January 4th, 2023.
My partner Kai and I live out in the desert on the outskirts of a small town in Baja, Mexico. It's generally quiet here, but there are a couple of events centers and what seems to be a large family compound, and they sometimes host very loud party's with Ranchero music blaring impossibly loud until 5am or later. Usually it's just one location, but on new years eve, there were at least three going, and it seemed to be extra loud. Kai gave me some great earplugs, and we slept as best we could that night. I've learned to accept it on those occasional party nights as part of the culture in which I choose to live. But this year the parties went through the night of Dec. 31st, continued sporadically throughout the next day, and went all in again the night of January 1st. It was hard to bear, and I tossed and turned a second night as well.
Lying awake in the wee hours listening to the Ranchero music has helped me better understand Baja culture. My Spanish skills are improving but still poor, so I can't understand the lyrics, but I am a student of both music and energy, and almost without exception, I experience the music as a celebration. Not a Pollyanna-ish celebration which avoids unpleasantness, but a celebration of the beauty, tragedy, heartbreak and messiness of life and love. A celebration of life just as it is, with no “should” to be found and no trace of it needing to be fixed. I find that beautiful and refreshing, even as it’s hard to sleep through.
It reminds me of my Tantra studies with Dr. Douglas Brooks. He talked about how in Sanskrit the letter “a” as a prefix negates the meaning. This is like the letter “a” in the English word “amoral” means without morals. As an example, the Sanskrit word “himsa” is injury or harm, and “ahimsa” means non-violence. But according to Dr. Brooks, the alpha privative “a” has a kind of higher octave meaning as well, and this higher octave is that it combines the negation with a double negation: “ahimsa” becomes “never without harming”. It doesn't mean “always harming”, but rather blurs the line and points to the way real life does not easily map onto black and white terms. We can harm someone even while attempting to avoid harming them. It points to the messiness of life.
With this understanding, we can grant ourselves some space to be imperfect. Instead of trying to be “unbroken” (abroken?), we can be “never not broken”. If we are never not broken, then we don't need to be fixed; being broken is our natural state. We can embrace the messiness of how life actually is and celebrate our lives in all it's imperfection. This might seem a bit counterintuitive when just reading the words, but can change dramatically as a felt experience. I invite you to try saying these statements to yourself and seeing how you experience them in your body.
“I’m unbroken”
“I’m never not broken”
When I say the first, there is a subtle undercurrent of fear; I’m unbroken now, but I’m vulnerable to be broken at any moment and must keep my guard up to avoid being broken.
When I say the second, my nervous system relaxes. I’ve been broken before and I’ll be broken again, and that’s Ok. It’s normal and natural to be broken. Brokenness opens me up to further possibilities.
The culture I grew up tends to have a black and white view of the world. It is full of “shoulds” and a need for self-improvement. It needs to fix what isn't “right”. I call it Spirituality1.0, or the path of perfection. It is left brained/Yang encoded. It strives to be unbroken.
Releasing the path of perfection and turning toward a savoring and celebration of life without needing to fix or change it is what I call spirituality 2.0. It finds value in life just as it is, and knows that perfection is just an abstract concept and not attainable in the real world. The Ranchero music seems to embody that.
Spirituality 2.0 values subjective experiences like happiness, meaning and joy. It embraces the right brain/Yin encoded way of being in the world, but without rejecting the goal oriented Yang encoded way to approach life. You could say it is Tao-encoded. Life is never without tragedy, never without heartbreak, never without messiness, and never without beauty. Let us savor all our experiences.