Finding the Wormhole
I’m a big believer that it takes hard work to get anywhere worthwhile.
In fact, I may be too big a believer in that concept.
The idea that it’s possible to take a shortcut seems like heresy to me. I’ve held onto that belief with such tenacity that it’s been, well, not so liberating. Oppressive even.
But lately, I’ve been considering the possibility of wormholes.
If you’re a Trekkie, you know just what I’m talking about. For those who aren’t familiar with Star Trek lore, a wormhole is a tunnel that connects two separate points in space and time. Wormholes make it possible to get from Point A to Point B in a much shorter amount of time than if we were traveling through space in a linear way.
So, for example, if you were on the Starship Voyager and trying to get back to your home galaxy across thousands of light years, a wormhole could, potentially, get you there in almost an instant.
While it’s not so clear that wormholes exist beyond the reality that is Star Trek, what’s important is to allow for the possibility that they can exist in your mind, and therefore your life.
Maybe you’ve held tightly to the belief that you’re bad with relationships. Maybe you even have the track record to prove it. Then one day, you meet someone who is different… really different. Somehow, the two of you, in your exquisite uniqueness, spark off each other in a beautiful way. And you find yourself in a relationship that sustains and inspires, in a way you never would have expected.
Or you might be struggling to pay off a huge amount of debt and doing it the old-fashioned way – putting in extra hours at your job, finding other sources of modest income, chipping away at that debt dollar by dollar, year after year. And then one day, you get the unexpected news that you’ve inherited a large sum of money from a distant relative. Suddenly, you’re able to dispense with that debt in a moment. Wow.
It can happen. Over the past few years, I’ve experienced wormholes similar to those in my own life.
And I believe it’s possible for wormholes to happen on a collective, global level as well. Some of the most significant shifts of power in our time have happened in places where suffering seemed intractable for generations — places like the Soviet Union, Ireland, and more recently Burma.
There is nothing wrong with hard work, nothing at all. In fact, I still believe that it is the work you do on the inner dimensions of your life, as well as the intentions and vows you hold, that make wormholes even possible.
So in that sense, they aren’t exactly shortcuts. What you’re really doing is facilitating grace to make an entry into your life. Here’s a definition of grace that I really love: “unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification.”
What do you think? Have you had experiences with “wormholes” or grace? What made it possible?
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7 Comments
Reflecting on the space between ‘when one door closes, another opens’, all the unforeseen leaps of faith that, together, land me here now, on how I’d lived in 20 places over 20 years (half of those, movements within the same religious communities) grace is the thread. The list of addresses doesn’t show that all those moves were understood as in this one world, in the same place, or that my apparent frequent uprooting was rooted in a habit of revealing the one world, sewing it together in a gesture of inhabiting its totality, found everywhere.
I love what Kimberly brought, about the incremental approach of momentous transformation. It reminds me of Richard Baker’s comment that, “Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes [us] accident prone”. Wormholes are only noticable because presence is inextricably specific and particular. If Grace is the thread and our passages, the sewing, by the time we can say, I am here, we’ve lept through yet another. Noticing Grace seems to depend on a fore-and-aft awareness that recognizes renewal, acknowledges change, and is equally gifted at saying good-bye, as hi.
July 5, 2012
My life is full of unexpected grace. The kind that makes me cry with gratitude because they were not even planned for, sought after or focused on. Yet there they’ve been. At the same time I believe that what I give sustained focus and energy is more likely to manifest – I don’t see that as grace but rather as the natural laws of cause and effect. Grace, for me, is grace exactly because I cannot explain it or figure it out. It just is. I don’t think I earned it or didn’t earn it ; deserve it or not deserve it -those kinds of beliefs can get me in trouble fast!
The wormhole for me is mindful choices. Even with grace I could have chosen to reject so much of it. With deeply ingrained beliefs I make the choice to begin changing them. Choice is always present and each time I make a choice i find myself in a “different place” – every choice changes my life in small and sometimes large ways. And a string of small choices becomes a huge change that feels sudden – like finding the wormhole.
I”ve probably rambled enough!
Happy to have found this place!
July 3, 2012
Wonderful reflections, Kimberly! Please come here and ramble any time : )
July 4, 2012
i love this analogy. i think coming to santa fe for the first time opened a big wormhole for me and suddenly everything i was struggling against transformed into easily surmountable obstacles. of course the obstacles still had to be surmounted, but it was a lot easier. sometimes a simple perspective shift can change everything.
July 3, 2012
How wonderful, Lauren! And I like what you infer here… sometimes it is the act of taking a big risk that can open up a wormhole. By walking, we make the path.
July 4, 2012
Good morning Maia and thank you for your post. Yes, I’m also a believer in “no short cuts”, however, I’ve been experimenting with the concept of “ease” rather than “struggle” and I’m now a believer! My personal conditioning also came from the belief that “hard work” is the only avenue to a successful life. Today, I feel that that perception is old Newtonian/Darwin conditioning of the old story of science where all sentient beings are struggling to survive in a competitive environment of insufficiency. I resonate with the new story of science of “interconnectedness” and “cooperation” and so I live now skipping arm and arm with the universal energy field as my partner, trusting… always trusting. It doesn’t mean that I am a couch potato sitting home “waiting” but I no longer hold the reigns in the illusion of thinking I’m in control.
July 3, 2012
Good morning, Natalie!
I love your re-frame of ”struggle” into “ease.” It’s funny, after I wrote that post yesterday, I kept thinking I wanted to change something in it, and the something I wanted to change was in the third paragraph from the bottom. Rather than describing this as ‘hard work,’ I feel a better way to say it may be ‘attention.’ By paying attention to some part of our lives or some inner dimension of our beliefs, etc, that is what helps grace to show up. And “Attention” can be an ease-ful process, not one full of struggle.
Thank you so much for shining a light on this! And may your day be full of skipping with light and joy : )
July 3, 2012