When you recognize that you have been operating hyper-vigilantly and that your nervous system is hyper-aroused, you are being asked to slow down.
Slowing down means that your body will have some healing to do. It will want rest and sunlight and clean food. This is the process of conscious recovery.
As things rise to the surface, uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, your task will be to stay: to not turn away from the depth and truth and poetry of your experience.
We make many choices throughout our day from what to wear and eat to how much positive and negative energy we let in through our thoughts and actions. Each choice is meaningful because we have an opportunity to use it to further our growth or hinder our development.
What are sane choices? They are decisions that bring us peace of mind, calm, joy, a sense of ease and belonging. They connect us with our highest self and allow us to feel at home in our bodies. Sane choices stem from self-love and also make a healthy impact on the lives of others. If we are out of alignment it will be hard to make healthy decisions and this adversely affects our work, our creativity and relationships.
If there are choices we are avoiding making because we are chronically afraid or uncertain, we can nurture the part of us that is holding back. We cannot force a solution but we can remove obstacles gently and deliberately. Also, we can create supports that will assist the soul as it opens. Acknowledging our fear we can better understand where it began.
The same choice may present itself many times until we finally commit to one path or another. Sitting with a question for too long will make us feel scattered and confused. To experience clarity we must make room for knowing, clear away the psychic clutter. This, too, involves choice.
We may notice a surge of energy when seasons shift and can use this momentum to manifest change. The energy of the vernal (spring) equinox helps us move into the next phase of our own development and can be felt viscerally.
I have been talking with my coach recently about wanting to re-commit to contemplative practice. I found myself gravitating naturally towards meditation a couple of weeks before the close of winter. Finding my way to a meditation class near my home felt intentional but also divinely inspired.
If there are projects we have been postponing due to fatigue or overwhelm, we find that there is more ease around getting started during the equinox. In general, there is less internal struggle and more fluidity, desire and connection. Pathways begin to open for us as we expand into clarity and possibility.
This a time of engagement. It invites us to consider and say yes to new experiences that delight and nurture our spirit. Darkness and light are exactly equal. We experience male and female energies coming into greater alignment. This balancing births sensuality, curiosity, play. It puts us intimately in touch with nature, and with our own blossoming.
“Listening is a form of accepting.”
-Stella Terrill Mann
Our grief often has things it wants to tell us. We may avoid engaging with it for a long time because we’re afraid of what it has to say. But the longer we postpone having a dialogue with our grief, the more numb and split off from our feelings we become. As the expression goes: feelings buried alive never die. What does your grief want to say? When I asked myself this question, the following is what emerged. What I found is that making space for grief also allows us to make space for other emotions.
Grief is under your armpits, the weight of your arms, your heavy heart. It is the grandmother you miss and the grandfather you mourn. It is in the things you do not want to say, the biting of your tongue and your slumped shoulders. The tight neck and clenched jaw; the forgetting of possibility. It misses the body and clings tightly to this life. A long night exiting the desert, a black sky. Grief is to feel alone, apart. Joy is in the long spine, the belly breath, sacred touch. It is not being afraid, trusting, the smile that begins inside. It is appropriate distance and kindness and the wandering moon.
When we think of a boundary, we think of a wall: solid, structured, impermeable. But some boundaries are porous and fluid. We might need to make use of them one day, and not at all the next.
If we’ve been injured we will identify more with the need for a hard, fixed wall. To keep the perpetrator out. To keep us safe. But to erect a boundary that is permanent means that we become inflexible, rigid. It means that we must adhere to strict rules and conform to a pre-determined identity. There is no room for change or transformation.
In self-help circles we talk a lot about the need for boundaries. I would agree that they are sometimes useful and necessary, particularly with people who may be unhealthy for us. But to allow space for opening in any relationship, we can consider the possibility that a boundary we once needed may no longer be necessary.
Healing can manifest both as a result of creating distance and moving in close to investigate. And these actions need not be mutually exclusive. They can even sometimes weave through each other like water reflecting sky. There is insight to be gained from lowering, when we are ready, the walls we have constructed. To step out from that container requires trust. But on the other side of that trust is a new landscape.
In most situations where triangulation exists, there is the symbol of mother, father, child. Depending on our upbringing, this can trigger conflicting feelings in us that are hard to make sense of. If we repeatedly find ourselves part of a triad, we may be attempting to heal some part of that primary relationship with our caregivers. There is nothing inherently wrong with this dynamic unless it re-injures or traumatizes us in some way. If we feel consistently depleted or confused, we are likely trying to fix an old wound. Perhaps our father was absent and our mother was a narcissist, so we felt invisible or unsafe. If we can name where the hurt originates we can more clearly identify the underlying need.
