Radical Wholeness

Red K Elders
Sep 2, 2018 · 1 min read

I’m laying out in the sun in the garden trying to read Philip Shepherd’s book ‘Radical Wholeness’, which is about somatic intelligence and being fully embodied in the present. My six year old daughter, meanwhile, is delighting in skipping about the garden catching many crickets, ladybirds, snails and various insects and placing them on my naked body to crawl all over me as I try to read.

“Its easy to meditate in silence in a monastery”, I’m sighing, as I try to concentrate on some interesting text about neuroscience while crickets jump down onto the page and my daughter shoves her excited hand in my face to show me a massive slug, “but it’s the Zen Master path to try to maintain depth of focus and concentration when you live constantly with small children”.

A ladybird creeps round the inside of my thigh and I’m suddenly pulled into the incredible intimacy of six tiny feet clinging to my skin; the extraordinary precise rhythm of her very definite steps. Two snails are sliding over my shoulders, their glistening trails already crisping on the warmth of my flesh. I can feel their destiny, to meet and intermingle at my spine. Various other unknown creatures with many microscopic and firmly pressing patterns of feet are gently tapping out strange music on my buttocks. I sink into the earth, forget the book, melt… arrive again in the ecstasy of my own Radical Wholeness.

Red K Elders

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Servant of the Sacred. Lover of The Beloved. Agent of the Numinous.