A Personal Earth

Near the beginning of a recent session in one of Bonnitta Roy’s classes, when it was open to talk about anything, I shared a version of the following story:

Our home phone rang and, not having my glasses on, thought that it was the number of my wife’s friend and handed it to her. It turned out to be Feeding America. We gave them a lot of money during the COVID years and since my name was on those donations, they wanted to talk to me. The reason that I still have a home phone is so that I can give it to all public entities so that I can avoid texts or calls on my cell phone from anyone that I don’t know. But she handed it back to me, telling me who it was. I started to talk but he had started his sales pitch. I attempted to stop him again but he ignored me again. I then got mad and said “Stop talking and listen to me!” which he did. I said that I had given them money in the past, that I would continue to do so but to stop calling. He meekly replied that he would take me off of the call list. When I hung up my wife said “you didn’t need to be like that.” I realized that she was absolutely right.

A cascade of insights followed, leading all the way back to, it seemed to me, my preverbal or near verbal childhood. I clearly remember being overwhelmed by my environment, which included several siblings and more than a bit of chaos. The incoming sensations were just too much and, in particular, I found sadness and anger the most distressing. I had the feeling that I was out of place and somehow needed to escape. That was hopeless, and so was I much of the time. At some point thoughts like “I don’t belong here” showed up, then something that I said often when a little bit older, “Go away and leave me alone.” “Get me outta here” showed up later and, as I came to understand, one component of my love affair with yoga was to keep the world and its emotions at bay. In that pursuit, I eventually gave away everything that I owned and moved into the ashram.

I am really anal about my privacy, and will not go into all of the ways that I use to avoid being tracked online. But it became clear in this moment that it was all an attempt to keep the “unpreferred” sensings of the world at bay. It was “go away and leave me alone,” again.

Later in that session, someone spoke of a call towards worship and at the end, devotion was mentioned. What came to mind was “I’m not devoted to anything and I don’t worship anything.” Those thoughts were immediately followed by my wife’s voice saying “You don’t need to be like that.” I shared this too, at the very end of the call.


This week I listened to a podcast where Jordan Hall, who is someone I have listened to a number of times in the past and respect, shared about his conversion to Christianity. This story was a surprise to me, and to my friends who know of him. In this Podcast he spoke with Jim Rutt, a friend of his and an agnostic, who did pose many penetrating questions, all within the recognition of their mutual respect. My initial reaction was that Jordan was clearly resonating with a church community where it seems that he, his wife and child, could live a full-filled life. Good for him! The way that I understood this was that due to his feelings about this community, he then CHOSE to try on the beliefs and practices that were anchor-like within that space and, due to that, its resonance sphere was further inhabiting him.

I followed that the next day by watching a video conversation between Jordan and John Vervaeke on the same topic. They too were friends and there was a wondering at the beginning if that could survive this transition. It was beautiful. I deeply felt Jordan’s new found wholeness, much more than I did in the conversation with Rutt…and for me the word worship, for some unknown reason, was its moniker. This had me wonder – if I worshiped something, how would that alter my reality? What first came to mind was an experience I had 8 years or so ago, where it felt like a vast inflow of de-light-filled photons were raining down on and through me. I remember thinking – maybe this is what they mean by grace. It has recurred a handful of times since. In my breathwork practice the next day I invited in that same sensation, reaching out my memory of it towards the photon-streaming star of ours, and putting myself in the imagined state of worshiping the sun’s rays. The grace experience easily returned, with a slightly different flavoring.

Though I believe that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the universe, I have always leaned towards the belief that the universe, as a whole, is not self-reflexively aware. But Jordan accepted that he had a personal relationship with god. Could I do that with the universe? No, at least not now. It’s too big for me to conceive of as personal. But I could “imagine” the possibility of having a personal relationship with our star, and certainly this Earth, which has graced me with life. So, I tried it on.

It seems to me that Jordan, and now I, collapsed a portion of our individual latent stream of potential states, out of its Superposition and into reality by that act of choosing. I am shifting into some new reality where a personal relationship with this Earth is just beginning to inhabit me…and at least gratitude for that relationship, if not quite worship.

I can always feel Spring when it comes. It is so different than Winter. I can feel the particle-like joy arising from the Earth this time of year. Today is the 15^th anniversary of my mother’s death. I went out to the cemetery, sat with her for a while, as my dear Earth welcomed home a prodigal son.