As I sit here on the cliffs and look down at my human self in the boat, a plethora of thoughts stream through my mind.
“I look so pathetic down there all alone in my boat.”
“It’s a big ocean; where is everybody?”
“Why aren’t there any other boats around?”
“Is there a regatta going on somewhere that I wasn’t invited to?”
However, at the moment, the most important thought for me is…How can I stay rooted in this Self point of view, this expanded consciousness, and, at the same time, reconnect with the part of my self which I left in the boat?? The part that exists in the ebb and flow of the main stream of life?
And to be honest, I don’t even know if that me in the boat is:
a. a part of Me
b. an aberration of Me
c. a transformable Me
d. a mini Me
e. none of the above
I feel disconnected from my human self up here, but not disconnected enough to leave this God Self I have discovered. Problem is that I don’t know how to gather up my God Self and bring It back to watery terra firma with me. I don’t know how to live in the ocean of devotion with humanoids and maintain my centered, peaceful, and (dare I say) spiritual perspective.
Like most of you, I have experienced peak moments where It all comes together with the internal stretch, the expansion of self to Self…those moments of awe and wonder and miracle that we all experience on occasion and look back on for the rest of our lives. I think it is possible to live that experience on a daily basis. Therefore, I am hesitant go back, raise the sails, and get on with my life without first anchoring into some kind of beginning awareness that I am navigating from a place that will eventually blossom into a full-time, full bodied mind/body connection: Me connected to me.
I wonder; is it possible to physically extend myself from my cliff Self to my boat self and remain on the cliffs? Can I stretch enough to generate a connected, whole and integrated fountainhead of flexibility, extension, and expansion with all of humanity and the Greater Field of Life via a deep, unbroken and fully integrated connection with my Greater Me and my human version of me?
Does any of this even make any sense?
Sense or non-sense, until I know how to deal with that me in the boat, I’m going to stay here and practice spiritual yoga by stretching through time and space while holding my position to remain faithful to the universal unknowns.
In the meantime, just think of me as Gumby (in a curly red wig).
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Sun, SUn, SUN Here It Comes!
It’s been 16 days, 15 hours, 9 minutes and 43 seconds, and the sun is finally starting to come out.
Yes, I ‘m still here on the cliffs. My mom finally said her goodbyes and left to get ready for her birthday party. I’m not worried. I know she will come if and when I ask.
I gotta say, I am really enjoying being way up here on my home cliffs. I’ve learned (and nothing against gurus), why some of them stay on the mountaintops, and we have to make the trek to them. Yes, the trek is probably the point for us, but I also have to say that life is easier (albeit a bit lonelier) up here. Sitting in my new and improved guru-ish perspective without the internal and external pulls and pressures of the world “down there,” even yours truly could probably come up with a couple of catchy universal pithy statements (perfect for bumper stickers) about how to live in the world (especially when I’m not doing it). It just strikes me as a little “Do what I say, not what I am not crazy enough to do.”
We all know how difficult life can be in the world. Even one-on-one relationships can be a challenge depending on the circumstances, but if that was all we had to deal with – navigate our lives one person at a time – it wouldn’t be too bad. Line up and take a number. Next!
It’s the immersion back into life and life’s mainstream of relationships where it gets tough for me. Juggling multiple relationships with multiple personalities at multiple times with multiple results for me often multiplies out to sketchy success.
If I am recalling correctly, it was on the Bill Moyers interviews with Joseph Campbell (that amazing PBS special called The Power of Myth) that Campbell said the real hero's (or heroine's) journey doesn’t lie so much in the challenges of that trek up the proverbial mountaintop to our intended transformation; the hero(ine)’s journey is returning home back to a life that probably hasn’t changed all that much AND staying IN the transformation.
I have the fortunate opportunity of being in a profoundly transformative process while being deeply related to an amazing group of women who intend the highest and fullest flourishing for ourselves and each other. I know I can rely on them to keep me in this new perspective after I have left the penthouse and returned to the ground floor.
Despite that, however, I think I am going to stay up here a little while longer. I need to give this perspective, this calmness, this peace, this expansive me time to penetrate through my epidural pores, absorb into the calcium in my bones, sink into the nuclei of my cells and re-absorb into its pre-assigned place in the matrix of my DNA.
