Care Practices in Communal Limit-ality
Landscaping Stability into Sustainability
First and foremost…
I am limited by a body…
That is the decree of my life - and how life develops Me.
(Authors note of experience, as this is something entirely different than I usually bring to Substack…) Coming back from an ‘Autonomous Community’ gathering - a communal day of Skill Building/Offerings/Knowledge Sancitoning - with myself offering my resources - healing, preachable stickers, storytelling and dictative connection… I am thrown in throes of my limits and the emotions that arrive therein…
There is no perfect point of communication… There is no perfect point of reliability… there is no perfect point of ‘collective healing’… as it is all conjecture in pre and post imagination…
A revelation of ‘The Continual’ emerges - our social construction as it develops in continuing to develop as we participate with One another - and how the community participates in repetition with my Creative Healing Practices. In turn - creating Me.
(More author’s experience… my limitations were very ‘in the face’ due to no restroom at aforementioned event As I struggle with IBD = no food, no water, no heightened energy - I must keep calm, cool, complacent. Constantly in check with my living-bodies-anxiety and remaining considerably empty… also meaning - I must do what I must and leave at my own sense of anxiety control… I feel I leave an empty space of worth when I ‘vacate’ events due to my illness.)
I arrived home with a bleeding feeling of displacement - and ‘reprimanded’ myself with an hour yoga session to ‘feel back into the body’ and remedy what might be having to move through me…
This is what I found… and these are the raw notes of my own reckoning…
To ‘Be Of’ Community vs. ‘procuring a viral’ community
A Practicing of separating that need to keep creating a viral-following - counteracting being in ‘the time and place and network of what is alive’ between people - as we present ourselves - with our own limits and encapsulated bodies. That in our communications between one another - we can witness the truth of our world - that which is vital - that which is really real - IN YOUR FACE. With no preemptive ‘postworthy’ verbage, no face filters or edits - and no limits to what tone we put into our verbosity. It is easier done to ‘hide away’ in our shadowed-screen-time. By placing yourself in the products of face to face - ‘you & them’ - to intermix all the preconceived notions of ‘How things are said and done’ into the full force of - “This is how things are said and done” - (as long as you can be with the creative construction…
Coming to the group with less of your own truth to declare - you learn the truth of the matter…
To love and love your work in turn - One must continually be dropping into the state of the willing unknown. Your knowledge becomes hence - the foundationalism of crafting an experience. You can only do so much in the throes of the ‘internal workings’ of creation.
As to say : those in the creative practices - as our greatest critics : we can always hold room for ‘more of our own’ - and that seems to be the underlying shadow of all our work.
We hold ourselves to much higher idealistic standards than ‘if we didn’t do the work’…
As to say : not doing the work is a hell of a lot easier - we won’t have to handle the aftereffects of our own limits… ideals of perfectionism, fawning into our own care network, would’ve-could’ve-should’ve - new ideas, missed opportunities, post-worthy thoughts. One can gift all your senses, selves, projects, ideas, connections, gifts in the moment - and still be told in the forethought of our mind “What if you gave more?'“
“WHAT MORE IS THERE TO GIVE THAN ALL I WAS ABLE?”
leading into…
Embracing the limits from a point of displacement
(As a Chronic Illness in Healing…) The body dictates my worthiness - particularly in place and energy. There is always a craving for more from me then was demanded. Ideas : There is a lot of catching up to do. A lot of dreaming to live. A lot of desire to mobilize. Wistful daydreaming of a day where - there is no fear of my form. It’s heard thought to bear - yet :
“As I am now, is All I will Be - Until…” and the eternal sits upright… awaiting response…
All this to mean : Aiming for love and respect from those around me. Created around : this is all I can give, and it isn’t enough : crafting from a deep internal : “I will end”. As to say : living already from the end of things. The End of Being… Until then “I am care, albeit first and foremost for myself - and all that remains is for those around me.”
