The Center of the Storm

“Everything in nature grows and defends itself in its own way and against all opposition, straining from within and at any price to become distinctively itself.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The instinctual dedication of Nature to become itself is something worth contemplating any and every day. And of course it’s not relegated to the rose and pine. The drive to flower into the full beauty that was intended at inception shapes the human experience, though we often get lost somewhere along the way—stalled in distraction or self-loathing or the devastation of loss.

How Nature has taken form inside you is seen from the unique configuration of planets, stars and sky at your moment of birth, which is like an x-ray of your psyche and karma. That moment is the seed of you and who you are destined to become, given proper conditions. Aligning with and understanding the shape that Nature took at your birth creates the least resistance in your life, and can generate the most beauty.

The pressures which might obscure the intentions of Nature grow stronger with each day in this modern world of sense stimulation, addiction and continual crisis (ecological, political, health). There is more we must defend ourselves against in order to protect that seed of Nature within us that will attempt, at all costs. to become what it was meant to be. Because the birth and flowering of this seed can—in most situations—now only arrive in resistance to its context, it might look strange and even unwelcome to the hostile environment it has to now attempt to survive inside.

I’d like to unpack what was just said into two parts: 1. what is it we must defend ourselves against, and 2. what are the implications of being in continual resistance to one’s environment?

First: It is not necessarily guaranteed that Nature is allowed to arrive in us. There are plenty of examples of people who have become extremely distorted through addiction, mental illness, trauma and countless other influences which cause us to lose touch with our center, which is the place from which we receive the information required to properly sprout.

You can probably think of several celebrities with incredible ability who fell pray to addiction lost their light. If you actually look at people you will see how a large portion of the population is under the influence of some numbness which is dulling their beauty. It is a dangerous place to be: if we are not operating from center then the ship is likely to be steered off course, so to speak. And it’s pretty plain to see that the ship of humanity has, indeed, gotten alarmingly off-course.

To be ‘natural’ in this context becomes almost impossible. And if you are hearty enough to be determined to make space for your own nature, you will likely encounter a fair amount of resistance in the process. This is due to the weighted crush of expectation to somehow fit in to a gigantic and extremely dysfunctional global “cultural avoidance system” (as one of my teachers calls it). And if your ‘nature’ is fructifying in rebellion against a toxic context, then can we really call it ‘natural?’ It will have some added layer of protection- like the species of fauna that grow thorns and spikes to fend off predators.

You can begin to see the difficulty of the moment. It is hard to get off either offense or defense to just be and allow something unencumbered to come forth. But problem solving inside this dilemma may be the most important task of the moment.

Second: the resistance to one’s environment is something we’ve probably all experienced, particularly if you’ve ever been a teenager(!). Existing inside situations that are not supportive of your health can create a certain tension that your organism must somehow tackle. What you become as a result of that tension is not who you would have been without it, just as animals adapt all manner of coping mechanisms to survive in their environment.

We cannot label these adaptations “bad.” They are necessary, if any goodness is to survive. But they certainly shift the psycho-ecological landscape that the human species has become accustomed to over thousands of years of relative stability in terms of development of technologies and culture. Managing technological devices, advertising, high-speed everything, traffic, pollution and pesticides on food and a pace of life not conducive to anything natural can sometimes cause the human creature to feel like they are actually fighting a war to protect what is most valuable in themselves.

I think what I am getting at is it seems we are at a historical moment where we are in the process of attempting to generate a new adaptation—a spiny exterior or an extra antennae or night vision—that might allow Nature to survive in this nature-hostile environment.

It brings to mind the Vedic writings about Kali Yuga—the dark age of man, which we are now in—where crooks become kings and good people go to prison. Kali means “discord,” and this time period: beginning about 5,000 years ago and having about 430,000 remaining, is defined by contention. Because we know that this will somehow be a part of our lives, it is up to us all individually (and collectively) to decide what is worth fighting for. During Kali Yuga dharma, or morality, is severely reduced, while Moksha, or enlightenment, becomes more accessible. This may be due to the fact that the discord is so evident, the divisions so sharp that the polarity itself becomes almost mythical, and sometimes comical. Things become so wild that It is easier to take a step back and consider whether one really wants to play this game of polarity.

And if you start to see through the veil and opt out—not through suicide, but through internal distance from the immediacy of the drama and to give your deepest self space to become what it may, the outcome may not be palatable to either side of the polarity. Or it may be medicinal—its hard to tell, and the verdict is still out!

It may be that this adaptation on the horizon has to do with equanimity—the ability to dwell in the middle ground between opposites, observing them but not becoming involved. We must somehow find a way to adapt to the presence of the divisions without becoming them. Eastern religions developed a solution to this problem thousands of years ago in the variety of meditation systems developed for the purposes of enlightenment. Buddhism, in particular, has as its specialty this ‘middle ground’ between desire and aversion where one might actually dwell in some form of peace and clarity.

The poles and extremes are seen from the nodal axis in Vedic astrology. They are the mental and emotional pushes and pulls that can makes waves in one’s life. They’ve been exalted in transit for almost two years now, highlighting the divisions in society, which continue to tear us apart. On a personal level, the nodes are the mind (Rahu) and body (Ketu). In the mythology they are sliced apart at the neck, with Rahu forever being a disembodied head, and Ketu a headless body. It is always good to remember that they are actually two parts of the same body, in the same way that the apparently polar opposites are somehow mirrors of the same thing. Being able to draw back into some form of equanimity is what allows this to become clear. Arriving at this perspective will require that you first take care of your personal Rahu-Ketu situation by re-attaching your head to your body, if it has gone astray (as it so often does). I recommend a regular meditation practice, now and forever. Everyone needs a place to return to themselves in the center of the storm. Don’t neglect this, there is nothing more important and it is easy to forget—life seems to be designed that way.