God View re-acquaints with God Self.
The seas are calm; the skies are blue; and all is feeling pretty right with me and the world.
Sun, Sun, SUN. Here it comes! (and not a moment too soon!)
Yes, I ‘m still here on the cliffs. My mom finally said her goodbyes and left to get ready for her birthday party. I’m not worried. I know she will come if and when I ask.
I gotta say, I am really enjoying being way up here on my home cliffs. I’ve learned (and nothing against gurus), why some of them stay on the mountaintops, and we have to make the trek to them. Yes, the trek is probably the point for us, but I also have to say that life is easier (albeit a bit lonelier) up here. Sitting in my new and improved guru-ish perspective without the internal and external pulls and pressures of the world “down there,” even yours truly could probably come up with a couple of catchy universal pithy statements (perfect for bumper stickers) about how to live in the world (especially when I’m not doing it). It just strikes me as a little “Do what I say, not what I am not crazy enough to do.”
We all know how difficult life can be in the world. Even one-on-one relationships can be a challenge depending on the circumstances, but if that was all we had to deal with – navigate our lives one person at a time – it wouldn’t be too bad. Line up and take a number. Next!
It’s the immersion back into life and life’s mainstream of relationships where it gets tough for me. Juggling multiple relationships with multiple personalities at multiple times with multiple results for me often multiplies out to sketchy success.
If I am recalling correctly, it was on the Bill Moyers interviews with Joseph Campbell (that amazing PBS special called The Power of Myth) that Campbell said the real hero's (or heroine's) journey doesn’t lie so much in the challenges of that trek up the proverbial mountaintop to our intended transformation; the hero(ine)’s journey is returning home back to a life that probably hasn’t changed all that much AND staying IN the transformation.
I have the fortunate opportunity of being in a profoundly transformative process while being deeply related to an amazing group of women who intend the highest and fullest flourishing for ourselves and each other. I know I can rely on them to keep me in this new perspective after I have left the penthouse and returned to the ground floor.
Despite that, however, I think I am going to stay up here a little while longer. I need to give this perspective, this calmness, this peace, this expansive me time to penetrate through my epidural pores, absorb into the calcium in my bones, sink into the nuclei of my cells and re-absorb into its pre-assigned place in the matrix of my DNA.
God View re-acquaints with God Self.
The seas are calm; the skies are blue; and all is feeling pretty right with me and the world.
Sun, Sun, SUN. Here it comes! (and not a moment too soon!)
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The (Third) Eye of the Hurricane
It’s wonderful to be with my mom. I miss her. The last time I saw my mom was in January of this year right around the anniversary of her death. She’s been gone now almost 12 years and with her birthday coming up tomorrow (she will be 88!), I appreciate her coming to help me move to higher ground. I am especially grateful because (knowing her) she still needs to buy a new dress and matching spiked heels for dancing, and save some time to torment my dad by taking an excruciatingly long time doing it.
As I sit here on the cliffs around the Drive with my mom, I feel calm, safe, and loved. What a relief to feel connected to my mom and released from my current internal hericane-like elements, to be able to see a horizon that was not visible to me while in the storm of myself, and to recognize the potential of self-radiated sunlight behind those storm clouds.
When I was a child, I loved hurricanes because of what they offered me. It was fun to challenge the weather by boarding up our bay windows. It was a major treat to be allowed to buy more than one comic book at a time. And, it was really cool reading those comic books by candlelight.
I depended on my home in Newport for its strong foundation, its horsehair and seaweed wall insulation, and its sturdy roof over my curly red head to remain intact while the winds and rains made its way through my town. Maybe it was naïve, but I had absolutely no doubt that my home would remain intact.
But hurricane season was much more than that.
Our three story Colonial home on Ayrault St, which was often (for me) a place of sadness and confusion, became a place alive in silence, electric in the expectancy of something much bigger than me or my family or my current circumstance, and a charged deeply cushioned and unfamiliar comfort knowing that, no matter what, my house would weather the storm.
I loved hurricane season for giving that to me.
