Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror
up to where you’re bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting
and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.
Rumi
There are no certainties in life, except that life, death, and change are inevitable. From a Buddhist perspective, the breath represents change. The oxygen inhaled transmutes in exhalation. Even you are not exactly the same person from the start of Rumi’s words, down to the deepest cells in your core. The subtle shifts reflecting microcosm of higher-level changes that are continuous.
Quantum physics is a field that seeks the metaphysical aspects of transmutation, the act of blending form, as rationale with mysticism. Such as with "the observer effect," which suggests that the act of observing even the tiniest particles actually influences change in the particles themselves and how the particle interacts in the environment. This implies that our external world is interconnected with our internal world – our thoughts and observations have a direct impact on how we relate to the outer reality.
The observer effect blends with impermanence in Sufism, balanced like Rumi's Birdwings, that one would not exist without the other. Interconnectedness is necessary. Our conscious mind has an incredible influence on the world around us, and the world around us can certainly interplay with and influence our conscious mind. Meditation practices, Sufi mysticism, and conscious conversations in community are a few ways to lean into the process.
To reference Rumi again, Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. When embracing interconnected changes with conscious intention, the possibilities are endless.
With gratitude,
Maryam