A work in process, not progress
I enjoy playing with different effects in photoshop on the iPad. Recently I was playing with a photo of myself and this is one version that photoshop came up with. What I am drawn to in this picture is that while the shape of my face is discernible, it is not totally clear. This picture reminds me that who I know myself to be, my identity, is a work in process. The term process is employed here, rather than progress. Progress implies forward movement toward a particular destination. In contrast, the term process here refers to an ongoing way of remaining engaged with life, wherever that leads.
Why is our human identity in process? Because conscious living involves a personal dance of being and becoming; a dance which also sits within a bigger picture of familial being and becoming; communal being and becoming; cultural being and becoming; the human species being and becoming; the Earth community’s being and becoming. Each of those interconnected dimensions of being and becoming also sit within Life’s ongoing creative dance of being and becoming. Consciously engaging in our personal and collective dance of being and becoming, is the sacred work of being human.
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Note: as mentioned in a previous post, Being refers to a clear view of who we currently know ourselves to be-in-the-world. A term synonymous with Being is formation. Formation involves the totality of our experience of self-in-Life, that is, body, mind, and spirit. Becoming refers to transformations in our experience of self-in-Life. A term synonymous with Becoming is transformation, that is, breaking through and transcending the limits of our current formation.
The dance of being and becoming, or formation and transformation, often takes place incrementally over time. Even so, there can also be times when a current personal, communal, cultural, or species identity collapses, giving rise to inner disorientation. At such times the dance involves the sacred work of reimagining and restructuring our being-in-the-world.
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The dance of being and becoming raises a couple of questions: “does life become tiresome because we are continually a work in process?” “When do we get to rest, if there is no solid ground regarding personal, communal, cultural, species identity?” By way of responding to the first question, there have been times when I have experienced that sense of tiresomeness. Those were times when I actively fought against the process of inner transformation, or passively choose to remain stuck in one version of identity, when it was time to move. However, when I remember that the dance takes place in response to the energies of Love within the deeper rhythms of Life itself calling forth authentic belonging-in-the-world, I relax into the process of inner transformation. Then I experience the dance as life giving and awe inspiring.
In response to the second question regarding ‘rest,’ there have been times in my personal dance of being and becoming when I have angrily wailed: “enough - can’t I rest in this place of being a little longer!” Over time I have come to understand that the experience of rest goes beyond the need for solid ground in terms of identity. Rather, rest for me is found in living fully into my current identity, without being totally invested in it. This way I can have a clear sense of my being-in-the-world, yet hold it lightly.
Before I end this post, one more question that comes to my mind is: “What relevance does the dance of being and becoming have in today’s tumultuous world?” I choose to keep writing about the dance of being and becoming as a form of planting seeds of hope that a viable future is possible. Hope here does not refer to wishful or magical thinking, but rather to the possibility of inner transformation - grounded in reality. Reality here refers to the knowledge that our personal and collective lives are part of something much bigger than what professor AnaLouise Keating named as, “self-enclosed individualism . . . or a Me-consciousness.” The move beyond self-enclosed individualism is toward the understanding that we are each unique beings in our own right, who are also intrinsically connected and response-able to a greater whole. That such a shift in consciousness is emerging within some sectors of Western culture is a seed of hope that a viable future for planet Earth is possible.