Now as I sit here on my internal higher ground with my mom, I feel that same sense of protection, but this elevated perspective also allows me access to seeing that the safety and the silence and the expectancy and the charge I feel is not generated solely by myself or the structure of my internal or external home.
I can see how the Greater Field of Life navigates the storm by entering the flow with it. The trees, ancient, experienced, and deeply rooted in the earth stand as sentinels of protection simply by remaining rooted while simultaneously giving way to allow the winds to travel through them. These very cliffs prevent great washes of waves from overflowing to the homes behind them simply by doing what cliffs were created to do…stand their ground and offer no resistance.
Similarly, I now see, my dependable inner home is generated by being in the con-current flow of relationships: with the part of my Self which my third eye of the hurricane gives me access to, with other loving relationships I have co-created on this planet, and with the Greater Field of Life.
And simply (though not easily) doing nothing else.
As I sit here on the cliffs around the Drive with my mom, I feel calm, safe, and loved. What a relief to feel connected to my mom and released from my current internal hericane-like elements, to be able to see a horizon that was not visible to me while in the storm of myself, and to recognize the potential of self-radiated sunlight behind those storm clouds.
When I was a child, I loved hurricanes because of what they offered me. It was fun to challenge the weather by boarding up our bay windows. It was a major treat to be allowed to buy more than one comic book at a time. And, it was really cool reading those comic books by candlelight.
I depended on my home in Newport for its strong foundation, its horsehair and seaweed wall insulation, and its sturdy roof over my curly red head to remain intact while the winds and rains made its way through my town. Maybe it was naïve, but I had absolutely no doubt that my home would remain intact.
But hurricane season was much more than that.
Our three story Colonial home on Ayrault St, which was often (for me) a place of sadness and confusion, became a place alive in silence, electric in the expectancy of something much bigger than me or my family or my current circumstance, and a charged deeply cushioned and unfamiliar comfort knowing that, no matter what, my house would weather the storm.
I loved hurricane season for giving that to me.
Now as I sit here on my internal higher ground with my mom, I feel that same sense of protection, but this elevated perspective also allows me access to seeing that the safety and the silence and the expectancy and the charge I feel is not generated solely by myself or the structure of my internal or external home.
I can see how the Greater Field of Life navigates the storm by entering the flow with it. The trees, ancient, experienced, and deeply rooted in the earth stand as sentinels of protection simply by remaining rooted while simultaneously giving way to allow the winds to travel through them. These very cliffs prevent great washes of waves from overflowing to the homes behind them simply by doing what cliffs were created to do…stand their ground and offer no resistance.
Similarly, I now see, my dependable inner home is generated by being in the con-current flow of relationships: with the part of my Self which my third eye of the hurricane gives me access to, with other loving relationships I have co-created on this planet, and with the Greater Field of Life.
And simply (though not easily) doing nothing else.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Hericane Season
I love the rhythms of water, salt water, Atlantic Ocean salt water, Atlantic Ocean salt water that surrounds the island town where I grew up, Newport, Rhode Island. Google Image it. It’s beautiful.
When we were young, my brothers, my mother and I were beach bums. My mother started taking us to Third Beach at Eastertime and every possible day after that at 3:00 p.m. until school was out for the summer. During the summers, we arrived everyday at 7:30 a.m. (a bit later on the weekends) for our daily swimming lessons. We spent the entire day there. Often my father would join us after work for a cook-out or clambake on the beach.
My brothers and I spent every second in the water. Ever swim out to a raft in the middle of an ocean in the reflection of a moonbeam? (so our parents could keep a head count)
Heaven.
I live in California now, but growing up in New England, I learned to resonate with the rhythmical changes the ocean evolves through as it cycles with the seasons.
I’d say that right now my ocean of inner devotion is experiencing what we used to call Indian Summer…that transition time between summer and fall. The water is often the warmest it has been all summer but the tides change drastically. The waves take on a power from further out to sea and that power carries it, like huge castles of sand, sea and foam, to the coast. Those warm and wonderful Indian Summer waves originate from very deep in the ocean. As the individual tidal vibrations rise to the surface, they join and morf into a beautiful never-ending cacophony of pounding surf. For a child who summered at one of the more sheltered beaches, being tossed and thrown about by that force was a fun and exciting wrap-up to the summer.
