When I was nineteen, I met BH at a tai chi class. She had seen the oneness shift in my energy field, initiated contact, and became a close friend and mentor for me. I remember she once said: “You are having the equivalent of a midlife crisis”.
It stuck with me because it’s true. My life seems to be one long quiet existential crisis, and I notice it now too.
AWAKENING PROCESS
Maybe that is part of the awakening process. I know there is nowhere to settle in the world of form. Life pulls the rug out from under me, continuously. My life, and life, is infinitely precious. This life, and the life of everyone and this amazing living planet, is infinitely fragile. There is a deep sense of awe of it all, and the infinite mystery that there is anything at all.
What do I do with my one precious life?
For a while, I thought something was wrong. Why do I have this ongoing quiet existential crisis?
I also see the beauty and blessing in it.
It keeps me unsettled, which is how it should be. There is nowhere to settle, apart from in my nature noticing itself, and noticing that I never left home and that there is no-one who can ever leave home.
Home is this awake space that forms itself into the experience of it all.
Home is existence, as it is, always new, different, fresh.
TRAUMA
I suspect this also has to do with trauma. Maybe that’s as much part of the long quiet existential crisis as anything else. Something in this precious human being is unsettled. Something is not healed. Something in how he relates to the pain is unhealed.
That’s OK too. That’s part of this life. It’s part of the human experience. It’s part of the experience of many beings.
And maybe the two go hand-in-hand. Maybe in this case, in this life, the awakening process and the trauma go hand in hand.