Opening

Passing from one world into a larger more spacious, complex, and liberating one is a human capacity. It isn’t well-known, but if you think about it, you and everybody you know, has passed from baby to adult. Along the way, there were many stages, many trips beyond oneself to a larger world. All it took was Nature’s pushing, growing us into the occupant of a larger way of being. The capacity to open up, and become something more, is built into our DNA, it is the way of Nature.

Like the crab we learn to abandon our shells to grow, to become, to occupy the world. Unlike the crab our carapace is located more within us, rather than outside, and because humans are a complex organism, molting (becoming larger) is a more complicated maneuver. At certain stages, the shifts that engender awareness, require humans to suffer growth pains, in the form of confusion, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability. These feelings arise around the impending urgency of growth, that wells up from within —no matter what — they occur from growing, or not growing.

It is for this reason — the growth pressure within — that there is a lot of normal suffering. It is also for this reason that we humans need to know about opening. A big part of this knowing is hard to stomach, disillusioning even — although a sure sign of maturation. Growing is painful, and involves periods of vulnerability. Leaning into anxiety and fear, feelings that impending change invariably produce, is counterintuitive, even as it validates what a complex animal we are. Opening is hard, but essential, for any kind of resilient being to stride deeper into the world.

It is easy to get mesmerized, hypnotized by the political and environmental conditions that threaten the worst kind of changes. These kinds of circumstances, charge the experience of change, with all kinds of feelings and ideological baggage. Change appears to be so hopeful to some, and so threatening to others. As a result cultural change has grown constipated. It needs a period of openness.

This is where Nature comes in. It open us. Despite ourselves, we humans give birth— to ourselves, to each other, to greater capacity, even to a world complex enough to include our diverse aspirations. The thing is, for this birth to happen, for the quickening that presages it to stir, a period of openness must occur. This means more vulnerability, uncertainty and unknowing than most of us are used to. Inviting a new sensibility, a world capable of holding so much diversity, means surrendering our knowing, putting aside our best laid plans, and our hoped for visions. Openness is exacting.

Nature has delivered to us the experience of opening. It is more awkward and vulnerable than most of us like. It can be as brutal as birth. It can also be a blessed entryway — a portal — a new way of seeing ourselves, each other, and the world we share. Strangely, Nature has anticipated times this stuck. It has provided us with the capabilities we need. Opening is not as hard as not opening. 

Existential threats are known to create communal opening, as do some forms of hallucinogens, ageing can do it too, but the opening needed now is more pervasive than all of that — it is the opening of the human heart. The moment contains existential threat enough — psychedelic wonder sufficient to the task. What remains is for each of us to open ourselves. I know this is easier said than done, but let me remind us all — this is how Life proceeds.

 Luckily, Life has aged me into paradoxical awareness — so I can sense the opening in what’s closing around us.