On those days of high winds and dangerously active waves, my mother packed sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies and drove us not to the beach, but to the cliffs around Ocean Drive. We sat warm, snug and safe in the car, ate our lunch and, from a higher and more expansive view, experienced the awesome power of the surf.
She would remind us that often those waves ushered in something more ominous and dangerous…hurricane season.
Since this black amorphous me has (generously) released itself from the darkness and made my acquaintance, I recognize that its inherent shapelessness is actually fluid and respondent to the vibrations that are deeply active in me just as the ocean swells respond to the tides and currents at the bottom of the sea.
And, I am just now coming to know, the locus of control of the various shapes my amorphous me takes is most often just as difficult to pinpoint as the beginning of a new wave.
I have felt my own internal “hericane” season approaching the last several weeks because of at least two encounters where I had every intention of being vulnerable and transparent but just couldn’t accomplish it. In preparation for these conversations I recognized that fear was moving deep inside me. I ignored it, and my amorphous me stepped in to raise a storm of protection.
It is still active and taking everything I have not to further react, not to go into blame, not to do everything possible to completely annihilate the exposed, coastal homes of those in front of me.
It is a very old feeling to be sure, but one that has not arisen from the depths of my oceanic floor for almost a year. I used to call it “my train.*” Now that I have been told by “my black amorphous entity” that its presence represents a compilation of my deepest darkest fears, I have also recognized that this part of me is a shape shifter with an infinite cacophony of inner swells and waves.
To attempt to find a source for this or any upset is as elusive and impossible as trying to contain one of those wonderful, warm, wild Indian Summer waves in my hands.
In an effort to get a bigger perspective on this storm, I am, for the time being, dropping anchor, leaving my amorphous mate in the boat, making sandwiches, and meeting my mom in the car on the safety of the cliffs.
I hope she remembers to bring the chocolate chip cookies.
* To chronicle my “train” adventures go to www.theyearoftheboy.blogspot.com
When we were young, my brothers, my mother and I were beach bums. My mother started taking us to Third Beach at Eastertime and every possible day after that at 3:00 p.m. until school was out for the summer. During the summers, we arrived everyday at 7:30 a.m. (a bit later on the weekends) for our daily swimming lessons. We spent the entire day there. Often my father would join us after work for a cook-out or clambake on the beach.
My brothers and I spent every second in the water. Ever swim out to a raft in the middle of an ocean in the reflection of a moonbeam? (so our parents could keep a head count)
Heaven.
I live in California now, but growing up in New England, I learned to resonate with the rhythmical changes the ocean evolves through as it cycles with the seasons.
I’d say that right now my ocean of inner devotion is experiencing what we used to call Indian Summer…that transition time between summer and fall. The water is often the warmest it has been all summer but the tides change drastically. The waves take on a power from further out to sea and that power carries it, like huge castles of sand, sea and foam, to the coast. Those warm and wonderful Indian Summer waves originate from very deep in the ocean. As the individual tidal vibrations rise to the surface, they join and morf into a beautiful never-ending cacophony of pounding surf. For a child who summered at one of the more sheltered beaches, being tossed and thrown about by that force was a fun and exciting wrap-up to the summer.
On those days of high winds and dangerously active waves, my mother packed sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies and drove us not to the beach, but to the cliffs around Ocean Drive. We sat warm, snug and safe in the car, ate our lunch and, from a higher and more expansive view, experienced the awesome power of the surf.
She would remind us that often those waves ushered in something more ominous and dangerous…hurricane season.
Since this black amorphous me has (generously) released itself from the darkness and made my acquaintance, I recognize that its inherent shapelessness is actually fluid and respondent to the vibrations that are deeply active in me just as the ocean swells respond to the tides and currents at the bottom of the sea.
And, I am just now coming to know, the locus of control of the various shapes my amorphous me takes is most often just as difficult to pinpoint as the beginning of a new wave.
I have felt my own internal “hericane” season approaching the last several weeks because of at least two encounters where I had every intention of being vulnerable and transparent but just couldn’t accomplish it. In preparation for these conversations I recognized that fear was moving deep inside me. I ignored it, and my amorphous me stepped in to raise a storm of protection.
