Once there was a young apprentice who went to sit at the feet of the maestro or teacher. S/he asked him/her, “what must I do to attain divine life and learn to love like the God?” S/he responded from within her/his stillness and silence, “be human.” The young apprentice asked a second question, “what is being human?” For which the maestro responded, “that, you are that.” After a deep sigh, too deep for words, the young apprentice asked a third and final question of the teacher, “how…will we know when we are that?” S/he answered with a better question, “who are your relatives?”
We are all related, and yet why is it that we only learn this when someone more experienced than us shares this reality with us? Maybe it has something to do with the reality of how we know what we know and learning styles? Moreover, if you tell me to do something, I totally forget what you told me to do. If you try to teach me something, then I will also try to remember what you teach me. But, if you take the time and energy to make an effort to involve me as a co-creative or participant alongside you, then I’m “all-in” and receive what you are sharing with me mano y mano, person to person, face to face on level terrain.
Living the life of a human is a paradox, isn’t it? When we think of the spiritual life it is mostly black and white, like the Yin and Yang (Wu~Wei) of Daoist lore. When we think of the material life it is mostly on a variety of valences of intersecting spectrums of color, like seeing through a kaleidoscope of Unity in diversity. Both the material and spiritual are made real in the human life, and yet the human is somehow caught in suspended animation between the varieties of iterations of spirits world and lives matter. So what, this is not the same as being stuck between a rock and a hard place, inanimate impasse. There is a breakthrough to reality for everyone who tries to answer the living question of the maestro, who are your relatives?
When we give-a-try and say who we are related to, then it is no longer a challenge to relate, because we can then take the next step and pull this relation nearer and also go to that relation, as such. So, whether we are staying or going we are breaking through to reality, which is the only place to be human, the rest of life is spirit and matter. Rebe Abraham Heschel once iterated, “…too much spirt makes a ghost, too much matter makes a corpse.” Therefore, we all must choose and in the end catch the art of understanding our coinherence to be human is to be related, there is no other way to go in this human life, is there?
