Failing to Imagine, Learning to See

In Visionary summer, I wanted to take a fresh look at my work/art/life plan. For some strange reason I couldn't see anything with my mind's eye. Who do I want to collaborate with, what do I want to create, what do I want to experience? My attempts to dream life into being went nowhere.

How mortifying that Wild Imagination should have failure of imagination!

But it's hard to dream big when we are feeling small. If we are unable to see anything ahead, it's time to see what's right here. I had to look at my anxiety and fears about no money, no support. I had to name my limiting beliefs. I had to face what in me felt hopeless, helpless. I had to be compassionate with these parts in me and agree to coexist peacefully. Maybe you know what I'm talking about.

I also had to let things be. In taking a pause, I got to fill up on reading about, of all things, the genius in each of us that relentlessly shapes our lives. I also had a most profound nature experience: the swift river flowing over immovable me. I understood how I am sculpted beautifully over time by life, like the granite boulders in the wild river's current. I felt grounded, joyful, satisfied. No pressure to do, just the bliss of being present and awake to incredible simple beauty. A day like that just fills my soul.

And now I have to pay attention to unexpected opportunities and support coming along - the days away at the river, a trip to see family and friends, a teaching gig, an inquiry about commissioned art, a new service project. These things pop up most often when I'm at my lowest, as if the Universe is saying: don't give up, keep going.

So that is what I'm doing.

The Pause

A while back I missed my Friday morning routine of house plant watering. So my maidenhair fern, which had grown several lush arms, is now all crispy. So again I cut it back to black stubble and wait for new tender green fuzzy spirals to emerge. I have yet to nurture this plant to fullness, and yet it still comes back, as if it trusts untrustworthy me to return to this practice. 

After beating myself up about it, I see I am consistently inconsistent. I can sustain a yoga routine for a few months, then I miss a class and that's it for three years. Or only remember to take my blood pressure when my doctor's appointment is looming. Anything that is a routine routinely gets interrupted. 

But perhaps this is not a bad thing. In that time out, maybe my energies are needed elsewhere. And coming back to a practice after a break, we may be chagrined, but also refreshed and ready to commit in a way that's more fitting. After all, the point is not to become robotic and perfunctory, but to actively choose to show up.

I'm wondering if it's just me or if it's a universal human thing to break out of rhythm. The pause is a space where integration can happen naturally. My birthday today,Winter Solstice this weekend, and New Year's beyond that all say the same thing: time for another round on the great spiral of life. But they are all pause points too. Time to reflect, revisit our vision, recalibrate our trajectory. A pause to get current.  

In this winter holiday season, I hope you get a chance to slow down enough to pause and choose what's important now.

     

W is for Wanting

It would be simple if we could just acknowledge that we want what we want.

Instead we want something and skip to the getting, as if to make the wanting itself go away. But we don't often rest in fulfillment either. We are somehow unsatisfied with the having. So we quickly find more wanting. To break this frenetic cycle, we can bring mindfulness to our wanting.

Say I have a craving for chocolate mint chip ice cream. Instead of rushing out to the corner store, I could pause as I tie my shoes and and say to the part of me that wants ice cream Yes, I know you're here. And then listen.

What do I really want? In that pause between wanting and acting, I might learn that the craving is really a longing to feel full. Hmm, curious. Just in the wondering, I find that there's more to it. Feeling full here means there'd be no space for worry about X. More curious!

So it's not about the ice cream. It's about not wanting to deal with the worry about X. This other part, this worry about X, clearly needs to be given some space of its own. So I could say Yes, here you are to that part worrying about X. I might then learn that it's trying to protect me from something bad happening. And the only way it knows how to do that is worrying. And that it wants this other outcome.

I acknowledge that wanting. Letting all the wanting be here is so powerful. And it calms down the need to take immediate action on any of them.

So acknowledging the wanting in ourselves and in parts of ourselves can open up the way to our deeper wisdom. It doesn't mean that I have to act on anything that the various parts say, unless it's good for our whole being. It is vital to validate that they want what they want, to make space for inclusion.

When a craving, a yen, a desire strikes, take some mindful time to be with it first. Let me know what unfolds.

Pregnant Pause

This spring has left me exhausted and preoccupied by the generational shift. My parents are going into assisted living, and we siblings need to take care of them now. My routine, such as it is, has fallen apart. This is a good thing, an opportunity to get current with how I want to be as a grown up and master of my fate.

The pregnant pause, I've been calling it. This falling out of rhythm to fall back in. Athletes course correct and it happens minutely every time you turn the steering wheel of your life. It's usually asking me to show up for my life and giving me an opening to do so. In journaling, Focusing, and other deep inquiry, I'm making a loose net bag to gather and carry the jumble of my life.


PS: On my street the Ruby Slippers I wrote about in the spring have run off, but same-sex weddings are here to stay. Not that marriage is for everyone, but civil rights certainly are.