It is still active and taking everything I have not to further react, not to go into blame, not to do everything possible to completely annihilate the exposed, coastal homes of those in front of me.
It is a very old feeling to be sure, but one that has not arisen from the depths of my oceanic floor for almost a year. I used to call it “my train.*” Now that I have been told by “my black amorphous entity” that its presence represents a compilation of my deepest darkest fears, I have also recognized that this part of me is a shape shifter with an infinite cacophony of inner swells and waves.
To attempt to find a source for this or any upset is as elusive and impossible as trying to contain one of those wonderful, warm, wild Indian Summer waves in my hands.
In an effort to get a bigger perspective on this storm, I am, for the time being, dropping anchor, leaving my amorphous mate in the boat, making sandwiches, and meeting my mom in the car on the safety of the cliffs.
I hope she remembers to bring the chocolate chip cookies.
* To chronicle my “train” adventures go to www.theyearoftheboy.blogspot.com
Saturday, September 4, 2010
I Gotta Have Faith
I kinda sorta (unintentionally) misrepresented myself…over there to the right of this post where I wrote an explanation about the title of this blog. At the end I wrote that I planned on using experience, intuition and faith to guide me. And while I absolutely 100 super duper percent had every intention of doing so…
I kinda sorta forgot about faith.
Faith that despite my fear of looking in the stern, my truth is there all lit up and waiting for me. And it is up to me to center my Self in that.
The realization of it hit me like a bolt from out of the blue. I'm, honestly, not sure I even know what faith is or what having faith means, but I decided I already must have it (whatever "it" is). So I tried to feel faith right there beside me (with courage as my wing woman on the other side) and have an encounter with the gargoyle-ish monster.
In the meditation that followed, I turned around, walked to the stern, and sat on the floor of my lifeboat so that he/she/it and I could look directly into each other’s eyes (it was still under the rear bench). After several clunky, awkward and, yes, fear-filled minutes (I think for both of us) our eyes tentatively connected with each other. He/she/it told me that I was looking at my deepest, darkest fears about myself and others, but it could not find the thoughts to articulate any more than that.
I asked it to come out into the light so we could sit on the benches and take each other in with our eyes. It obliged me. What emerged from under the bench were two clear and vibrant eyes surrounded by a black, amorphous, undefined shape.
I had absolutely no idea what to make of this entity, and since it was having trouble telling me anything further, I accepted that we would not be going any deeper in our discussion for today (at least we were eye to eye…it’s a start).
At the same time, I started growing very concerned for both of us because the sun was quite bright and we were sitting vulnerable and unprotected. My Irish skin can’t take that kind of sun exposure and my counterpart was (excuse me for saying this ) basically a black blob…not good either.
After I finished putting SPF 75 on myself, I leaned over to put some on my new sailing partner. The touch of my hands on its “face” brought all my senses to life. I could smell and taste its hot decaying breath, hear the rattle of its inhale and exhale, see the blackness and decay of its skin on its now revealed form, and feel rough calluses all over its body under my fingers. But, most importantly, I felt its sadness and feelings of complete and utter abandonment…by me.
This isn’t a he, a she, or an it. This is a me: a compilation of all those ugly, or unacceptable, fearful human parts of me that I don’t want to own, so I pretend they don’t exist.
My heart went out to me. Without a second thought, I reached across the seemingly cavernous divide between us and put my arms around my deepest darkest fears.
I kinda sorta forgot about faith.
Faith that despite my fear of looking in the stern, my truth is there all lit up and waiting for me. And it is up to me to center my Self in that.
The realization of it hit me like a bolt from out of the blue. I'm, honestly, not sure I even know what faith is or what having faith means, but I decided I already must have it (whatever "it" is). So I tried to feel faith right there beside me (with courage as my wing woman on the other side) and have an encounter with the gargoyle-ish monster.
In the meditation that followed, I turned around, walked to the stern, and sat on the floor of my lifeboat so that he/she/it and I could look directly into each other’s eyes (it was still under the rear bench). After several clunky, awkward and, yes, fear-filled minutes (I think for both of us) our eyes tentatively connected with each other. He/she/it told me that I was looking at my deepest, darkest fears about myself and others, but it could not find the thoughts to articulate any more than that.
