Namaste dear ones,
Usually my spiritual practice is to allow people the grace and space to be themselves. All I can do is try to be an environment of love. But…I am also human. And being misunderstood is a primal wound from childhood. And though I have a policy of not talking about people behind their backs, I also have to speak the truth.
I really dont want to make this about me. I hate talking about myself. I hate ego and ambition and THE WANT that can tear through a soul. I used to be an actress. So I know. Some national commercials and a few important guest stars. And I once modeled for Sears long ago. So believe me, I know.
Thats why I came to this community in the first place. Well I came here because I was dating a narcissist who thought “becoming spiritual” would make him less of an asshole. Spoiler alert: it didnt. But I stayed because the noise of LA and the compare and despair and the constant focus of ME ME ME made me feel both murderous and dead inside.
Like so many of us, I felt the calling towards a belief in something greater than myself. Knowing there has to be more than ambition and conquesting sex, and self promotion and the false sense of control we spend our lives trying to cultivate. Believe it or not, there are people that want out of this trap. Sur is one of those beings. I am one of those being. I spend my days in service and prayer and art, every day learning from Sur how to spend more time in the Self with the capital S - the knowing, loving spirit that penetrates all our souls Yoni’s gently yet powerfully.
We are all important. Yet none of us are important. I am special. But none of us are special at all. When I relieve myself of my specialness I tap into something so much greater. That is the gift of the path. Ironically, it may be the thing that calls me back to the screen, this time in true service. But anyway this isn’t about me.
Ive been part of the Sur community for 4 years now. I don’t like to talk about myself in these terms, but under the circumstances I do feel it’s important to say with humility, I am one of the more important leaders here in our community. Outside of the older folks and a few others, Ive been here the longest. And honestly, I have one of the deeper more special relationships with Sur.
That is, until Ben and his new friends arrived. Maybe its a coincidence, these new folks arriving the same time as Ben and his cameras… But for someone who claims to be interested in the spiritual work of this community…he’s certainly giving these new outsiders a lot of attention. And a lot of camera time.
I’m not a scientist, but they say in physics that by observing something, you change its state. An artist hungry for a story and for his own redemption using the tool of a camera - is hardly a passive fly on the wall. There is such beauty to see here, such pure intention to rise above this prison of ego. And yet, his arrival, his chaos, his camera, his attention is pointed not at what he says he seeks - those who are moving beyond fighting for attention, and validation and ambition, but is magnetized to exactly what he says he wants to avoid. How can you dear reader be shown the truth if the very work we are doing here is to give up the fight of the ego to be seen? And yet that is exactly what he seeks?
Money. Sex. Gossip. Proximity to Sur. Who’s the most important? Who’s the face of SUR after SUR? What is Ben inherently avoiding and ignoring by where his gaze lands? Be skeptical of the story you are being told.
The camera is like a key to pandoras box. Does it unleash the truth? Or does unleash the worst of our ego’s hunger, evaporating the very thing it portends to find? Will we use this challenge as grist for the mill to rise above? Or we will succumb to our basest instincts and all fall apart?
With love and light,
Your Surafina
