a deep bow

My wife and celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary last fall by attending a?Japanese tea ceremony. It was a beautiful experience I’ll be?expounding on in a longer article. A key part of the culture and the ceremony is the importance of bowing. Bowing to the other guests, the hosts and even the bowl made by someone.

It felt weird to acknowledge so much and revere all these details.?In a post modern Westernized society, the values of humility, reverence and honor are tuned out by the noise of idolization, constant distraction, self- exposure through social media and the insistent need to be right.

Bowing shows humility. In Latin, humility comes from the word, ‘humus’, meaning ‘grounded’. When we bow, either physically or inwardly, we fix our eyes on the earth and lower who we are as if to say, “there’s no need to build or add, what I stand on and am grounded in, is enough.” We recognize what’s including yet beyond us as greater than.

For me, I go back and forth on being a Christian?because it requires forming an identity, and giving up of control. There’s an acknowledgment of a greeter Source at work in my life. Finding out who we are can be scary because we’re all unsure if that realization will be good enough or free enough. So, we’d rather "live free" in bondage to an ambiguous confusion in who we are than engage with this paradox.

Because we live in a world where nothing is validated as truth and everything is always questioned and mistrusted, we create chaos.?It’s created spiritual schizophrenia. The buffet of self righteousness always feeds our ego.

This is the dangerous perception that believes it can detach from suffering, pain and negativity and mistake discomfort for trauma. We think we can escape ourselves and our feelings, when we think each decision we makes directly decides our lives.

This prideful statement of, “ Its my life I can do what I want, say what I want and live how I want.” This is a illusion. We are not our own. If we take just a second to think how we got to where we are, it’s wasn’t simply by our own merits not just for our own good.

To me, it’s our lack of healthy knowledge of our complete divine union with Love that leads us to ignorantly?think we could be outside of anything God leads us there. Ironically, when we surrender control we actually receive a truer deeper reality that is totally dependent on God yet totally free to live as we are, in who we are.

To become nameless. To become faceless. To let the ego shed away layer by later till all we are is pure love. The name I give it and face I know is Christ, the person Jesus. We are nothing. I often see that as a negative but it makes infinite room to be everything. To be nothing is to be Christ on the cross. To empty myself of all ego. Christ took on all ego to then let it die and transcend into full truth.

The spiritual life is one of decent, detachment and subtracting. The less, the decreasing. Not accent, attaching, adding or increasing. We have everything in Christ so any work that is to be done must be a returning to this.

Another way to put it may be that everything we need is already within us. When we forget this truth is when we decide there needs to be more.?We continue to worship the need to need.

Labels help identify but aren't an identity. the ego is like a shapeshifter- taking on an identity as its own, mimicking its DNA and even its wounds. It's?over identification. Like Antonio in the movie,?Encanto, who shape shifts into others, completely taking over the identity of someone else yet, only for a short time.

“Who will I be?” is the question we ask each time we are faced with the opportunity to change our mind and heart.?If you have breathe in your lungs it’s not too late to answer that question through a more whole, true way of living.?You can bow instead of standing your ground.

We need others to help us see where we can grow and how we can change. Outside of love and suffering, this is our clearest mirror. Getting others’ perspective is like needing to see a spill on the floor from a different angle, where the light reveals the substance.

After we slip enough times,?we see the value in slowing down, noticing and making right the environment that we stand on day to day.

Questions

• What areas of your life are you standing?instead of bowing?
• Where do you see humility in your life? what about pride?
• Where have you added to your life and not recognized the enoughness you already have?

Quote

When asked how he made the statue David, Michelangelo replied, “ I simply chipped away all that was not David.”