When I write I often feel hesitant to write from the perspective of we, but even more so from the sole perspective of I. It’s a conundrum every time. Will this piece speak to anyone else? Is it clear that the story is personal parable? Or does it read as the mind-numbing navel gazing of thinking too much and not being able to weave a thread others can follow through the waves that brought me to the shore of this particular thought. Either way, here is a personal pearl started around a piece of grit offered by a friend and teacher recently.
I took on the task of making a commitment to myself and wrote something lovely, mostly passive, and assuredly benign about connection and full expression. My friend and teacher, pragmatic in the ways of making inner change happen, suggested something that was more active yet seemed unrelated. It was a commitment to creating a life oriented around my priorities and preferences. Don’t we all do that anyway? Aren’t we all walking bundles of priorities and preferences just trying to get met? Maybe. But that commitment felt right, something tugging at my belly that felt slightly scary, a little gritty, and just a tiny bit too big to wrap my arms around. So I said yes and it has irritated me since. Not the irritation that stems from agreeing to something that isn’t mine and builds to frustration, eventually letting out in passive aggressive forgetting or an unrelated and over-sized volcanic explosion. This was more like that little idea turning around and around within, elbowing some room for itself in the dense center of my being, so it could turn into a luminescent pearl reflecting a soft glow on its surroundings that I might better navigate from that center outward.
There are times it feels as though life aligns and the universe conspires around intention, especially those intentions that hum, or buzz, or sing. So with my little piece of sand in hand I ventured into my everyday and tried to think consciously about something I want. But the world is vast and there are so many choices that choosing can feel overwhelming. How can I possibly know what I want? For now and into the future?
Months of cultivating the ground of my being with dance, breathing, writing, painting, practicing with friends, and asking questions that appear to have no answer but to provide grit have put me in place to respond to that question, at least for today. I know what I want when I feel a certain way in my body. When I’ve cleared enough expectation, judgment, fear, and regret—other peoples’ and my own—from within and around it that I can hear its wisdom and follow its natural inclination toward fulfillment. And my mind begins to act in service to its wisdom and the path it meanders because it sees the relevance, deep meaning, and possibilities of the whole experience.
When I follow how something feels I am no longer lost when it doesn’t work out, when the path leads somewhere other than where I thought it would at the start. It’s possible that I know even less than when I started down this path but in the process found the way forward lined with pearls of truth.
How do you cultivate the ground of your being?
Photo credit: https://www.amazon.com/handmade/Rhonda-Chase-Design?ref=hnd_dp_smp_img_c
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