Awakening to Aliveness
Notes from Howard Thurman, Jesus, and my yoga teacher on aliveness.
Howard Thurman, for me, is a mystic of aliveness. He came at mysticism by way of absorption in nature, a Quaker teacher named Rufus Jones, and his spiritual quest as a Black man in racist, early 20th century America. The stereotype of mystics are that they are removed from or numb to the world’s problems. For Thurman, though, mysticism is not separate from life. Mysticism is life. It is that quality of being fully alive and awakening to one’s intrinsic connectedness to all that is.
In his book The Luminous Darkness, Thurman writes about how racism dehumanizes both the disinherited and the inherited class, oppressed and oppressor. He says, “The burden of being black and the burden of being white is so heavy that it is rare in our society to experience oneself as a human being.” To experience ourselves as human beings, he describes, is to experience others as human beings. Kinship, community, and our awareness of the oneness of life—while still acknowledging the pain of division, the beauty of our differences, and the systemic nature of oppression—helps us become human. “A human being, then, belongs to life and the whole kingdom of life that includes all that lives and perhaps, also, all that has ever lived.… To be a human being, then, is to be essentially alive in the world.”
Thurman’s own life exemplified such aliveness. He participated in a “Pilgrimage of Friendship” to India to dialogue, lecture, and meet fellow spiritual seekers of God. Of that time, he wrote, “I had to find my way to the place where I could stand side by side with the Hindu, the Buddhist, a Muslim and know that the authenticity of their experience was identical to the essence and authenticity of my own.” While in India in 1936, he met with Ghandi and discussed satyagraha, the spiritually rooted practice of nonviolent action that fueled Ghandi’s independence movements. Thurman is one of the key mentors of the spiritual and political discipline of nonviolence which would then impact the direct action strategy of the civil rights movement. A spiritual adventurer, in 1944 Thurman left a prestigious teaching position at Howard University to found the nation’s first interracial, interfaith church. Ten years before the Montgomery bus boycott, he dreamed and dared to create sacred space for people of all races to “center down” into the Divine Presence together.
A significant yoga teacher in my life named Ana Forrest talks about aliveness as breath. In my twenties, anxiety kept my breath shallow and my energy of aliveness shut down. Ana taught the basic yoga breath called “ujjayi breathing,” which is a deep and continuous inhale and exhale with the mouth closed. Yogis call it the “ocean sounding breath” because the constant breathing sounds like the ebb and flow of ocean waves on the shore. Before we began movement or “asanas” for each yoga class, we sat still on our mats for five minutes or so doing this method of breathing. Physical yoga being the combination of conscious breath and movement, Ana then directed us to continue ujjayi breathing for the duration of the class. When I do ujjayi breathing, there’s this point at the top of the inhale where I begin to feel a tingle all over. I inhale far beyond the typical length of my breathing patterns. I track my breath expanding my ribs, moving up into my heart, and even up into my face and brain! I can’t tell you physiologically what’s going on when I do this. Others have that knowledge and can explain it better than I can. All I can say is that when I do the ujjayi breath, I experience the feeling of aliveness in my body. It wakes me up and energizes me. I feel more present and aware of what is happening around me.
I’m placing a large photo below for you to slow down scrolling, pause, and lovingly gaze at the transparent green of the leaves and the sun’s steady shine. Aliveness.
Photo by Soliman Cifuentes on Unsplash
Jesus, too, has something to say about being alive. He dared call himself “resurrection and life” and taught that the purpose of his movement was to bring about abundant life: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). In John’s gospel Jesus issues a scathing critique against the religious and political leaders of his day, and often his critique is lightly covered by pronounced metaphor. In chapter 10, he is telling the religious leaders about a shepherd that protects the sheep entrusted to his care. Thieves try to break into the fenced-in enclosures where the sheep are kept, and wolves are an ever-present risk. But the “good shepherd,” he says, is the one who protects the sheep, at cost of their own life if need be.
Jesus operates in a Jewish prophetic tradition in which aliveness is connected to the good of the community. Aliveness and social justice are inherently related, because if my thriving is dependent on someone else’s failure to thrive, then my aliveness is built on a lie. The prophet Ezekiel raged at the leaders of his day who failed to create the conditions of aliveness: “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them” (34:4). Good shepherds, by which Jesus metaphorically means good leaders, help create aliveness when they prioritize the needs of the excluded, the ill, and the hurting.
When I consider these different-yet-connected forms of aliveness, then perhaps the goal of life, and death, too, is simply to embrace and continually discover more life? Aliveness is not mine alone, it belongs to all of us. It’s not an ethereal concept. It’s grounded in bodies both personal and collective.
P.S. I’m switching my publishing day to Sunday morning. This will allow me more time beyond late Friday night to put the finishing touches on these missives.
I LOL reading the scroll pause photograph! Brilliant idea. Worked for me. Also, I loved this summary.
“Kinship, community, and our awareness of the oneness of life—while still acknowledging the pain of division, the beauty of our differences, and the systemic nature of oppression—helps us become human.” Thank you Mark.
I often used to think that the abundant life had escaped me. Now, I know it hasn't...and for the greater good.. Sometimes it takes us a while to receive the gift of our own beng, the paradox we are with joy. In Richard Rohr's devotion today he said nothing is wasted, even our brokenness and that is true. Thank-you for talking about the Good Shepherd and how it fits in with aliveness. Very good.