Being Present by KD Farris, Ph.D.	MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT

Oneness

Shifting from our belief in separateness to our realization of oneness is the theme of the 21^st century. Separateness is the source of all discourse and war, within ourselves, in our homes at night, between nations. It defines and controls our borders internally as well as externally.

The power of the One is realized in the acknowledgment of the other. Oneness is not merely an idea. It is our reality – as well as our duty and mandate. In our current state of local and global reconstruction, we can’t afford the luxury of simply contemplating this condition. We need a sea change—a quantum shift in perception: something to snatch us out of complacency into actions that make a difference. We achieve what we seek, but what exactly is sought after? The answer is not always known to us consciously. If we want to know what we believe, we need only look to our perceptions as a compass, for we cannot perceive what we do not know to be true.

The MESHE concept is a model living wholly in the notion and expression of oneness. It reflects how our relationship to self is our relationship with life and other and vice versa—our relationship with life and other is our relationship to self. Only through the integration of our individuality into the whole can we achieve presence, thus allowing our participation to be reciprocal. In short, we supercharge the whole when we participate as a fully functioning inseparable part.

Like members of a musical ensemble, we need to listen to what each other is playing—the tone, melodies and rhythm. Who strums? Who sings? Who keeps the beat? And, not only do we need to listen, we also need to play our own instrument, to lean into our own creative edges, feel the places where we harmonize and where we create discord. Only through this level of awareness and expression can we truly be known to ourselves—in relationship, to life and as a part of the Whole. We need to sharpen our skills as band mates, while simultaneously sharpening our skills as musicians. With awareness we can begin to discover what it means to honor the oneness that is the nature of our being, for only in acknowledging our function as a participant in the Whole can we engage in our individual lives with direction, meaning and purpose. Once meaning and purpose drives us, what we seek will be manifested, for it will complement the world within and around us.

A Visualization—MESHE is your relationship with yourself. Everyone has a MESHE. So that you might see yourself as the interconnectedness that is your being, picture its symbol in your mind’s eye as a circle with five petals. Now, picture a separate MESHE diagonally across from yours that represents another person (note: other is not only personified).

HESHE is your relationship with other. It takes place in the Space between yourself and another person. The symbol for HESHE is known as the “Third Bird” and is drawn as a bird in flight enclosed by a circle. Picture a Third Bird located between the two MESHE symbols.

MISON is your relationship to life. It is the source of the Space between yourself and other.  In an area above the Third Bird, picture a circle with eight lines radiating outward. Allow the lines to extend in all directions to infinity, through and beyond the MESHE and HESHE symbols. As you see the lines of MISON’s symbol moving upward and outward, visualize multiple MESHE and HESHE symbols that the lines run past and through—filling the screen of your internal eye.

ORBIT is the areas of unconsciousness where there is a loss or lack of relationship (connection). Symbolized by three concentric circles (a circle within a circle within a circle), these areas point to the unconscious patterning that creates the false perception of separateness. Into the spaces between MESHE symbols and HESHE symbols add in multiple symbols of ORBIT in varying sizes. Take the image in… Breathe a few long breaths…in and out. This is the interweaving relationship of self, other, and life itself that is the Whole of what and who you are. It is the functional reality of wholeness: that which is connected (MESHE, HESHE, MISON) but not always aware (ORBIT). Now that you have this image of symbols, you can conceive its massive content as large and boundless as a moonless starry sky.

ORBIT is the falling out of relationship (loss of awareness) through repetitive patterning of thought, action, sensation and emotion. It is natural, normal, practical, functional, acceptable, necessary, and ordinary. Like cycles of waking and sleep, we move in and out of relationship, in and out of connection, into and out of awareness…all the time.

For each area of unconsciousness (ORBIT) that you move into awareness, your MESHE (relationship to self) grows. Each ORBIT symbol in the image transforms into a petal or bird in flight. Each blockage, once dissolved, transmutes exponentially into relationship.

Understanding how to recognize and utilize the concept of ORBIT brings much awareness to, as well as practical knowledge of, the fluctuations between relationship and disconnectedness. The function of ORBIT gives attention to the consequences of repetition, for within our nervous system what repeats increases in its impact by form, volume, and magnitude.

Awareness either notes and responds to the stimulus, or notes and degrades its impact. What this means is, we either become sensitized to repetitive motion (the feeling of being sick and tired of being sick and tired), or we become desensitized to it (create an identity around the feeling of being sick and tired and then set about defending that identity). Self-reflection shifts the balance from desensitization to sensitization through awareness, thereby moving ORBIT material (material that has fallen out of relationship) to MESHE, HESHE, and MISON (material coming into relationship with self, other and life).

ORBIT (repetitive patterns of unconsciousness) can be manifested by and through many different means. One common expression of this is speaking without connecting to others—repeating ourselves without end or resolution or incessant telling of one’s “story.”  Repetitive bursts of anger, pain, and resentment also point to unconscious patterning expressing out of relationship with self, life, and other. Introduce something new to the pattern (the best way to this is with an open-ended or containing question) and you have reestablished relationship.

Breaking the cycle of unconscious patterning results in new experiences of feeling, sensation, thought, and behavior, which then leads to potentialities of knowing ourselves anew. With this newness comes relief and vitality, and with the revitalization comes unlimited potentiality, pliable and readied for co-creative experience. This newness is often accompanied by a familiar state of being. Once returned from ORBIT into a relationship with self, life or other, people often remark that they feel like themselves again, referencing periods of childhood, grace, and joy, as if they have regained something lost from long ago.

