Kiyowara

Waking from a dream

The last few weeks have been hard.  I have made decisions that were long over due and that will reach far into my future.  The result has been a lot of hard work, although some of it has been surprisingly easy.  The sense of ease has come in part from the fact that I am no longer fighting to be small.  There is pain and sorrow.  I have wondered when I would wake up from what feels like a bad dream.

Talking through some of this sorrow and pain with my Spiritual Director, we came up with the idea that I am grieving dreams - my dreams - that will never be.  Even though they are just ideas that will not come to fruition, these dreams are a part of my spirit and I deserve the space to properly honour their burial. Out of this will come something new, new dreams will be born, as I finally give myself the space to be fully me.

And then, on the drive into work this morning, I became aware of an awful thought: THIS is what it feels like to be awake.  

It will take a while, I think, to feel the Joy under this sense of obligation.  Right now this feels like a burden but healing and rest will bring the bright colours back.  It will never look the same.  I understand that, and at the same time this reality is much clearer, more colourful, and filled with possibility than any dream state could be ever hold.  And yet...I sorrow.  And  yet...I would have it no other way.  It feels like the duties I had feared I was too small to carry out now rest easily on shoulders I didn't know I had.  I am be capable of whatever the future brings.

"Rise Sleeper, kiss me and open,

Rise Sleeper and dream no more."  - Briar Rose by T. Thorn Coyle.

Slow down to speed up

After my first healthy Winter in 20 years, I finally came down with a sinus infection that has dropped into my lungs just as we are on the verge of Spring emerging.  As part of this I recognized that even though there are myriad pressures on me from work, family, study, etc., I was going to have take this lying down, literally.  I really dislike being inactive.  

However, out of this has come one or two useful insights.  I recently made some decisions about details of my life path...and in the process I let some irritations settle under my surface and eat away at me.  Instead of simply recognizing situations to be dealt with, I let them fester and I believe the result was allowing my immune system a great opportunity to be open to this onslaught.  This is a painful lesson, but a useful one, as I learn how to navigate this subtle course correction in my life.  

Additionally, in various areas of my life I have been presented with the idea of "slow down to speed up."  It sounds counter intuitive, this idea of slowing down internally just as a crisis heats up.  However, doing so and returning to my own center allows me to much more accurately assess whether or not a situation IS a real crisis...and often it turns out not to be.  This recent illness brought home this axiom in a very physical way.  As my asthmatic lungs were enjoying a nice nebulizer treatment (a breathing treatment involving a bronchodilator (lung opener) to open constricted air passages) I found myself experiencing the usual physical speeding up and tremors that these medications have as an undesirable side effect.  I know this feeling well, having had years of experience with this.  It has been so lovely these past few months to be free of this type of side effect, and I found myself feeling irritated at my "failure" to avoid this illness.  As this thought went through my mind I reached for a glass of water too quickly as a result of my trembling and almost turned it over.  

I told myself to stop, to move more slowly and accurately, and to give myself the space in which to be human.

That's not an easy road for me.  I grew up enduring inhumane conditioning, and I still find myself demanding that I be superhuman, or at least other than human.  It's interesting to note that the more deeply I accept my own humanity, the healthier I am.  It's when I try to deny my humanity that I unintentionally make myself somehow smaller rather than growing larger to embrace the whole of who I am: Human and Divine.  When I try to transcend my humanity, I get sick.  When I embrace all of me, I feel good, strong, healthy, and large enough to do all the Work that I wish to do.  It is the merging of all aspects of myself that creates the container -both large enough and strong enough - for the Work I feel called to accomplish.

Let us grow and embrace ALL that we are, rather than rejecting parts of ourselves and creating too small a vessel for the Great Work we are called to create.

Namaste.