice that said: "and this too".   It was to me an acceptional ability to notice that everything matters and nothing matters.  That of course it mattered that she was upset - and that in the hugeness of human experience and the vast universe - it also did not matter.   It was a surrender to the fact that there are no seperate or protected parts of our life - immune from the suffering or strife.

I have been wondering if I have become numb or if I indeed are coming to some of the "wisdom" of the serenity prayer, but I have noticed in the last 5 years that as the long, ever increasing list of calmaties, system failures, irreverible man made environmental collapses occur that there is a voice in my head that just says "and this too".   This does not stop me from still trying to effect change.   But it does (usually) stop me from despair or desperation.  I remain in a calm center acting as I can and surrendering the rest to the ocean of Love.   This week I have faced that we may all soon die in a nuclear war...or we will once again skate thru another confrontation by nuclear powers with the price of the conquered Ukraine, and all the death and suffering this has brought.   Given the US invation of Iran, Iraqi and Afgahstan in the last two decades (also encased in death and suffering)....I can hardly find any difference between these acts of aggression by imperil powers.  So everything matters and nothing matters.