The Gaze
Spring has sprung. Rather it is springing, pushing forth and emerging in its own time. Kind of like me.
I woke to greens and shades of various yellows and whites greeting me as I looked through the window next to my bed. Arriving to places in the dark of night always delights me, for I know newness is upon me as day breaks. When I departed, the first daffodils had opened, their entrance to the world followed a huge rainstorm followed by a day of sunshine. This mirrors my own journey. Long stretches of inward gazes, quiet contemplation, the pull of the mind, the physical heaviness of the body. The weight of being. Seeing the color through the window I smiled, a sense of accomplishment within- I made it. I survived another winter.
The end of March is approaching, it is a few days away and I see how while I want the end to come simultaneously I am wanting it to stay. “Haven’t you learned the gift of Shani,” I hear my dear friend Amaya share, “he teaches us to let go.”
Ah so. The grip. The tendency to want to hold on to the familiar, the known. The ease and comfort although nothing about these past 18 months have felt like either ease or comfort. One would not see this from the external world though, as I am taken care of and provided for. So, it is not that I am without and it is this stress of strife that leads me to the feeling of discomfort or ill ease. Rather, it is my mind that has a hold, that has really got a hold on me. I keep telling myself, a few more months, weeks, which have now become days. Stay the course. Steady yourself. Trust. A shift is coming.
Mere glimpses of clarity have risen and for this I am always grateful. And as I type I see how I am selective in my gratitude, grateful for what feels good, what I enjoy, feeling safe and comfortable. I really do not like the stuff that causes shifts, discomfort, ill ease and an unsettled feeling within, and yet I know, I know that it is these moments, these events that are discontinuous that are the ones that shape and shift my views of the world, my life and my role in it. This work of welcoming all of the feelings is work, a true labor of love. It is work to love myself. To meet myself with grace and compassion, acceptance and love in all moments, not only the ones that is feels easy to do so in.
Each time, each and every time I am presented with and each and every time I meet a moment that shifts me, I feel off centered, uprooted and not aligned. Sometimes these moments bring me joy and delight, most often still (as if it is supposed to change or stop, or that I should have learned it all by now) I really dislike it. Within a recent bout of this doubt and questioning, this place where I met myself feeling ashamed and guilty, I looked at myself in the mirror seeing a disheveled me, as if I had been dragged through bushed with thorns and brambles. Which in a sense I had. I had recently experienced what happens when I ignore and override my inner knowing and voice. I had a few opportunities to do this and chose not to. I chose instead to stay, to not disrupt or be seen as rude. Ignoring the loud internal signals, warnings with red light and sirens, I persisted. I stayed. I sat. I took. I choose what I perceived was best for someone and a group else over what was best for me. And what I met when a boundary was crossed was fury, anger and rage, rising up from my root. A fierce protective form self-love, one that took me by surprise no longer hidden, pretending or contained.
Interestingly, in the moment and the moments that followed, I felt strong, fierce, fueled by conviction. It was, as always, only after that I felt disliked and I wanted to retreat, hide, remove myself from myself. Second guessing flooded me. That combined with guilt and shame and the worry of what others may think of me had me in a tailspin. While, I found myself going down quickly, I was open to hearing perspectives of members of the group, as I know and have grown enough to face myself fully and to do that, taking responsibly for my actions is an important step. In one exchange, I was able to hear, to receive. I felt heard and safe. Something about her approach and curiosity to understand what led up to the moment allowed me to share. In the other exchange, I felt attacked. The words spoken to me felt like they were a telling, as if to say I did not know what had unfolded and why. The view that was being held and shown to me in this exchange did not resonate at all, it felt forced, foreign and false. And here I met my mind. Who to believe? What was true? And all of this back and forth, this debate, this thinking, this pull and tug was exhausting. All consuming. All I wanted was to have the constant narration in my mind stop, the excessive worry and doubt and replaying of events to cease.
What is fun, it that this stopping point is not a known point or event in the moment. It can not be planned or crafted. It doesn’t just end when I want it to, or at least I have not figured that out yet. Rather it is only later, when I catch myself and realize, Huh, I haven’t thought about ----- in a while, it is as if it just dropped off or fell away. And this is how it goes. Things drop and fade away, not with my conscious attention or awareness on it at every moment, instead it is the lack of attention, the turning away from that ends the feeding, the excessive loop of thinking and returning, feeding and coaxing. It is as if I need to walk away from myself for it to end.
For me, the end of this most recent episode was to cross the border and go to the end. To literally cross an imaginary line, defined and agreed upon as a divider, a marker, an edge and to travel on a railroad that is known and real, but not actually seen by all to arrive at its last stop.
And, it is all true. For each of us involved, each of us that witnessed and shared the same event, each interpretation and take away, each feeling and projection was and is valid. True to each individual from where we sat, stood, view, attempted to make meaning and understand. All of these perspectives and experiences were true. And at the same time, they were not, since what we each value, the assumptions we hold and the attention we place are all construed, conjured and created by the mind.
I have heard countless times that we cannot solve problems in the mind with the mind, problems that arise as thought, problems that cannot be seen, yet are real in the feeling sense (as my dear friend Ria shared, seen on my face) cannot be solved or resolved by thinking. All of the justification and revisiting of the moment, whatever it was, does not help me at all. Yet my mind thinks this is a great use of resources which is why I have been finding myself physically exhausted and worn out. This is the power of my mind. It can debilitate me.
