Maybe it was the video of the non-stop billows of oil into the water. Maybe it was one more disaster on the heels of so many others, in a time when all of us are consumed with the threat of (dunh dunh dunh duuuunh) Climate Crises, or maybe it was just the unavoidable fact that what I was looking at on my television screen and in the news was in fact a giant energy leak--not from a tanker or a plant or a factory, but from the center of the earth itself. Whatever it was, a question has risen to my mind while watching the events of the last 67 days unfold, and the question refuses to leave me:
Where is the oil spill in my own life?
If I am to buy into this "oneness" thing, and really buy into it, even just in a blanket kind of we-are-all-part-of-the-same-world way, then I have to believe that what is happening in the world around me must be reflected SOMEWHERE in my own universe; the microcosm of body, mind and heart. And if that's true, then also everything that is happening in the world around me must also be reflected in my ever-widening circles of family, neighborhood, community, city, state, country, and on and on.
And so, if there is an oil leak there. There must be an oil leak...here.
And what is an oil leak, really? It's not a random substance...it's not maple syrup or battery acid or, I don't know, gelatin...it's not something messy and yucky but lacking in resonance. It's...energy. At this moment of heightened awareness about all things "green", the earth, our big old mama, is leaking energy. Gushing energy. Bleeding energy. And we don't know how to stop it.
So the question came up, "where is the oil leak in my own life?" Where is it that I am wasting energy? Letting resources just spill out of me, gush out of me? Where is it that I am letting vital stamina-making fuel be wasted?
And what pristine waters in me are being toxified because of it?
How have I attempted, in the early stages of my own oil spill, to cover it up? To claim it's not as bad as it actually is? To throw garbage on it? To clamp it down? To deny it?
And how have I been bribed to look away from where the problem might have originated? What treats and monies have I taken in exchange for my complicity?
The answers to these questions are surprisingly uncomplicated. I, in innumerable ways, allow my own ecosystem to get covered in toxic sludge, over and over again. My oil is envy, it's despair, it's hopelessness, it's vanity, it's greed, it's worry, it's fear. Man oh man, is it fear. And I look away, and I claim that I am not responsible. I am not responsible, but somebody better clean this up, because damn it, it's costing me. It is costing me peace and it is costing me money and it is costing me precious valuable resources that could be so much better served--used to power education and mobility and service and advancement--instead of just spilled, barrel upon barrel, into the ocean. Which is me. Which is my life.
I am not, I promise, trying to get into a bunch of new-agey "I don't have to worry about the world around me because it's all iiiiiiiin meeeeeee" world-view-ing, I'm really not. In fact I feel more and more convinced that we must (I must) we must get MORE attentive, MORE outward-facing, MORE action-taking as our spiritual practice evolves, but I also think that there is no way to look at what is going on "out there" and not turn inward. How can I expect that "out there" to get cleaned up, when I am a walking oil spill way too often in my own life?
So the question then becomes, in this (forgive me!) anthropomorphizing of what is a true disaster in the real world--is it possible to take a look at what is going on out there and promise to do better in here? Can there be a direct communication between natural world and internal world, where each is constantly endlessly reflected in the other?
Can I finally say enough is enough this is no one's responsibility but my own I AM CLEANING THIS OIL SPILL UP!?!
I don't know. I hope so. I'm trying.
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