Anchorholding: The Immeasurable Gifts of Connection, Gratitude, Discipline, and Calling, Part Two
'Beloved', Artist Bruce Ley
Each of our contexts is unique. Reflecting on the three entrances to a traditional anchorhold, you may come to see the elements they represent in your own particularities. And in doing so, you may know the gifts of this viewing. I am hoping so.
The first entrance of your anchorhold does not empty into a nave, but a vast vortex of knowledge, education, experience, and internal and external struggles upon which you were both formed and continue to rely for support. We are never alone; this is an impossibility. We are part of an enormous cosmological tapestry that weaves us in as a bright bit of thread on an on-going story, one that began long before humans walked this earth, and may last long after we are gone. We are part of a family of thinkers and writers and doers working together through the ages. And we see also that our troubles are not new. Marcus Tullius Cicero wailed back in 43 BC, “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” There is a sweet humour that arises when we see ourselves as participants in the larger playing field, upheld and supported by the endless intelligences around us.
Into the second entrance of your anchorhold pours all those who uphold you in the common everyday ways that allow you to live. Consider all that must be in place for you to simply sit for five minutes and really think – free of agenda, free of constraints – it is an enormous support system from the air that flows around you to the water used to wash your face – to the places of study, library, sources of learning that have brought you to a certain intellectual curiosity – the benefactors of your very life itself, your birth parents, your DNA, your nurturing as a child, your community, your traumas yes, and your sorrows, all that has brought you to desire to offer your intellect and energy to consider the larger matters.
The book you are reading, the podcast you are listening to, the tree outside your window, the pathway of your daily walk, the wood floor of your yoga space, your teacup, your kettle, your fire, they are all there to enable you, to uplift you, to guide you, to help you with the offering of your part into the whole. Think on all those who have laboured that you might eat a simple bowl of soup – the growers, the gatherers, the packagers, the shippers, the store owners, the salespeople, the cook. And what of the ingredients themselves - of herb and grain, animal and vegetable, each with their own intelligence beyond your own, their own spiritual teachings if you are willing to learn. Understanding the depth and length of those supports grounds our ambitions in gratitude for all we have been given. And deep gratitude is certainly the best foundation for our simplest ambitions, never mind our larger ones. Without gratitude, we lose our connection to the larger body of being, drift and are lost.
Resting in this understanding of connection and gratitude, we will come to see where real thought and effort is to be placed so we may eliminate all distractions that bleed our energy, waste our time, and leave us feeling divided and inept. We will be asking the question: How can we set up our life and time and effort so we may work from this quiet, contemplative space? The spiritual discipline of setting ourselves apart for times in the day, is not a punitive affair, but the sweetest gift of self-care. It is an absolute imperative for our well-being, and thus, to all those around us.
Having understood all that is needed to be in place for us to work, and all that enables us to do that work, we may come to see that the resulting thinking which results from our quiet consideration, belongs not to ourselves, but to all of time and space, to all nature, to all people, to everyone and everything without acceptation.
Our work becomes a calling, something particular to each of us, that only we can offer. It must be offered, without hope of recognition, or reward, or a sense of pride, but something that is offered as part of the on-going flow of gift from all around us – human, more-than-human, technological. And then our job, our calling, our adventure becomes quite simple, really.
While we are about our ordinary work, what larger questions might we consider? And while we are considering them, how might we serve the outside world? What does our third window look like? How and where shall we open it? Then, no matter what it is we do to pass the time from waking to sleeping, we are on a grand mission to serve the cosmos. Our small world opens to the big world. Our time opens to all time. We expand and interact with all others.
“Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone,” writes poet David Whyte. “You must note the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you freedom. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.”[i] Look around. Pay attention to your space. Free yourself from the constraints of your daybook. ‘Everything is waiting for you’ to make your contribution and acknowledge your valued place in this world.
[i] David Whyte, ‘Everything is Waiting for You’, The House of Belonging.