A Question of Order

Acceptance

Commitment

Desire

Will

These fours words have a lot of meaning packed into them.  When I asked my wife for her opinion of their appropriate order, I was surprised by her answer.  My order of operations and hers were completely in opposition.  

I have always felt like I have a purpose, but not one of my current choosing.  I recognize that some of the spiritual burden I feel is a direct result of an horrendous childhood.  Nonetheless, I believe that I came into the world knowing there was a job to do and that I had chosen to do it.  I'm not sure that there was much of a choice to be made, but I am assured by people I trust that a choice I did make.  I have felt that now I only need to find the strength to accept the commitment I've made, and the resulting desire and will to carry out the work I came here to do.  Consequently, the order I would place those fours words in falls like this: Commitment, Acceptance, Desire, Will.

My wife's order was the other way around: Desire, Will, Acceptance, Commitment.  I was blown away by her perspective.  Her reaction to my stated order was visceral and unexpected.  For her, my viewpoint was far too close to that of her cult upbringing - deterministic and removing all sense of free will.  I truly had not seen it that way. Her reaction sparked a need for me to look deeper, to think hard about why I have ordered things in this way.

I have struggled the past year to articulate my deepest Desire, to be able to name my True Will. I have had an emotional sense of these things.  However, I have been unable to label them, to define them, and I struggle with this uncertainty.  I find it disconcerting when I cannot speak clearly.  I want to be able to succinctly present my Will to the world. Instead, it has been suggested that I'm pursuing a definition with too ardor and that a shy lover is better sought with kind words and tender actions. 

As a result of today's musings it has dawned on me that perhaps I have simply been looking in the wrong direction.  I wonder if I was so busy looking ahead that I missed the earlier moments of my own development.  It wouldn't be the first time in my life I have done such a thing: I walked before I crawled, too.  I wonder if the piece of myself I often feel is missing is actually something I just overlooked, that was so natural that I took it for granted in my rush to fulfill the responsibilities of my decision.

By missing that moment, I failed to connect the responsibilities to the Joy of having made a choice born of my deepest longings.  I didn't take the small measure of time to feel, really feel, that deep, unconditional Love that filled me with Desire, that shaped my True Will.  It happened, uncelebrated or even noticed by me, and I took only the burden of the Commitment, missing the part where that Joy would have given me the strength, the drive, to truly Accept what I had committed to.

Ironically, when I look back at my life, what I Desire most, more than anything else, is Connection.  At my deepest part I seek, pursue, and give connection.  I breathe connection in and out, I want it more than all of that which I own.  Selfishly, I want to be connected.  I desire to build a web of connection, a real safety net, that brings all of us together in support of one another. I believe that I knew there was this great Love to connect me to everything even as I was rejected by those who should have been the source of this connection during my childhood.  I felt it, longed for it, and my search for connection to this real truth - the truth that remains beyond all else - of Love has shaped my life even when I was unaware of the process of sculpting.  "Why do I love when I still feel pain?," writes VNV Nation.  Even in the most painful moments I find myself fighting for Love, despite my weariness, despite my sense of the gathering dark.

It is time, I think, to reorder my world: Desire, Will, Commitment, Acceptance.  In doing so, I want to take the time to celebrate and experience the Desire that brought me here in the first place.  Remembering the Joy of that connection, of that knowing of unconditional Love beyond all odds, reveling in that deepest magic, may well be the key to Acceptance that I have been missing.  Let that memory drive my Will, to shape it consciously this time.  I know what the Commitment is - I need to fill it with the meaning of remembering that moment of discovery.  This is what I hunger for: Re-membering.  From this, I can Accept the burden of the commitment I have made while remembering why I had the Will to make it in the first place.  

Namaste.

Comments

[Lyssabard]

Hi Sandi,
Wow, this resonates. I would also agree very much with Kaye that the order is Desire, Will, Acceptance, Commitment. I long for/want to do it, I will do it, I accept that I can do it, I commit to doing it!

Right now, I am going through a time in my life where I am not sure what the Desire for the Will (or the Will) is...I really thought I knew, once upon a time. I know I said things related to it--but is that it?
Or am I simply hiding? There is a part of me that suspects the latter.

And I argue with myself. It's not as if my childhood was ALL bad. Nothing is ever so black and white. I had friends, we created worlds, and sometimes our games and stories manifested and reflected here. We saved ourselves from our own soul's dying. I knew that despite my pain, I was a wild bright thing, and I hungered, and a voice in my head that was in part my own always gave the right advice and I knew I'd get out of this and move on to all the possibilities and magic in the world. And I hungered for that magic.

As time went by, however, after undergrad, I got disconnected. It got harder to push aside the words of my mother and her fears, and I went through a period of isolation and disconnect from people.

And now...I look for that self again, I am looking for what she has become now and I mourn some of what has been.

Sometimes, I tremble and hear that whisper growing, "What if...what if you just dropped this? This safe little mask that you've accepted, the act that you forgot was just a role. The suffering you've accepted in fear of the work, trading in talent for abuse. Let go. Let go and just do it--just do it like you used to do, even if you are afraid. Remember when you were afraid AND excited? Or so excited you got a little afraid? Come on, come on, wake up, just reach for it and pick it up again."

"It"...power, desire...so many things I am not even sure what all of them are. But there is a fear that some of it is responsibility--equated in my mind falsely with burden, with a draining of the self that came from lack of boundaries, of spinning myself out for everyone but myself for a number of years and trying to be fed from that without tending to my needs. (Or even being able to really identify them.)

There is a part of me that loathes myself for even remotely hesitating (and some days, it has words that are the same as my mother's--oh, how we learn), while the other part tries to figure out what all this is. And sorry to be so vague, but the vagaries capture what I feel at the moment. Something builds under the skin.

What if...what if...

I wonder.

~Lys
(This seems to have become my morning pages for the day. Thank you!)