What if?

What if our religion was each other?

If our practice was our life?

If prayer was our words?

What if the Temple was the Earth?

If forests were our church?

If holy water—the rivers, lakes and oceans?

What if meditation was our relationships?

If the Teacher was life?

If wisdom was self-knowledge?

If love was the center of our being

©1998 Ganga White, Santa Barbara All Rights Reserved

- Written at the Rainforest Benefit, NYC April 1998

A beautiful poem that gave me shivers the first time, and then many more times after I read it. It encompasses the idea of unity, integration, and simplicity, and makes one think.

In this day and age, spirituality can be pretty separated from real life and mystified to the max. Talking about energies, auras, magicians, goddesses, rituals, ceremonies, alignments, signs, and so on can make one feel like they’re entering an invisible realm and sometimes even get lost in that illusion of fantasy.

But the more you connect to your body, the more self-awareness you gain, you realise that unity and these special moments are not in the magical realm of energies but rather right here, right now. And that you don’t need to travel far away to the jungle for an ayahuasca ceremony to gain clarity, as your body and life are always communicating to you, as you are part of life, a living, breathing organism. Made out of the same materials existing around you, and after death, returning to the same earth.

I know myself, being on this path of self exploration for 16 yrs, that in the beginning, when one starts the journey these theories and teachings do sound magical and have certain allure to it, as subconciuosly we think we may be able to get away from life and what we’re experiencing now, to somewhere where we are always surrounded by love, positivity and isolated from dangers and uncomfortable experiences.

However, the deeper you go and the more your connection to yourself and your body grows, you realise that there is no escape from life, and, in fact, it’s not necessary to run away from something in order to feel fulfillment. And then all spiritual theories and practices slowly but surely integrate into your life, seep into your every pore so that it is no longer separate but rather united with how you live and breathe.

And suddenly a miracle happens, the one Ganga talks about in her poem:

We bring our daily meditation practice from behind closed doors and away from people with crystals and incense smells, to everyday people and life, but maintaining more intentionality and awareness of ourselves in it.

So instead of praying to the statues, our prayer becomes caringly speaking with people we meet, paying full attention to them.

Instead of visiting church on Sundays, we visit our main home - Mother Nature, the one that gave us life and continues to support us despite our uncaring practices.

We start seeing life not as a container for achievements but rather as a place for consciousness expansion, seeing our daily experiences, relationships, and life lessons as something brought to us for our own development.

And most importantly, that love is the centre of our being. Not romanticized love, ignorant love, but fully encompassing love. One based in the truth of reality, capable of both both creation and destruction, but more importantly, forever moving in the direction of unity and expansion.

So then, my mind starts to wander: What would our personal lives look like? Our societies, countries? Our development as a species, technologies, cities, everything that surrounds us?

Maybe finally, we would start creating in a way that supports us and life as a system, and start appreciating this gift of LIFE, instead of destroying it and drifting further away from it minute by minute?

And I know it’s a long way down to this utopia, if achievable at all. But things can change, and the good news is that it's in our power to do so, even when the world order tells us differently.

What are the words you live by?