I asked it to come out into the light so we could sit on the benches and take each other in with our eyes. It obliged me. What emerged from under the bench were two clear and vibrant eyes surrounded by a black, amorphous, undefined shape.
I had absolutely no idea what to make of this entity, and since it was having trouble telling me anything further, I accepted that we would not be going any deeper in our discussion for today (at least we were eye to eye…it’s a start).
At the same time, I started growing very concerned for both of us because the sun was quite bright and we were sitting vulnerable and unprotected. My Irish skin can’t take that kind of sun exposure and my counterpart was (excuse me for saying this ) basically a black blob…not good either.
After I finished putting SPF 75 on myself, I leaned over to put some on my new sailing partner. The touch of my hands on its “face” brought all my senses to life. I could smell and taste its hot decaying breath, hear the rattle of its inhale and exhale, see the blackness and decay of its skin on its now revealed form, and feel rough calluses all over its body under my fingers. But, most importantly, I felt its sadness and feelings of complete and utter abandonment…by me.
This isn’t a he, a she, or an it. This is a me: a compilation of all those ugly, or unacceptable, fearful human parts of me that I don’t want to own, so I pretend they don’t exist.
My heart went out to me. Without a second thought, I reached across the seemingly cavernous divide between us and put my arms around my deepest darkest fears.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Fear Factor
I’m going to admit right at the top that I am processing from my head now cuz I need to let my thoughts sift internally from the top down through my body (before I turn around).
I envision something scary behind me, and to be honest, a few days ago I did sneak a quick peek. Whatever it was had crouched under the wooden seat at the back of the boat. There was something looking up at me, but all I could see were its eyes. Those eyes sent chills up my spine and infused me with so much fear that I had to turn away.
Today, after thinking about that experience, I wonder if fear has been having its way with me. Is it possible that whatever is in the stern is actually benign, harmless, possibly friendly, maybe even full of fear itself, and it is my fear that is perceiving it as a gargoyle-ish monster?
Is it all an illusion created by my fear meeting its fear?
Am I seeing this gargoyle-ish monster because I am afraid?
Or am I afraid because I see this gargoyle-ish monster?
And how is this gargoyle-ish monster seeing me?
Only problem is I have to get up the gumption to turn around again and honest to G look at it without my fear which I fear is now running willy-nilly through my body.
Yet, if I don’t get a handle on my fear, how can I trust that anything I experience is reality?
See I told you I was in my head.
I’ve watched the television show Fear Factor twice (it made me too fearful so I never watched it again) and, from what I could see, the competitors were presented with increasingly more difficult (and let’s face it, dangerous) challenges as they attempted to overcome their externalized fears to win a boatload of cash.
I wonder if anyone has ever considered a television show where we had to face our fears in our own personal internal world? To win what? Our real Self? Sans illusions?
Is that what I am afraid of?
Fear Factor.
The only thing that keeps me in this sometimes terrifying game is my intention to secure a boatload of me.
That’s something I can begin to get my head around.
I envision something scary behind me, and to be honest, a few days ago I did sneak a quick peek. Whatever it was had crouched under the wooden seat at the back of the boat. There was something looking up at me, but all I could see were its eyes. Those eyes sent chills up my spine and infused me with so much fear that I had to turn away.
Today, after thinking about that experience, I wonder if fear has been having its way with me. Is it possible that whatever is in the stern is actually benign, harmless, possibly friendly, maybe even full of fear itself, and it is my fear that is perceiving it as a gargoyle-ish monster?
Is it all an illusion created by my fear meeting its fear?
Am I seeing this gargoyle-ish monster because I am afraid?
Or am I afraid because I see this gargoyle-ish monster?
And how is this gargoyle-ish monster seeing me?
Only problem is I have to get up the gumption to turn around again and honest to G look at it without my fear which I fear is now running willy-nilly through my body.
Yet, if I don’t get a handle on my fear, how can I trust that anything I experience is reality?
See I told you I was in my head.
I’ve watched the television show Fear Factor twice (it made me too fearful so I never watched it again) and, from what I could see, the competitors were presented with increasingly more difficult (and let’s face it, dangerous) challenges as they attempted to overcome their externalized fears to win a boatload of cash.
