By Annmarie Early

They are like pathways or channels, the force that carries you into a landscape either wanted or unwanted. “Be in the world but not of the world” captures a bit of it. How does one be fully embodied, accepting and delighting in the form that holds and carries them, but not be of it in the substance that makes up what creates and manifests? 

 I’ve reflected on this phrase more recently as I feel the world being carried on unconscious channels that sweep and crash.  Some mysterious Koan for reflection that is no longer only a saying of Jesus from the Bible, but has concrete relevance in my daily lived experience. The vibratory significance is visible—where one lives from in the not yet formed of the subtle world—and the consequences that manifest— create themselves from that vibration, and take form in the world.

 I’m meant to be here, fully here in the world. That means being in my body, acknowledging and allowing the limitations and suffering that come from flesh and blood.  I am to be here. Nowhere else. Here.  I am meant to be human, at this time and place, Here.

 And yet, I’ve wanted to get away more than usual with fantasies of mountain top retreats and questions of whether I could survive up there (and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t) and if I’m honest my life has signatures of retreat stamped all over it.  And, I also notice that I get away in the small things—living in anticipation of something arriving tomorrow, thoughts of how circumstances will play out next week or a year from now.  Or, when life pulls me backward into the “what was” and the consequent vibrational drop that parallels it.  Not being here, fully here, is in the big and in the small.  

 Yesterday it showed up in the car.  I was stuck in traffic in the dark an hour from home.  In my heart and mind everything wanted to be home.  I asked myself, “Where are you Annmarie? Here in the car in this moment? Unexpected and named as unwanted, but here you are.  Or are you?”

 Be in the world.  Be here.  Present moment. Not one step out or over. In.

 Not of the world.

 So, be here, fully, but not of the substance that makes up the world, especially not the unconscious part. I’m sure there is much more to it than this, but I’ve been engaging this as vibration.  Where I hold myself in vibration—simply meaning what I attend to, jive with, engage in, allow—matters, as in creates.  My inner world of thoughts, emotions, attention, and feel create form in the world both seen and unseen.  This doesn’t mean that I float up and out of my life in Pollyanna platitudes for I am to be here and sometimes life hurts.  There is much to feel in the present moment without bypass. And yet, many of us— I— can get stuck in the recirculating loop of  repeating what is or simply what I see before me (or remember from back then) where I/we create more of what I/we don’t want through the very act of staying with through unconscious allowing.

 So I practiced last night as I sat and waited, inching along.  Instead of dropping into the disappointment or wishing to be where I wasn’t, I positioned and listened.  I watched my vibration dip and dive to then return.  By noticing I was more conscious of where I was and I was in where I was more fully.  Be in the world—I am here—but not of the world—my set point matters, where I am in this moment.   For this is how we are meant to live. This is what being home really means.