 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. Living Mosaic is conceived as an invitation to conversation and thought, pondering, about the possibility or understanding or conviction that there is a solution to the current horrors all over the world and in this country and the pain, the heartbreak, the causes of the heartbreak. That there is a solution and that it may be conceived of as a living mosaic in which each one of us has a unique and essential part. We're each invited to let go of what gets in our way of, grab onto what helps us hold on to, to become a part of this living, evolving, ever-developing, ever-breathing and morphing mosaic, which is the solution. And this is a conversation about that. You're welcome to zoom or call in or send us an email and we'll respond to your comments or questions. This particular show is entitled Metaphors. Our first guest here on the show a month or so ago was having a hard time with the metaphor mosaic because to him it sounded too much like probably like white man with beard on throne up there plopping us into our niche in the mosaic. And that's not what I have in mind and maybe not you. So we're exploring other possible metaphors for this. We're going to continue being a living mosaic program, but there are other metaphors before I dive into dancing around the other possible metaphors. An experience from my way here this afternoon. Seeing things, understanding things, being willing to pay attention to things around us metaphorically. Seeing them as metaphors can be a very enriching experience I've discovered. There was a time a few years ago when I could perceive everything as metaphor. All physical reality is a metaphor. It's sort of platonic, isn't it? All this reality is a metaphor for something that's deeply and subtly true. And so do we read this in a way that helps us access and pay attention to what in reality and truth is going on underneath the physical interpersonal manifestations that we're seeing. I don't think we're going to go any deeper or more abstract on that today, but we'll find out. On my way here I thought I was late. I often think I'm late. So I was preparing to huff up the second steep hill in my walk over here. And there was a honk at a car that come down to a stop sign. It was a little quaint car, and I waved back. I had no idea who it was. And as I was heading up past the passengers window, which was rolled down by the driver, I was already getting my excuses in my mind. I'm in a hurry. I think I'm late. I'm on my way up to Orca Studio. Good to see you. Goodbye. And it was a woman who's been a friend of mine, not a close friend, but a close and consistent friend of mine for well over 30 years. And she said, looking at the passenger seat, would you like to say hello to my cat? And I said, well, no, I'm on my way up to Orca and I think I'm late. And she said, okay, and she headed off. I didn't have to take many steps up the hill to realize from her expression and her tone of voice, she may very well have been going to have the cat put down. And I thought, looking at that, I could have said, do you know what time it is? I don't know if I really was in danger of being late, but I'm so into my anxiety, my stuff. And I could look at it because that's where my mind was. Well, it goes there anyway, but certainly today with this topic for this show. Okay, how much is that interchange? How much is that encounter a metaphor for how I so often am in my life? I'm so wound up in my stuff, my idea about who I am, how I am, where I am. And of course, it's important. It's very important. It's totally crucial. And in fact, I do like to get here to the studio on time or enough before the time so they're not getting anxious. But how much of my time am I so wound up in my own story that I'm not accessible to an opportunity to connect with a friend, bring blessing to the cat, be part of the solution to get closer to my niche in the ever-living, ever-evolving mosaic? So that's a good question. And it's good for me to be aware of that sort of thing. But I'm very fond of metaphors. When I was in grade school and we had to take tests, the ones that involved metaphors, there's standard form. I don't know, they may have been sent to every child in the United States in the 1950s. The ones that involved metaphors were very easy for me. So I tend to think that way. On my way over here, I thought, well, it could be because of all the trauma and the brain injuries that my brain doesn't tend to go in a linear fashion. That's very difficult for it. It sort of has to leap because it can't find the words. It doesn't think like sometimes standard textbooks and people are. Anyway, for whatever reason, metaphors work for me. So I tend to disseminate them through the Spark of Humanity Network and hope to apply them wherever the Spark of Humanity Network is operational. And certainly Spark of Humanity is a metaphor to somebody saying, so what exactly is the Spark? Is it our soul? It's a metaphor. It lets me off the hook for trying to explain things. That's a little sermon, isn't it there? Anyway, so metaphors for what we're trying to convey in this Living Mosaic Project, whatever you want to call it, you're well