What an interesting passage I’ve had since writing “Managing My Now.” (1) I wish everyone could have the same experience.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever watched an epic movie from around the Fifties or Sixties like The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur or Lawrence of Arabia. In the middle they would have an “Intermission” which stretched on for perhaps fifteen-twenty minutes. I seem to have been in such an intermission.
It started with writing that article two days ago and proceeded through an interval during which I had writer’s block. That must be the scariest thing for a writer. And it seems to have completed itself this morning, during sleep.
There was a reorganization going on, an assimilation of a great deal I’d learned from recent engagements with several projects.
The intermission in the old epic movies often separated two lines of conduct – almost a “before” and “after,” or more to the point a “getting there” and then a “doing it.”
Moses flees to Moab and returns to Egypt; Ben Hur is sentenced to the galleys and returns to Jerusalem; Lawrence aspires to lead the Arab forces and then leads. The intermission almost serves as a symbolic watershed.
I feel as if I’ve had a watershed as well. I can’t express it very well, but I would say that the first half was a going out of myself and the second half is a returning to myself. I was seeking something in the first half and I’m no longer seeking.
In several readings, Archangel Michael has told me to be rigorously independent. I don’t think I fully understood what he meant at the time. I thought he was referring to simply not teaming or partnering myself or the blog with someone else or some other effort. But I’m progressively intuiting that he means something far more subtle than that.
I think he’s referring to an energetic matter. And his point may not apply to everyone. But there is something about the role demanded of a communicator that requires that the individual choose more sovereign individuality than many others might be advised to. There seems to be a need to hold on to one’s energy, not to rent it out, lease it out, or give it away. I can’t say at the moment why that would need to be so, but I have the intuitive sense that it’s necessary.
Feeling blocked, I knew I had reached a critical point in my work life and had to change tack. Hence the intermission. And “Managing My Now” was the critical insight.
On one side of it, I was endeavoring to fit in, please, serve others’ agendas; on the other side of it, I’m withdrawing more into myself, letting go of pleasing others, and serving what seems like an inner agenda.
I’m doing what’s right here in front of myself and no longer worrying about accomplishing a set workload or any agenda really. Just doing what comes up next to be done and living with whatever fallout comes from not doing the rest.
And I’m setting what it is I want to do. It’s as if an external structure has fallen away and an internal structure has arisen. Or perhaps that structuring itself has become internalized.
It’s as if I went as far in one direction as I could go, realized the positives and the negatives of that, and have now made my final choice for the rest of this amazing year. Hard choices flow from that. I’m no longer available to be co-opted; I’ll be doing a lot less than I did; and that’s where another, externalized feature of rigorous independence comes in.
If this were a movie, then the director would represent the young boy as having grown into a man – fit that into whatever plot the movie chooses. A rite of passage occurred in that restaurant when my metaphorical face was about to hit the metaphorical floor and I finally got what I had been missing up to now.
I feel much more meditative, much more complete. I feel much less desire to stir to get things done. How did Lao Tzu describe it? The man who moves without moving? At this moment, I feel no desire to stir at all. And at the same time, I get how I’m the absolute chooser in this moment.
I’ve become my final arbiter, it would appear; taken back something I gave away since forever; perhaps my “say” in things; perhaps my discernment.
As with all things, or most things perhaps, I choose to go through it publicly. That seems to be a part of my soul contract.
I sense that many things flow from this and I’m content to allow them just to arise within me and express themselves in due course. One phase of life has ended for me and another phase of life has begun. This new phase is both an active phase and not. I can’t say I understand it completely but I feel amazingly content.
Footnotes
(1) “Managing My Now,” April 16, 2012, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2012/04/managing-my-now/