It can also enliven me and excite me; expectations are great invitations for this learning. Oh to hold an expectation in my mind. You know what else activate and excite me? The present moment. And it is here that I strive to meet myself in again and again.
Pure presence. This moment that is upon me. Right here, right now. It is through the gift of the present moment that I can choose, that I get to choose how I want to carry myself forward into the next moment.
How do I want to carry myself into the next moment?
Would I like to carry myself with curiosity and wonder?
Would I like to carry myself with dread and worry?
This is another layer to the work I do with my mind. Inviting myself into the moment at hand and asking myself how do I want to proceed?
For those of you who have read my work, you may be familiar with my once reoccurring dream of wanting to step into an elevator but every time the doors opened, I would pass, saying there is no way all of my stuff (read baggage) will fit. And this is where I meet myself now, I no longer want to take steps forward carrying any baggage. None. No more baggage from the past. Enough lugging. Enough dragging. Enough weight.
You know, recently I have had a realization that this gaze of Shani Dev for the past 7.5 years has brought of these feelings of having things withheld from me. That this slowing or delaying of things is a form of punishment, that I have not gotten things right, have not done things the right way, have not done enough, that I am not enough. These feelings have been mirrored in a lot, pretty much all of my relationships. You know what is the common thing in this, in all of these relationships- ME. I am common. I am the ‘thing’ that I carry around. My mind. My idea of myself. That me being me is not enough, right, good or worthy. That I have to be, do something, anything more than what I already am.
This is the baggage that I am referring to. The garbage and litter in my mind, conjured up by my mind from previous experiences that tells me that in order to be worthy, good, enough, loved, liked, successful, seen… I have to do more.
And it is a farse. These thoughts are illusions. They are delusions. They are not true.
I am not these thoughts. I am not an idea no matter how loud or prominent it shows up in my mind. All of these things that I worry about are located in my mind, in my mind only. They are not seen, not visible in any other form (aside from my physical body as dear Ria shares). My face, my body they communicate the inward story, they show and represent what is happening inside on the outside.
Which brings me full circle to this dormancy, this weight, this heaviness. This force that feels like it has been upon me, holding my head and body down. Stop. Stay. Be. Remain. Move Slow. Not now. Be here. Be here for this all there is, is here.
Maybe the physical pain and strain in my body is because I am actually allowing myself to feel. For the hurt, pain, suffering, grief, loss, anger, betrayal, disbelief to be acknowledge and felt. For it to dislodge itself from the confines of my cellular memory, breaking down the borders and membranes all that has contained and held it back. Maybe it is this pain and hurt that I feel coursing through my bones and blood, trying to find its way out through this labyrinth of me. Maybe this is what it is like to feel all the feels I have held in and stuffed away. Saying I do not have time to feel or I do not want to feel. Maybe these physical sensations and heaviness are years and years of aspects of myself that I have turned away from.
Turned away from because they stemmed from falseness. Stories told of me, ideas made of me, projections placed on me are not true, so I turned away from them. Turned my head, my gaze because they were not aligned, they are not aligned and it felt easier in the moment to sit and take it. It felt safer in the moment to feel the suppression, the guilt, the fear of what would happen if I spoke up or out. This is that power, that power outside of me that has controlled, that has had a grip. Yes, at times I have used these hurts as fuel, fuel to burn this fire inside. At other times I have allowed it to be turned to stone. To harden and become callus, blocked off, removed. From myself and worse, from others.
Recently I heard someone share, “you can take care of your body yourself or you can pay someone to do it.” For me, it is a both and. I am tending to my body and mind in a way that feels right and best to me in the moment AND, I have support from Sallie and friends, guides whose voice, perspective and insight I value and welcome.
There have been HUGE lessons unfolding for me recently. For so long I have outsourced my well-being. In my search for whatever it is I am searching for- connection, acceptance, community, myself -I am invited again and again to listen inward; to trust the signals, signs and messages MY body and heart are telling me. To stay true to me. To turn the volume of my own inner knowing up. Because, when I ignore the calls, it feels as if I have no other choice, the subtle signals turn to blaring warning signs.
Except I do have a choice, I always have a choice. And these recent events are showing me that when I choose someone over me, or a perception or a thought over me, when I ignore myself, it hurts. When I turn away from myself, when I attempt to silence or stuff or contain the action that wants to rise within spontaneously, I hurt myself. This action is an act of betrayal. I can see it on my face, I can feel it in my body. There is deep, deep-rooted pain and suffering in this.
Which, now I can see. I have seen this before, yes. And now I am meeting this layer, this depth. And I am grateful. Grateful for this awareness, this shift. As they are markers on my journey. Markers of growth. Markers of change. Signposts. Opportunities to remember.
Ah this dismantling. This breaking down, this crossing of self-imposed borders in space and time.
Grateful for seeing this. For witnessing this truth and illusion. It is as if this wants to be seen and acknowledged. For it to be given voice to its existence.
For this growth is birthing the action of choosing to lean towards my inner voice, listening to and honoring my voice within. I am eager with anticipation to meet what is coming my way when I commit to myself to this.
The wind blows. The sun shines.
And I am here.
With a hug,
Sara