I was once part of a triangle with two older male coworkers. One of the men symbolized a projection of my mother and the other, a projection of my father. I seemed to be working hard to win their affection and, on the surface, I seemed to be getting it. They were polite and welcoming. The problem was that the triad was an illusion that, for various reasons, couldn’t be sustained. They were not friends and I felt myself “in the middle,” and objectified. Eventually I stopped engaging with both of these men. It felt like a loss not because we had developed a true bond, but because it triggered old grief I’d not fully processed. The relationship was an attempt at somatic completion.
In triangulation, we often aim to fill voids with people. There is the underlying charge of the triad that often keeps un engaged, against our better judgement. What we are attempting to find is balance, nurturing, understanding. If we lacked these as children, we will inevitably be hungry for them as adults. Triangles seem to promise comfort but may lack emotional connection. If we experienced abandonment or abuse we will likely repeat these patterns in relationship. If what we are seeking is to recover from the past, we can ask ourselves what we need. The answers will bubble up if we are courageous enough to ask the question. Honesty will always move us in the direction of true belonging.
The first draft is where we begin. It is where we play and explore and allow inspiration to descend upon us. It is not where we make sense, pursue, make final. The first draft is simply where we open, like a thirsty mouth, to drink.
What if we approached big life decisions this way. If a change or transition could be initiated as a first draft, where we focus less on making everything right and we simply begin, make a start.
It snowed in New York yesterday. There are messy, wet piles all over the city. There was irritation in the air. It was a day of feeling disoriented and without clear direction. Distraction and things that, if not today, eventually, need fixing.
Sitting down to articulate a first draft (of anything) is all about immersion in the process; it doesn’t seem to be getting us there but it is the clearing of a path that makes arriving possible.
This week I spoke with Sharon, my coach, about a shift I want to make in my own life. We explored the metaphor of me carrying a suitcase. What was inside. Why I carried it. How I would abandon it. I imagined a woman I had seen on the street earlier, pictured her dragging her luggage through snow. This conversation with Sharon was my first draft. Incomplete, significant.
The first draft cares less about perfecting and more about articulating. It’s a foot in the boot; an arm in the sleeve; getting the parts in more or less the proper place.
1. You are allowed to ask for help.
2. Loneliness passes.
3. Healthy food is necessary medicine.
4. Creativity is a wonderful companion.
5. Play is vital.
6. The feelings we ignore don’t go away.
7. Return to gratitude.
8. No is a complete sentence.
9. Let intuition lead.
10. Go where it’s warm.
Detachment is one of the most loving things we can do when faced with hostility. It lets us choose what we take in and what we leave alone. Its opposite, codependency, keeps us locked in. It deprives us of bliss.
In situations where we develop an overly tight grip, learning to stop and acknowledge that we have no power over other people’s actions, keeps us grounded. We can literally say out loud, “I have no power over this” as a way to reorient ourselves.
If you check in during those moments, you’ll notice that the gripping leads to tight muscles, constricted breath, agitation. It’s an aggressive posture, leaving little room for light and playfulness.
I have practiced observing when I am in the habit of codependency. My skin actually feels hot and itchy. I get headaches and stomach pain. Nothing moves through me; everything feels jammed.
To take what you like and (love) the rest is just that. We don’t have to get caught up or lost in the madness. We have a right to be here without getting swallowed up. By using these charged interactions as opportunities, we can refine our focus and aim to have a clear mind. We can leave or we can stay: the choice is up to us.
I heard a story once of a wise teacher who would advise his students to wear a stone in their shoe as a reminder to wake up. The friend or boss or lover can be that stone.
“The purpose of life is to know your true unconditioned self.”
-Agnes Martin
We all wish, on some level, for a truly unique and original experience. Maybe we haven’t felt it for a long time but we felt it once, even if only as a very young and curious child. We knew then that anything was possible and the notion of obstacles didn’t enter our mind. Because it didn’t enter our mind, there were none. The field of experience was wide open and we felt ourselves at the center of it.
When was the first time you felt the hard edge of the world uttering no? How did you reconcile the urgency of your desire with that energy of opposition?
We cannot form a relationship with limitless possibility in a purely intellectual way. We will continue to talk ourselves out of taking the first step. It is necessary to create a new strategy, one that moves us from mind to body, from psyche to soma.
If we feel the burn of wanting something we do not yet have, we are already wedded to it. Therefore, it can flow through us because it is already a part of us. That it doesn’t yet feel wholly accessible should not concern us. If we are in love with someone but cannot see them for a few days we do not cease to be in love. We may forget the exact shape of their face but our connection and longing keep us interested in a complete union.
As it relates to our creative self, this longing is about surrendering to the mystery. We don’t always have to be in the mode of doing. We are constantly changing and who we are today may not be who we are tomorrow. It is refreshing to consider, albeit strange, the possibility that we know ourselves only partially. The longing suggests it is our duty to find out the extent to which that is true.
