credit: cultureclasswar.wordpress.com
The last month has been a busy and intense one for me. It’s been a series of personal challenges asking me to dig deeper and stretch higher. A roller-coaster of ups and downs, and yet it’s also been giving me the experience of expansion.
I can’t say it’s been comfortable by any means. My preference would be to find the balance of the mid-range and stay there. My personal life story has had enough of the extremes to last me what feels like forever, but this is what’s required, it seems, to make this passage.
Along with this push for expansion in both ‘directions’ has been a mysterious void space that’s made my ‘normal’ ways of proceeding wash ashore and sort of wither in the sun. I seem to have a melting-mind syndrome, I easily loose my train of thought, for instance, making focus anywhere from difficult to impossible at times.
I note that I’m not the only one having these experiences either (nothing new about that). I’ve had people even say to me recently that this has been presenting as death to them. It seems like the death of the old has been highlighted this last month, and so it is for some of us. It’s made for some dismay and also some sadness.
Along with this ‘withering of the old’ experience comes challenges, asking us to cope with whatever is crumbling and to still somehow find the willingness to continue with our tasks and to find new ways to do this. This post is simply to acknowledge this process.
I want to encourage the release of what isn’t working and to inspire myself to find my way in new ways that aren’t yet formed. If I can inspire others while doing this, then I’ve accomplished something more than what serves only myself and this would be the frosting on the cake.
Like a mighty sigh, I’ve been feeling the sadness and insecurity of these times in a way that suggests to me that this isn’t only what I’m feeling, but is what the collective field, the field of feelings we share as a species, is feeling.
These feelings don’t present themselves as personal to me. It feels like an out-breath, like a sigh releasing from collective breath-holding. As if this breath-holding could hold together the crumbling foundations of what we’ve come to know as our shared ‘reality.’ Only this crumbling isn’t going away. No amount of clinging is going to hold together what is terminally dissipating and dissolving.
Many of us are feeling exhausted again this last month. I know many folks who are finding it necessary to let go of whatever they can to keep the ship afloat. The decisions here are about what has actual value and a chance of surviving into the future. All that doesn’t pass this test is being pitched over the side of the boat.
For me, this is all about pitching out what doesn’t serve me, and also, since I’ve claimed my right to serve others, I’m looking at pitching what I carry that doesn’t serve them either.
There’s no part of me that is so discouraged that I would pitch out my dreams of a better world for everyone. I still keep my eye on the horizon while bailing out the boat. The way to the future is here now and it’s up to me to sail to this destination.
I guess what I want to do here is to call out to others to encourage them to continue as well. Yes, there’s the tiredness, of the struggles and the sadness that seems to be in the background for so many.
There’s this sense of insecurity that goes along with this passage, this in-between space that is the border of what we know and what has yet to be created.
I’d like to suggest that the supposed security of what we know hasn’t produced security at all. We just got used to it and therefore it feels familiar.
Just because it feels familiar doesn’t mean it’s secure, and I think this is the basis of the feelings of sadness I have at this time.
What is true for you may mirror what I’ve shared with you here, or it may not, but either way, it’s been my pleasure to share this journey with you.