Cafe Musings: a Greater Intelligence

Don’t you love when you go to a cafe, and even as you are a new energetic-being entering this group-field of beings who already have a certain configuration going, it still feels that everything and everyone has their place and enough space? 

(I ought to write an ode to coffee-shops, how much of a resource they can be for my nervous system...but)

This is a feeling we can actually tune into no matter where we are, no matter how seemingly chaotic the group-field may be, even as a coffee shop gets noisier or one’s place-of-work or home gets buzzy, as the metaphorical ‘political stage’ barks and lies through our hand-held movie screens.  Or perhaps slow quietude makes your skin crawl?

Whatever it is, we can train ourselves to tune into what is underneath this discomfort, what is harmonically holding all of this, too… (& of course, we can always leave if an environment is too much &/or use our voices to request change.  We always have choice (!) though sometimes it can be hard to remember, especially if, as little ones, our environment was too much and we really didn’t have much choice because our survival was dependent on staying and “adults know best!”  I digress and all of us, truly, are always trying our best, even if it doesn’t seem that way.)

By practicing in more “impersonal” spaces, we can develop more capacity to try, one breath at a time, in the stickier areas of our lives – those situations where we feel most regularly thrown off-center.  Sure, we might still react in an un-ideal way and wish we didn’t, but instead of the shame-spiral lasting as long, shoving it under the rug, or whatever the coping strategy is, we can curiously sense into whatever is also holding all of this, too… We can feel our way into a greater trust that maybe this, too is somehow working out in the highest good for all, even if in the moment it f**king sucks or feels absolutely life-shattering.

A personal example from school:

BCST the past two years: I look back on occasional uncomfortable moments where me and someone’s else’s edges would rub up against each other and cause painful friction.  Something in my shadow-history mirrored their shadow-history in some brilliantly synchronistic way – that if it didn’t, there wouldn’t be the possibility for that shadow-history piece to be seen and subsequently digested and integrated.  Now, the reason that this integration was possible (instead of it just idling in some repetitive projection-dance) was because of my teachers’ skills in 1.) holding the clarity in the group-field 2.) compassion 3.) so much more, but maybe most importantly: 4.) their steadfastness in tuning into what’s underneath and permeating all of this, too: a Greater Intelligence.

What is your relationship with this Greater Intelligence?  Whatever name you call it by, what qualities do you feel in your being when you’re tuned in with it?