The Cycles of Cycles — sara lynn lashbrook

I am emerging from another cycle. Another go. I wrote a piece about this cycle a few posts back. This time, the cycle felt as if I was trapped in a washing machine cycle- the door was locked and I could not get out despite everything I was doing to try to get it to stop! And this is the thing I am learning about cycles- they are cyclic and they move at their own pace and timing. It isn’t possible for me to hurry them up or asked them to get on with it, or conversely when something is blissful to have it stop and slow down. What I am finding is that it is all relevant, the beginning, the end and all of the stuff that comes in between. What I have learned from my practice is that I can be with this all- the highs and the lows, the swings from one side to another. I read this today from Rebecca Campbell and smiled:

“You are being invited to remember that while these extremes are difficult, they can also be magnificent. The more widely the pendulum of your life swings, the more truthfully you can say, “I have truly lived.”

We are taught that something is good or bad, right or wrong, accepted or not or it is rewarded or punished. I am really undoing all of this. In this undoing, I am seeing things as they are. As simple as they are. I am seeing that I don’t need to attach some sort of condition to it, some sort of adjective to it. It is what it is. It can be this way from my perspective, from someone else’s’ perspective it can be that, and they are both true. The thing itself is what it is – it is only when we attach something to it that we have to show our opinion or our preference or our tendencies, our likes and dislikes.

I am acknowledging this as I come out of this cycle, that I feel like I have been in since November. This cycle that has felt like a lot of tossing and tumbling, a lot of fast stuff happening with little gasps of air in between. At times, life has felt like it has been a real obstacle, a real challenge. I can say this because in some ways I thought this time, this specific Dasha I am running would have a certain flavor and it conjured up a vision of what it would be and it turns out that it has been something different than what I expected and as I am discovering it is something way more than I could have ever imagined. Way deeper, with way more breadth. Its depth and the space I have traversed is vast. Subtle and subtler layers are being unlocked in all directions. And this is the things with cycles, they have their own beginning and their own end. They come with their own energy, own expression and they come within their own space and time. This is something I acknowledge, that I cannot hurry. I cannot tell it to hurry up and rush or go fast or to slow down or stop, which is really sometimes what I wanted. Instead, I bask with and in it all.

Today, for the first time in a long while I sat for a practice and it was delicious. Oh, so lovey (this word wrote itself and is a nod to Beloved Carol Mann who energy and wisdom is so strongly with me right now). Yes, yes, I thought. Why have I not done more of this? Why do I not do this more often? And there it is, the stick, the measuring stick, the comparison, the wanting things to be any way other than the way they are. Now is the time I sat. Now is the time for that experience. Not before. Not after. Now. I continue to soften into this, as this is part of the cycle. Part of the cycle I am emerging from. And nature is too.

I am waking up. Things are waking up. Pushing up through the earth, rising up, bursting into bloom, emerging, expressing. Have you ever watched something come up from the earth? How it transforms and changes? How it knows what to do? Some silent (to us) intelligent form inside guiding its way on? This is how it is for me too. Emerging from the winter, the inwardness and stillness of winter. A slowing. The preserving of energy. This emerging is leading me to the acknowledgment of energy. The energy I have and where I want to share it, the energy that I want to be around. The energy I want to surround myself with. The more I learn about myself, the more I turn inwards, the more connected and rooted I am in my own body. I ground down and feel. I notice sensations that I may have missed in the past, messages that were trying to be delivered but I was not aware. My receiver was not tuned in, my attention was elsewhere, focused on other things. Things outside of me. Things outside of my control. Things that have nothing to do with me. Things that I know now, I would willing pick up and take on responsibility for- even though they are not mine. This inward time, this time of reflection, pondering and contemplation has allowed me to gain distance, separation. With this new perspective I can see things clearly, from a new view, a new stance. I am able to see patterns at play. Patterns of ways of being, of interaction. These habitual ways. They seem instinctual, they happen without any thought. They are reactions, embedded, known reactions that just happen, that rise up. This is what I am noticing. This habit, instinct, deeply embedded response happens and the thought comes up, turn on after. That is how quick it is.

This response is not always bad or negative. It is not always good or positive. It is simply a response, a response that is embedded deep within the cells, within the body, within the knowing that has been around for a long time. These responses are our samskaras and they are related the kelsha, the sticky residue that I have found to be more sticky than cling wrap. Yes, that is what this is, these responses are old habitual ways of being. Ways that are in a family line, from my own patterning and experiences, from the community in which I was raised and they reflect the timing of when they got locked in or imprinted on my being. And now, each cycle I go through is helping me see and once I see, then I can rid myself of these tendencies and patterns, some of them are so deeply embedded they do not want to go. The grasp tightens and there is a clinglingness- like the tendency of cling wrap- it gets all tangled and knotted. It is such a mess you do not know where to begin and then desire it to throw it away, stop and being again. When I read back my pieces and what they have left traces of on this journey I see this is also a thread- the wanting it to stop, enough, let me off, let me out, I am tired, what more do you want. And there are also the threads of let’s go, let’s clear this, let’s clean away this muck and left over residue, this grim and film that lingers.

I was going through my audio recordings this morning and found these two gems from September 12,2022:

“It’s as if the thoughts that come in, the samskaras, they’re interference, they’re the static. That is what brings you out of the alignment, that causes the confusion.”

The confusion for me is another thread. Over the years I have used the word, cloaked or getting knocked down, hit by a wave and disoriented, out of sorts, not able to see clearly, unsure of what is happening or asking what just happened. When you are in it, it is challenging to discern what is going on. And each and every time I come out, I laugh with giddy delight, flying high in the bliss of releasing and letting go that which binds and limits me.

“And if you think about what static looks like visually, like the black and white fuzz or really erraticness, you can also see that it is an illusion, the blurring of it, like it is not clear, it is fuzzy when it is like that.”

Sometimes things have to blur before they can become clear. Like turning a lens into focus as a dear friend Michelle offered to me the other day.

Sometimes static is also points of light that spread, like mini lightening storms. Reminding us, showing us that there is power here, a great force at play.

So here, with this static, confusion, haziness and disorientation I am accepting that they too are parts of these cycles. Cycle of undoing. Cycles of rebuilding. On and on and on they go, fueled by this natural intelligence that is always here guiding my way on. And I am leaving a trace of this here, so when it happens again and I forget, I can revisit my own wisdom and trust that this too will come to an end, which is actually the beginning.

Cycles of inwardness and outwardness.

Cycles upon cycles upon cycles. Everything is embedded within cycles.

Which reminds me of a dream I had the other night and the awe I had once I put it into words and said it out loud.

“It was dark, and there was light on the horizon,”

Meeting you here,