And in all roundabout ways :
To be of service is to be served in turn
The body craves Bio-Diversity - yes, internally - it craves the long-song-humdrum-flux of our interior community connectivity - all the little microbes, gut bugs, cellular structures thriving in the bubbling bloodwork sustained by our tender care inwards…
yet, the Body thrives off of our Cultural Bio-Diversity. The more capacity we have to hold each other in our times of need - the larger our body can grow into expression. To state the fears that surround our truths - to state the truths that surround our fear. Shedding layer after layer to divulge into the deeper interior that connects us all (for an INTENSE story about shedding layers:
The Lindworm) - and brings us all into the worthiness of ‘creating community’ from a point of witnessing the gifts that we hold for one-another… ie: from foundational knowledge that can build wisdom (the Zapatismo revolution was founded by Intellectuals - writers, artists, and poets) - to shining light upon systemic faults that concern oppression. By showing that ‘this is how you suffer’ - the world ‘holding you down’ amongst all your ‘shit, muck and filth’ - in which the system itself enforces as the ‘shit, muck and filth’ of your own unworthiness. Within your community - embracing the ‘shit, muck and filth’ of the systems creation - and we are cleansing One another… polishing the Gold we long forgot and removing the Maggots we have tolerated for so long.(However - as a practionor-ship key note : One must work through the emotional work and identity regulation to come back to Your Own Sensations - the Self that knows your values, valor, and integrity - and reconnect to those by Your Own Language by your own Returnal to Said Self.
As to say : One must hold your Capacity for Care for Self - in order to grow the Capacity of Care for Others)
Through all this Community
in the search - however you find it - or it finds you -
You are Embraced.
and
We are Here for You
and your Worth.
All Resolute :
A Practice in Stability creates a Practice in Sustainability
Returning to my ‘Author-torial Landscape’ - It seems I shall procure myself as an example… I have been searching Creation for a ‘Stable Body’ for some time… and it has not arrived… yet. Trans-figuring myself in union to my self-procured care practices - inner and outer - language transforms itself - yet : Only as I am willing to experience the development… physically, mentally, spiritually.
As this is new territory - these are raw, wrought thoughts. (You, as reader are witness to another step in this Author’s/Healers/Well-Beings Creation) - May we remember this as You traverse the webs of other Creators - May we hold each other to Our Next Worth)
What does it mean to change from ‘Stability’ to ‘Sustain’?
It is by developing a practice of knowing what keeps returning You to You. The taskwork of crafting a life around your limits knowing that these are the struggles that will keep on keeping on - and countering those with what keeps You keeping on - within the life of limit. Life Worth Living (A mantra the Author quotes relentlessly) - is founded on the belief that ‘No matter what I am doing, it is in Creation’ - no more no less.
I may never be stable - my body may never be stable - the world is for sure never going to reflect the stability I seek. Yet, if I can rest in the sustainability that is created by -
The people I reach out to for Well-Being - Others and Mine Own
Knowing how I support - Other’s and Mine Own
What fuels the Capacity for Care - Others and Mine Own
My Bio-Diverse community within and without of My Self is always ready to be enacted and tapping into that faith of “I am in Creation”.
What Sustains a practice of “Creation?”
It truly is holding One’s Self to higher standards. Knowing that in the moments of Another’s need - all you have is all you can give - an it is moved through you - and by that activity - it is strengthening and developing - Creating.
And to put some ease to those that are seeking an answer to How? ":
Offer - as if that is all you can do. As if that is all you have.
Blessed Be
Oh, Learning One
all you can ever do is offer. every image a Buddha image, every offering a Buddha offering…! no matter how small or mundane or dirty or busted or misguided or whatever, so long as it’s given with a whole heart.
the most extravagant gift given thoughtlessly, with no heart, is meaningless.
the sacrifice that breaks the altar is rendered powerless, with no threshold to cross into divinity.
anything offered that is beyond your ability to give is a falsehood, intentionally or not.
so what does that leave? only what you -can- offer, and what you are -willing- to offer. which is enough by its nature and regardless of its qualities, simply because no other offering would be proper.
appreciating your thoughts about “stability” which is such a ghost concept to me lately. sustain-ability… response-ability… those seem more manifest, more solid and tangible. good food for thoughts.