translate the term Mosaic into whatever works for you. The idea is that there is a solution and that it's not complete. It may not even be visible or apparent unless you allow yourselves, you allow yourself, you invite yourself to be part of it. My experience in that I've heard from others is that once we are willing to hope enough, believe enough, we're willing to put some, have our rubber hit the road, however you want it, I don't have a metaphor, see? That there is a solution. There is a possible solution. And we're each, each a unique, which means we each get to be ourselves. We don't have to try to be Cinderella's ugly stepsisters. That was one of my favorite metaphors who shaved off their toes and their heels in an attempt to fit into their stepsisters' glass slipper. There's a glass slipper for each one of us. There's a way in which we are called to be true to ourselves, to our essential selves. So there is a solution that involves us being who we truly are, unique, and that means letting go of some stuff that we're, at least in my case, I know, profoundly attached to self-images, and we're each essential. So it doesn't happen in a sense without us. And we can hide from our calling to allow ourselves to be formed into the niche if we're still using the mosaic imagery. Or it's very easy to say, well, they're not, they're not doing their thing. They're not being their unique self. They're not letting go of what they need to do. They're, you know, they're not doing it. So why should I do it? Nobody I see around me. There's nobody I know who's doing this. So I'm not going to do it. You know, that's a cop-out. If we choose to use it, you know? What I've discovered and what the people have talked to and listened to have discovered is that when we take a little action towards joining in, toward becoming part of the solution, to being willing to become part of the solution, to consider being, you know, when we have a choice of action. Okay. What's, what is more like my being a part of the solution here? Or what is more of my, in my case, pandering to my ego? Or my belly? Or anything else? My inner voices of my parents and grandparents? What is, you know, what's more like the solution? So once we start moving into being willing to let go of our stories, our preconceptions, our understandings, to allow ourselves to be drawn toward our niche in the Mosaic, we're going to get to the other metaphors. Drawing toward our niche in the Mosaic. Then it's an amazing thing. We begin to start feeling hope. We begin to have a feeling of participation, a feeling of belonging, being part of something very big, larger than I can imagine. And that gives us a feeling of being included and belonging. And so we become less and less concerned about what they're doing and what they're not doing. And all the ways that, you know, before we started this process, we would have thought that they should be doing and not doing. We begin to just, oh, really all I want is to be gently nestled into my niche in the Mosaic. Okay, enough of the Mosaic. Well, I can't leave it alone because I like it. I like it because I think to me the Mosaic is alive. It's a living, evolving Mosaic. So it's living so it inhales. It's sort of gently drawing us into where we belong in it. Okay, on to another couple of metaphors. And I invite you to develop more and I invite you to let us know them so that we can start expanding our language, expanding our receptivity really. To the concept, because that's the point, is to get a sense somewhere. I mean, I'm kinesiological or whatever, however we best get concepts, you know, to open it up. So another one that we've used a lot in the Spark of Humanity Network, we were using this one before the Mosaic one came up, is that we are each members or creatures, whichever we prefer, of an ever-evolving, see a similarity here, ever-evolving, multi or perhaps omnidimensional dance, that we are each a unique energy event within this dance that is maybe all dimensions possible. I don't know but it's many more dimensions than I can tap into or I'm aware of. We'll just say multi-dimensional so we don't have to try to figure out on me. Multi-dimensional, ever-evolving dance and we're each a unique energy event within it. So that metaphor for me has some advantages. It keeps me loose because the Mosaic, even though I'm saying it's living and evolving, can sort of feel stable and two-dimensional, three-dimensional, two-and-a-half-dimensional. And it doesn't allow us, it doesn't invite or talking about considering the fact that as we get close to our niche or perhaps for those people who get into their niche in the Mosaic, oh it seems like it has great potential depth. It may be potentially infinitely deep our niche. So it's not like we get to be static and stay there and say, oh it's not great, I found my niche in the Mosaic. Even if we're saying, yes it's alive and it's evolving, so I need to be alive, I need to be here and I need to be paying attention. And evolving, I need to be evolving. It's also, oh, we're being called ever more deeply into our niche, ever more deeply into our unique and essential selves. There's no graduation here. It's a process that's ongoing. But Mosaic doesn't