News from Jules | 08.22.2022 | At the Root
Why am I thinking a lot about where I’m at right now? Well, for one, people keep asking me: “Why are you here?” People being other seasonal staff members and our hundreds of guests, plus faculty, cycling through Omega every week and weekend. So, I get asked this a lot. Even more lately as last week marked the halfway point in the Omega Institute 2022 Retreat Season—the inevitable existential check-in midway through the journey.
There is still plenty to come—most likely the deepest parts—but the horizon is starting to look more like a sunset than a sunrise.
And yet, it’s as if I just arrived.
After driving across the country, moving in, learning a new job, making friends, exploring the Hudson Valley, Rhinebeck, NY, and the whole campus, enduring trials, and establishing a rhythm, I actually know why I came, what I signed up for and what it looks like in real life.
Reality is similar and a lot different than what it looked like on the Internet. Go figure.
The first half was the leap of faith. Now, it is a walk of faith. As if halfway is actually the true beginning.
Somewhere along the winding journey, I turned a felt calling into logical reasons. I’m just now starting to remember why I first said yes to this opportunity about a year ago. Not Omega specifically yet, but once again facing two roads diverging in the wood and this time choosing to take the one less traveled by.
Like so many others, my deep longings have grown stronger throughout the pandemic and with each compounding heartbreak—political, social, environmental, personal. I didn’t want to be in the city. I wanted to be closer to nature. I didn’t want to work at another corporation. I wanted to write.
I needed to get back to my roots.
I needed to heal my root.
The root chakra, or Mūlādhāra in Sanskrit, is one of the seven primary chakras in Hindu tantrism, according to Wikipedia, and closely reflects the earth elements. In a human, it’s physically located where the base of the spine connects to the pelvic bone. Or symbolically in the tree of life, where the base of the trunk connects beneath the earth and extends its roots to gather nutrients and connection.
The root chakra represents survival. When unbalanced, it feels like fear, anxiety, insecurity. When balanced it’s associated with feeling safe, secure and grounded in the world.
I thought I could find this in money, in a job, in a home, in health, in a partnership, in family. I believed it was a static way of being, and once acquired, permanent.
But I’ve learned it isn’t static or acquired or permanent.
It is dynamic and it is inherent.
Interestingly, “Mula” means root and “dhara” means flux. Like how a tree’s roots are always growing and adapting to the changing environment. The only way we can feel safe and secure and grounded in this world is to constantly adapt.
And, the Sanskrit phrase also beautifully translates to “root of Existence”—it is spiritual in essence and at the core of all of us, not something we find outside of ourselves. Something we already know how to be, how to do.
It is in nature that I have always felt calm, confident, and centered, and how I am now tapping into feeling safe, secure, and grounded.
I am getting back to my deepest roots so that I can pay off my spiritual debt to the planet.
Just like the story of Nanabozho, or Original Man, and the origins of the world from the Dakota people that Robin Wall Kimmerer shared in Braiding Sweetgrass:
“He considered the Original Instructions and understood that all the knowledge he needed in order to live was present in the land. His role was not to control or change the world as a human, but to learn from the world how to be human.”
This is why I’m here: to relearn from the world how to be human.
As the yoga instructor of the random class I took while passing through La Veta, CO on my road trip here reminded me: “You’ll probably leave knowing less than you did when you started.”
She was so right.
I’m at least halfway there to knowing less.
May you too get back to your roots this week.
Love,
Jules