“To be” is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing.
This morning I felt drawn to a book on my shelf I haven’t picked up in a while: Peace Is Every Step, by Thich Nhat Hanh. I flipped to a random page to read the wisdom that wanted to make itself known today.
This chapter called “Interbeing” jumped out at me. He writes:
“If we look into this sheet of paper…we can see the sunshine in it. Without sunshine, the forest cannot grow. [And the tree to make the paper cannot exist.] In fact, nothing can grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is…in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore, the wheat that became is bread is also in this sheet of paper. The logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.
“Looking even more deeply, we can see ourselves in this sheet of paper too…When we look at a sheet of paper, it is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. We cannot point out one thing that is not here — time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper….This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.”
I was moved by this beautiful way of looking at the world.
We have to inter-be with every other thing.
On an intellectual level, we understand that we are all connected. But we don’t often stop to really take that in…to allow ourselves to feel it - to know it - on a spiritual level, do we?
What comes up for you when you let that sink in?
There are so many implications of inter-being, aren’t there?
The thing that jumped out at me was the great responsibility we have as individuals to heal our own pain so that we do not put it out into the world for our earth family members to take on. Our suffering becomes the world’s suffering. And the world’s suffering becomes ours. Pain ripples out into the world though the destructive choices each one of us makes to numb our pain, blame others for it, lash out, work ourselves weary proving it doesn’t exist, and so on. When we do the work to heal our personal pain, we’re simultaneously working to ease the suffering in the world.
Likewise, the joy, happiness, love, passion, hope and well-being we experience is shared with everyone and everything else in the world too. When we focus on filling our life with these more expansive emotions - in spite of whatever circumstances we may be faced with - we can’t help but make more loving, life-giving choices, which sends beautiful energy out to the rest of the world in a ripple effect.
We have incredible power as individuals, far more than we can even comprehend!
My wish for each of us is that we recognize this power and begin to take responsibility for what we “inter-share” with the world. When we heal our pain, share our passion, skills and talents, and have the courage to live a joyful life, we evolve the world to become the peaceful place we truly desire it to be.
Now over to you: what comes up for you when you contemplate your inter-being and the responsibility that comes with this?