call that fourth in mind unless you have Martha telling you all about it. So the dancing, the dance is three-dimensional, four-dimensional, five-dimensional, but the dance that we're unique energy events within is multi-dimensional. And so talking about dance makes me feel a little looser, particularly when it's omnidimensional. So who knows how many dimensions we're dancing in as we're engaged here at this moment. So I like dancing. It's very, yeah, it's ever evolving. I know I'm not in charge. There's the singer, I can think of the singer of the dance, which is much better than the idea there's somebody putting pieces into a Mosaic. Some thing, some non-thing, the dance is being sung. I don't think it's choreographed as such. Maybe it is. I don't know. But anyway, there's a, you know, the dance emerges, the dance evolves, the dance lives, and the dance includes all dimensions. I like that metaphor, obviously. Then the third option that I think of at the moment, and I'm hoping that you'll come up with some and communicate them to us. So that, and our email address, I'm sure those, these nice people at Oracle put it on there. It's Living Mosaic at, I don't know what it is. Oh, Living Mosaic 2024 at gmail.com because this show is for 2024. Who knows what will happen in 2025? So you can send us an email and give us your suggestions about metaphors. The other metaphor that comes to mind is very familiar to some people and in some traditions it's a body. We can think of human bodies because we're most closely acquainted with them. It's a body where each part is unique. No two cells are alike, arguably, I'm not sure, but I suspect they're unique in their own way. And they're essential. I remember my big sister who's ten years older than I was, and she was very smart. And she came home from college, freshman, sophomore year. I would have been like eight, seven, eight, nine. And I, of course, knew everything because I was the youngest in the family. So I wasn't in that sort of tumble of closely choreographed siblings. So she came home and told us about how every part of the body was essential. And I said, I don't need my little toe, I said to her, and all my brilliance. And she didn't have to think long. And she said, yes, you do, you need it for balance. Oh, okay, maybe she's right. Never being humbled wasn't comfortable at that age or any other age. So the idea that a body as a metaphor is handy because the eye cannot say to the foot, I have no need of you. You know, the elbow cannot say to the earlobe, I don't need you. We all need each other. And we're each unique and we're each essential. And it's a useful metaphor for many of us. There have been times and situations where I said, I think I'm a cell in the pancreas. And I may be if we want to think in terms of the body imagery. Anyway, so that's, I don't really know where to go further with that or with all three of these. Without a few moments left, I don't see anybody lurking to call in or to or to zoom. So I'm going to be silent for a couple of minutes. And maybe you can telepathically because this is omnidimensional. Maybe you can telepathically give a question or a comment that I can respond to. For me, the source of this solution, the mosaic, the dance, the body is entirely non-essential. There are so many innumerable rabbit holes. We can go down or woodchuck burrows. We can go down as we are working with these concepts. And I'm sure that there are, I know because many of them are friends of mine, you know, whoever really hard time. But I need to know, you know, I want to know what the source is of this. I can say never mind. My father and I back in the 80s went to a thing about computers or learning about computers. And he just, because he did not understand, the instructor couldn't tell us how computers work. My dad just couldn't, you know, couldn't get it, couldn't go from there. He needed to know how it worked before he was willing to engage in it. Fine for him. For this, to realize that questions like that, issues like that, draw us away, draw our attention away from being what we need to be being in the mosaic. Yes, there's some things that need to be questioned, that we don't need to drop that unique part of us. But to realize that there are distractions on the journey, well, how about this? How about that? But maybe what's needed is for us just to let go of our felt need to understand that and instead become willing to allow ourselves to be brought toward our niche or to find our unique place in the dance. To be our unique energy event in the dance or to just let ourselves sort of move around the body until we find ourselves where we are comfortable and where we are essential. So there's a whole bunch of stuff you can practice. All the things you don't need to think about, all the things you don't need to concentrate on, all the things you do not need to understand. In order to come into participation in becoming a part of the solution. And the more deeply I've found that we allow ourselves to do that, the less we care. Because we are where we need to be doing the things we need to do, which is our greatest joy. Thank you, Orca. Thank you for showing up and thank you for Orca for hosting us.