 Welcome to Living Mosaic, a project of the Spark of Humanity Network. My name is Martha Holden. I am a member of the Spark of Humanity Network. We do these live shows every two weeks, and within the next few shows we will be talking about the interplay between the Spark of Humanity concept and the Living Mosaic concept. This program is designed or offered as an exploration of the concept, the belief, the possibility that there is a solution to the heartbreak of the world, all the trauma and distress and unfairness and ugliness and violence and something I read a while back said the problematik. There is a solution to the problematik, and we believe that that may be conceptualized as a Living Mosaic or a dance or a body. I am sure there are other metaphors, but we are using the term idea mosaic because we believe that each one of us is a unique and essential part of the mosaic. So the hope of offering this program is to offer that image, that concept, as a hope, as a possibility to help people get away from the denial or the paralyzing distress of too much information about what is going on in the world. But the idea that each one of us has a unique gift to bring to be part of the solution and that there is no solution without each one of us at least being willing to approach, as we call it, the niche, your niche, your unique niche in the mosaic. So that's the big picture of it. Each session, each of these live sessions, we have been offering a topic to sort of focus the discussion. So if you want to call in or zoom in while this is live, feel free to do so to add your two bits to the conversation. Otherwise, I just carry on for 25 minutes about it. And today, what we're going to be talking about, thinking about, exploring is the concept of willingness in the spark, I don't know what we call it, in the spark literature, which is very small. We talk about the willingness to be transformed because as we connect with our spark of humanity that each one of us has and through that we connect with and affirm the spark in another person that strengthens their spark. It also strengthens ours. The strengthened spark, it seems, acts to erode the defenses, clarify the bafflement, and release the distortions. The spark can't be damaged, but it can be defended or baffled or distorted. So by strengthening the spark, by using our coherence, our intention, our willingness to connect with the spark in the other, we are subtly, subtly offering transformation. And the thing where the willingness comes in so far in our understanding of the spark principle is that doing this work or connecting with the spark in others, it strengthens their spark. And it strengthens our spark too. So our strengthened spark, it seems, acts to erode our defenses, clarify our bafflement, release our distortions. So we are being transformed even as we are acting from the desire to transform those people. They really need it. I'm fine. I've been here for years. Or if I'm not fine, that's okay. I'm used to it. I can handle it. Put the good effort into somebody else. They need it more than I do. I'm okay with how I am. It may not be good, but it's well enough for me, and I'm just fine the way I am. But if we're doing the spark work, which to cut things short, is one of the ways we are drawn towards our niche in the mosaic, if we're doing the spark work, we are becoming transformed too. So that's where the willingness to be transformed shows up in the spark. There's a word for it, and I forget it, in the spark corpus. That's the word in the spark corpus, the spark literature. But willingness is a topic, is a concept, is a dynamic that is a hard one often for us, for us human people. I first became sort of bumped into it around the issue of forgiveness many years ago. There was somebody that I believed I forgave, and I told them I forgave them, but then I wanted to take out my cast iron skillet and bash their head in with it. I thought, I guess I really didn't forgive them. I wanted to, I meant to, but I realized that forgiveness is an organic process. It's a distinct shift in the attitude, in the chemistry, whatever, and that I was incapable of willing it. And more recently, there was somebody who I knew I needed to forgive. I didn't particularly want to forgive them, but I knew I needed to forgive them. But I wasn't willing to forgive them. So honesty is a wonderful thing on this journey. Okay, am I willing to be willing to forgive them? No, I'm not. Okay, am I willing to be willing to be willing to forgive them? Maybe. Okay, am I willing to be willing to be willing to be willing to forgive them? Yes, I was willing to be willing to be willing to forgive them. And so, I just held that as the truth for me. I was willing to be willing to be willing to forgive them. I may have dropped one there anyway. What I found was that when I took check-in with myself every year or so, if I made any progress here, and I would find that I was one level of willingness closer to being able to forgive them or to be willing to forgive them. And eventually, after three or four years, I found myself willing to forgive them. That was a big moment for me. And then it's like, I believe that life moves towards wholeness. That's its nature. And that it's like the process of evolution. If something works, it moves into it further. If it doesn't work, it drops it. So life moves towards forgiveness, it moves towards reconciliation, it moves towards wholeness, it moves towards healing. So once I became willing to forgive, meanwhile, I'd been being sandpapered. My unwillingness had been gently being sort of abraded away. And so after I became willing to forgive this person, within, I don't know, a few months, something happened, there was a click, and I realized, oh, I've forgiven them. Just like that. So that was my first experience of the importance of willingness. That's sort of a primitive example. So when we're talking about willingness in terms of the mosaic, of being turned, being formed into, formed into the living, unique bit of the mosaic, that we inherently are, that we essentially are. There's something within me that fits into this