I wonder if anyone has ever considered a television show where we had to face our fears in our own personal internal world? To win what? Our real Self? Sans illusions?
Is that what I am afraid of?
Fear Factor.
The only thing that keeps me in this sometimes terrifying game is my intention to secure a boatload of me.
That’s something I can begin to get my head around.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Turn, Turn, Turn
I didn’t do it. Turn around that is. I was too afraid. I kept telling myself that I would do it later when I had more time or more interest (or more courage). However, we all know what happens when we continue to ignore what is knocking on our door, tapping on our shoulder or breathing down our necks.
It eventually bites us in the ass.
My stubborn insistent refusal to turn around has, perhaps, cost me a relationship (possibly with one of more of my beloved Mastery sisters). Without going into a long-winded story, let’s just say that I wrote an email that was my honest to G feeling. I meant it to be generative but I wrote it from a place within myself that I was blind to (because it was behind me in the stern and I couldn’t find the courage to look it in the eyes).
I didn’t turn around because I was afraid of what I was going to see about myself. And from what I could hear of the slow deep inhales and exhales behind me, I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. Honestly, it sounded downright grotesque …a living breathing gargoyle.
And it wouldn’t stop talking to me with its breath.
Its breath was daring me to turn around. Its breath was taunting me with its smell. Its breath was steamy, hot and sharp on the back of my neck as it electrified my spine. Its breath rolled and rasped and coughed and sputtered like a big engine waiting for the brake to be released.
It was full of its own terrifying power, waiting for me.
Knowing that I felt small and tiny and boneless.
So I let this part of myself do what it has done many times in the past. I allowed it to wear down my resolve and courage and Love for myself and all things. Then it snuck up on me when I was busy adjusting my sails, or looking desperately for an escape or surrendering into its incessant, insistent, insipid breathing.
It silently, skillfully, and without my conscious awareness took me over.
I wrote the email, clicked on the Send button and let it fly unfettered to its appointed destination. The response to my email was immediate, sure and swift.
And I was broken by the experience of being categorically silenced and being seen as someone who undermines and sabotages.
I was deeply confused. So I went back to the email, read it again, and crumbled into bonelessness. My grief about what I had said in my unconscious but all-consuming state was more than I could bear alone.
I turned, not around, but in. I turned in, to my Self, and asked Love for help.
It eventually bites us in the ass.
My stubborn insistent refusal to turn around has, perhaps, cost me a relationship (possibly with one of more of my beloved Mastery sisters). Without going into a long-winded story, let’s just say that I wrote an email that was my honest to G feeling. I meant it to be generative but I wrote it from a place within myself that I was blind to (because it was behind me in the stern and I couldn’t find the courage to look it in the eyes).
I didn’t turn around because I was afraid of what I was going to see about myself. And from what I could hear of the slow deep inhales and exhales behind me, I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty. Honestly, it sounded downright grotesque …a living breathing gargoyle.
And it wouldn’t stop talking to me with its breath.
Its breath was daring me to turn around. Its breath was taunting me with its smell. Its breath was steamy, hot and sharp on the back of my neck as it electrified my spine. Its breath rolled and rasped and coughed and sputtered like a big engine waiting for the brake to be released.
It was full of its own terrifying power, waiting for me.
Knowing that I felt small and tiny and boneless.
So I let this part of myself do what it has done many times in the past. I allowed it to wear down my resolve and courage and Love for myself and all things. Then it snuck up on me when I was busy adjusting my sails, or looking desperately for an escape or surrendering into its incessant, insistent, insipid breathing.
It silently, skillfully, and without my conscious awareness took me over.
I wrote the email, clicked on the Send button and let it fly unfettered to its appointed destination. The response to my email was immediate, sure and swift.
And I was broken by the experience of being categorically silenced and being seen as someone who undermines and sabotages.
I was deeply confused. So I went back to the email, read it again, and crumbled into bonelessness. My grief about what I had said in my unconscious but all-consuming state was more than I could bear alone.
I turned, not around, but in. I turned in, to my Self, and asked Love for help.
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