I choose to believe this earthplane existence is a school and that I am a student. I have committed myself to learning. But then the question comes, “Okay, there are an infinite number of courses I could study. What is the course of study that calls me? Do I have any choice in this matter, or was I already shaped to choose one thing or another before I was born?”

I feel like I am in a submarine with portholes and a periscope. I get bits of information from my windows on the world and then stitch these morsels together, making them into a tapestry that at least has coherence and, to me, beauty.

I watch over the years as the tapestry takes different shapes. Colors and densities migrate from here to there like plants in a garden. A little sprout, which one year feels like a weed, begins to have its way with the bigger picture and sprouts into fullness and unimaginable beauty.

It matters to me to make stories that ground me in the earth and into the ever-expanding universe. I care about engaging with people and the land to activate parts of myself that might otherwise remain hidden. I am curious about how another person’s perspective or even the activity of a tree or germinating pea plant can stretch my understanding so  I can tell an even more illuminating story about what this universe is made of.

Stories about love call my attention the most because, if truth be told, this earthplane embodiment is all about love. When I say it is all about love, I am walking into a mystery. Love is something that I have experienced, but it is not something that I can describe. I can only point to aspects beyond the scope of my understanding.

I do know that love is not what the Hallmark cards advertise. It is not about never having to say, “I am sorry.” Love is not all sweetness and light and tiptoeing throughout the tulips.

Love is hard work. It is the hard work of knowing that we are already connected and then being willing to come face to face with anything that gets in the way of remembering. It means being ready to dissolve the barriers and boundaries while being curious about this seemingly separate thing we call Self.

Clearly, we come into this earthplane game with a societal demand to be individuated and to protect the boundaries that allow us to see ourselves as separate human beings. But where does this supposed isolated self end? I am breathing the same air that everyone else breathes, and without that shared air, I would die. I come from my mother’s womb from eggs that my mother was born with that came from her mother’s body and then all the way back. It has been a seamless process of one body coming out of another body. Where is the disconnection except in the illusory separation we experience at birth?

In the face of this mystery of human embodiment, I want to open my body, soul, and mind to the reality of Oneness and to allow an ongoing process of deeply embodying that which my rational mind is incapable of understanding.

What does that mean? It means accepting the ‘isness’ of life and then dancing on the edges of what I can understand about love. It means bringing a beginner’s mind to love and saying to the Beloved in oneself and the other, “How can I love you? What do I need to know or to let go of to be the Lover of a person, a tree, or a faraway star? And what do I need to let go of so that I can be Lover of all that is, of the One, of the Source?

What matters to me now is to love. I watch myself fail and try again, melt and reform, and I walk into the mystery of the unknown, held in the love of the universe, whatever that might be.

I am curious to know how others face the mysteries of life and what really matters to you.