Joni's Journey My Journey to Authenticity, Love, and Enlightenment

I love rivers and streams, babbling brooks and waterfalls. I love listening to the sound of the waterways as they intertwine and merge. I imagine where each drop of this moving-churning-blending body of water came from: Perhaps some came from Egypt, others from Tunisia, still others from China, North Korea, The Congo, Israel, or Mexico. Sometimes I even imagine that these drops were not so long ago the moist evaporations from the brow of people there, people like me but with a different life, struggle, beauty, pain. This water we are all drinking (in one form or another) is a confluence of moisture from everywhere, from everything and everyone. When we drink we are drinking the world.

My spiritual teacher, Sant Darshan Singh Ji Maharaj, while speaking to my dear friend and former spouse, spoke about the currents and undercurrents that run throughout the waters of the earth. he spoke about how, while they come from various climates, various parts of the world, they are more similar than they are different. Likewise, he said, there are currents and undercurrents of humanity. While we have different ways of worshipping, different ways of celebrating, and different ways of expressing, we are more similar to one another than we are different. He elaborated about how many of the differences in religious practice or expression originated from a combination of regional, cultural, geographic and climactic variations… but in spite of these differences, the intent was the same. So why are we so divided? Why do we continue to focus on what makes us different when what we really need is to understand each other… to understand. When we truley understand another’s pain, another’s struggle, another’s joy and another’s passion, we are sitting in the confluence… that confluence is where we truly become one humanity… where the “M” in “me” becomes the “W” in “we”.

I have often found myself observing. Observing others in the world, in my community and within my circles of friends and family. I have often found myself imagining myself in their shoes, in their struggle, or in their joy. But even in my imaginings, I could never fully appreciate what made their life experiences so different from mine… but I struggled in my imaginings to contemplate these differences nonetheless. While I could not see that to which I was (and am) blind, in the process of imagining their lives, their struggles, their joy, I always discovered the very core of my self in them. I knew instinctively that at the very core, we are ONE and we are connected.

The struggle of our time is the struggle for human rights, the struggle for ALL of us. The struggle today is for freedom. Freedom from tyranny, oppression, bigotry and hate…. Just say NO to H8! However most of the time what I hear is “me me me me me”. Give me my rights, my freedom, it is MY life. When I attended the Immigration Rights march this past weekend, I did notice that, visually at least, the vast majority of people there were those who would be directly impacted by the recent immigration legislation. While I march in the Utah Pride parade, in the Utah Transgender March, and participate in other “rights” gatherings, what I find again is that most of us seem to be passionate about our own rights. Gay, Inc for example, seems to be almost exclusively fighting for the rights of white gays and lesbians. I say this because of the conspicuous absence of discussion about the struggles of the “B” and the “T” not to mention there is the conspicuous absence of discussion of the struggles of those who don’t experience white privilege. Am I seeing this correctly or are we that myopic and narrowly focussed? Is this because we just can’t see another’s struggle? Or is it that we don’t want to complicate our “human rights” battle with the silly details involving color, ethnicity, gender-variation, and non-binary sexual orientations?

To me it is sad to see that we as humanity, who drink the water which came from the foreheads of ALL, are focussed so narrowly on our own lives and our own struggle. What if we could change that? What if we could come together, seek to understand one another? What if we could create a confluence of humanity, where each of us is concerned for the others? For me, the answer is simple: Change the me into the we. Instead of focusing on my own struggle, pain, suffering, and drawing up my own list of complaints, I can broaden my scope, my horizon, and (like turning that frown upside-down) I can slowly turn that M into a W and focus on the We instead of just Me.