Autonomous and interconnected.  Can we have both?  Can we be both?

I grapple with these seemingly paradoxical or contradictory needs on an on-going basis.  Sometimes I just want to be alONE.  To be ONE with just me.  Other times I’m feeling so alONE, what I crave is ONEness, togetherness, interconnectedness, shared reality with friends or even strangers.  In those moments I am needing to know there is more than just me, that there is a we.

And while this may sound like a big philosophical question, I can tell you that it plays out for me on a regular basis in the everyday of life circumstances.

I attend a spiritual community most Sundays.  There are two things I particularly appreciate about going there.  The sense of community and the spaciousness and acceptance I feel from within me and by the community to acknowledge my own spiritual journey.  While we are there in community, to listen and contemplate together, each of us is invited as individuals to decide for ourselves what we are hearing means to us in our everyday lives.

And sometimes I like the quietness of just me in my car, bopping to tunes, enjoying the me-ness.  Other times I delight in having a gaggle of friends in the car as we drive off to some adventure.

I love playing with paradox.  For those of you who read my blog  with any regularity, you will see that it is a theme that comes up over and over and over again.  In my view life is full of paradox and what an invitation it is to be fully alive and present.  My logical brain has a hard time wrapping my head around being both alone and one, interconnected.  When I am able to acknowledge the paradox and see it as a flow of energy, a dance in which these two elements of myself are in motion, sharing the lead, passing it from one to the other, doing different types of dancing – in those moments I get a warm fuzzy feeling accompanied by a deep calmness in my body, that sense of inner knowing that it is not about figuring it out, it is just about being in the dance.