particular niche in the mosaic that will be living and evolving. And so become willing to be formed by the process, by this process of life that wants us in our niche in the mosaic so that we can be our part of the solution. So that willingness to be formed by life, it's a little bit like being in a jeweler's wheel where the rocks bash against each other and knock off the sharp edges. And if there's a crack, I suppose they break each other open. The willingness to, I'll use the s-word, the willingness to surrender to the process is really quite huge because our culture, at least for me when I was raised, tends to be, you know, you can be whatever you want. You know, develop some self-discipline. Make it happen. This is not like that. This is the underside of this or the oversight of that. It's a different dynamic with its own integrity. And its own integrity is as we are willing to enter the process. This is life's process for us. Most of us are willing to live most of our lives because we're thinking of living as biological and we're, this is what we know, this is what we remember knowing, this is what we know best, is our biological lives. This is the process of willing to life, willing to engage in life where we are not in control, where we are being formed and grown, G-R-O-W-N, not G-R-O-A-N, grown, formed, molded, developed, created, well we're already created but formed, molded, developed into what fits into this particular niche in the mosaic. And that process is one that I'm sure any of you with any life experience when you think about it, oh that can be a little painful. It's definitely often uncomfortable or discomforting as some could say. Because it's not predictable, we're not in charge, it is organic, it's bigger than we are and so being willing to subject ourselves to that process of transformation or being willing to be willing to subject ourselves, we're willing to be willing to be willing to subject ourselves to that, to surrender to it, to allow that process to be living in us and through us, part of it is I think we're believing or being willing to try out the hypothesis that there is a solution and that we are meant to be part of it. We are a unique and essential part of it. I had something, I just lost it, it will come back or else it won't. So that being willing to engage in that process, because it's uncomfortable, because we're not in control, very sad but we're not in control, we may be not willing but once we become, we care enough when we can let the pain of the world, the heartbreak of this beautiful, tender, generous, gentle planet and all our human sisters and brothers, when we let that heartbreak move us to be willing to do something, to give up perhaps our vision of who we are, our dream of who we are supposed to be, who we are meant to be, what, how we can best serve this life that is pressing us toward what it needs for us to fit into this mosaic, when we let that pain move us, that heartbreak move us rather than going into denial or, you know, freaking out or trying to be or do something else, trying to avoid it or becoming paralyzed by the horror of it, when we allow ourselves to be willing to go through whatever is necessary in order to become part of the solution, to be and to continue to be a living, active, essential, unique part of the solution. That's a great term, so willing for that shift to happen, where we're no longer in the buried in the denial and the muck and the pain and the misery, which is, strangely enough, quite comfortable for many of us for a period of time and we have such great companionship there because we can complain about what they're doing and they should do this and he should do that and they shouldn't do this, but rather give up all that, if they were just giving up the analysis, unless we're called to be an analyst, giving up the analysis, giving up the judging, giving up the comparing, I like, I like how she's doing it. I want to do that. That really feels nifty. That's what I want to do. That's, I want to be that part of the solution. Giving that all up and the poor of me's, poor of me, why am I just sitting here and I don't know where I'm my niche is and it's, you know, well we don't know because we haven't been willing to surrender to the process. We may be a little impatient. We may think we know best. We may be tired, you know, who knows, but you know, when we're willing to allow ourselves to surrender to the process of life because the mosaic is living. That's the point. It's a living mosaic. It's a living mosaic and it's an evolving mosaic. So to find our place within that mosaic, we need to be living and evolving too, which means surrendering some measure of control or illusion, surrendering some illusion of control, perhaps letting go of some of my, our delusions, some of our preferences and willing to be, if I dare use the word, humble enough to let ourselves trust this life, this force, this, that is, is trying to, is working to the best of its ability as far as we will let it to help us form and become what we need, what it needs us to be, what we are needed to be as our unique and essential bit of the mosaic. So that's, that's a willingness. It's a, it's not a willingness, it's not a will to live. It is when you get deep enough, but so it's a willingness to join life. There are so many ways in this culture that we are taught and trained and encouraged to avoid life, all the addictive processes, news addictions, work addictions, consumering addictions, shop addictions, substance addictions, relationship addictions, self-righteousness addictions. So to become willing to engage with life, to let life have its way with us as it were, and to trust it. That's, that's part of the community of the spark of humanity network and which is seeping out into the living mosaic folks. You're welcome to send us an email and get on our mailing list, LivingMosaic2024atgmail.com. It'll show up on the screen here, probably. And that, that to be willing then you become part of a community and you know you're not alone. And that the difficulties that you find, the challenges in being willing are familiar to us.