Learning about ourselves in real ways builds bridges between what we seek and what we embody. As you begin to see the blockages between yourself and other, within yourself and your own potentiality, as ORBITs—areas of unconscious material to be reclaimed through acknowledgement and acceptance—you will experience the differences between connection and separateness. This vitality is a response to the connection found when living in the oneness that is our birthright.

Remember the picture you created in your mind’s eye, the image as it moved out as if it were the sky? You are all of that, not just a single portion of it. Your existence cannot be separated out in any real terms. We can pull things apart and deepen our understanding of the pieces. We can work on our MESHE, our HESHE, our MISON. But we cannot separate ourselves from the reality of our inseparability – the truth that we are the relationship, ever holding it as one. I often think that gravity is to our planet what relationship is to our wholeness—the ever unavoidable, indescribable force that enables everything else as we know it to exist.

Your relationship to self, other, and life is who you are. Your move toward awareness is synonymous with a move toward oneness.

So, how do we increase levels of awareness? It is no more challenging than increasing levels of relationship and connectedness.

We can build our MESHE (relationship to self) physically by slowing down to breathe, taking the time for a long flowing breath. We can build our HESHE (relationship with other) through giving and receiving: most of us are either givers or receivers, yet it is through giving and receiving, listening and sharing, that we experience connectedness.

We can practice awareness and connectedness by choosing gratitude over suspicion (MISON), balancing movement with stillness (MESHE), choosing revealing over concealment (HESHE), and risk over safety (MESHE, HESHE, MISON).

When we approach our personal relationships through the MESHE model, and allow life (the source of the Space between ourselves and other) to play alongside, we have far less to do than when we believe ourselves separate from life’s flow or from our relationships. In seeing the connectedness we can sit back, relax, and experience the effects that life is adding into our dynamics with others. We can breathe more, do less, become surprised, be thrown off guard—and most importantly, we can appreciate the novelty of discovery that in our hearts we so passionately seek.

Passion is the product of seeking newness. When we are part of a whole, we dance with each of the parts: self…other…and life itself. Most of us dance alone and struggle with other, rarely feeling the connections that life offers. We make “same” out of “other,” which by definition is going to be “not like me”—suffocating what we love as well as our own passion for life. We spend time reviewing and returning to the past. Planning from what we have known, projecting past experience onto future fantasies. Yet life moves on from the past, and because we are intrinsically connected to it, we are destined to move on as well. And in staying stuck in the past, we distort the overall shape and movement of the Whole, of ourselves, and of what we may and can be as One.

Remember the image: the many MESHEs are individual parts, different from yourself, yet part of your wholeness. We can experience oneness through passion and excitement by embracing and seeking that which is not “I”— or we can struggle, resist, and worry ourselves back into the past…

Theses symbols – a circle with five petals, a circle containing a bird, a circle with eight radiating lines, a circle within a circle within a circle, are the parts of your whole and the oneness that is your birthright. The boundaries we need uphold are no more complex than the four circles I’ve described.

You need only know if you are radiating out and through; if you are circling within a circle; if you are in flight; if you are unfolding from your center. You need only ask, “In my unfolding, am I connecting through the Space with my partner? Into life? Or am I blocked by a lack of awareness I must seek to understand?”

You are the Whole. Your relationship with yourself, with other, and with life itself are the parts that make up the whole that is you—parts that when separated without relationship disconnect you from their meaning.

The borders which define your boundaries, as they are described in the introduction, are transitional points of perception. They let you know what shift in perception is required: a shift from self…to other…to life itself—a shift from unconsciousness to connection, from a lack of awareness to relationship. With this image you can begin to locate the dynamics of relationship, thereby revealing strengths, weaknesses, and imbalances. This gives us insight into areas of unconsciousness and how they live alongside, beneath, and between areas of awareness as you oscillate (quite naturally) between self, life, and other—between awareness and separateness, connectedness and unconsciousness.

What distinguishes one moment from another in terms of its value is our capacity to find and connect to relationship. For in relationship, everything is One and you are found, whole, passionate, connected. With no promise of security, yet still you are safe in the knowing that there is only One place to be: in relationship.

© Copyright 2009 KD Farris, Ph.D.. All Rights Reserved.

Read KD's Past Columns:

Summer-Fall 2008 - "Celebration: If You Want to Learn Stillness—Watch a Rock"

KD Farris, Ph.D. is a successful counselor, healer, and bodyworker. For more than twenty years she has taught extensive workshops based on MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT as well as many other self-discovery topics.

KD began developing her integrated bodywork and counseling techniques in 1983 under the tutelage of many prominent doctors and healers throughout the United States.

Her education into the spiritual and physical aspects of the human experience served as the foundation for her private practice and the development of a new philosophy. She combined her techniques into four guiding principles, which she shares in her book, MESHE, HESHE, MISON & ORBIT: What My Grandmother Taught Me About the Universe. She teaches a companion workshop series, where she creates an interactive environment demonstrating the material from her book with tangible, life altering effects. In these workshops, individuals discover a deepening of their relationship to self, others, and life itself.

Through individual counseling and group workshops, she has taught her results-oriented programs to many different types of people including those confined to mental institutions, substance and food abusers, and generally, people in life transitions, struggling with intimate relationships, or who lack direction in their lives. Visit www.kdfarris.com.

KD is currently touring a new body of work, Talking About People in Transition, Also Known As Liminal Space. She will be writing about liminality and its relevance to day-to-day living in upcoming issues of Soulful Living. For more information on this new and exciting topic, or to learn about more her private practice, workshops and lectures, visit www.kdfarris.com.

Contact KD at: info@MESHE.com

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