Human or Divine? Yes.

This black-tipped shark was in captivity in a pool at the resort where I stayed in Hawaii this past June. They had sea turtles on the grounds, too, and someone informed me that they release the turtles after three months and bring in different ones, so no turtle remains captive too long. I hoped it was the same for the shark. He swam back and forth, back and forth in his small pool, anything but peaceful, and definitely not free.

Sometimes this is how I feel being in a human body. Miraculously, when we incarnate, we take the expansive, eternal, divine energy that we are and confine it to this tiny, limited form, hang out here for a while, and then return to the infinite spaciousness that is our natural state. But this conundrum has been unwinding for me lately -  I realize I have so much resistance to being human! My divine self knows nothing but love, nothing but freedom and joy, and then I come here as a human and do all the things that humans do - strive, struggle, hurt, cause pain... all sorts of constriction that makes no sense to my divine being and that is totally at odds with who we are. Or is it? If it's all the One, if we are that One, then we include all things. I see that once again I'm experiencing the pain of separation, i.e. duality, which is the name of the game on planet Earth, but which isn't really real since we can never be separated from ourselves, our divinity, or each other. What a weird game, though!

So lately I'm feeling into forgiving myself for being human. At least, that's my human perspective.  My divine self gently shakes its head in the knowing that there is nothing to forgive.  It stands with infinite patience waiting for me to recognize I still am and always have been this infinite God energy. There is no way I or anything anywhere can be anything else. And in the acceptance of the strangely broken-but-not-broken, conflicted-but-perfect human that I am, I begin to feel a joy in being in this body, in having these experiences, in riding the wave of this amazing adventure. Sometimes I may show up as a shark (or someone may be one to me), and that will simply be what is. Sometimes I may be the heart, watching the shark swim by, and that will be what is. And I will let my divinity love on my humanity with the eternity that it is, folding all into the sweet oneness of Is. There is only this One, this God that we all are. Hello, little human, hello, god-self. Hello ego, hello divine knowing. Hello shark, hello divine Heart. Here we are. We are the same.