expansion, discomfort and revelation, part 2

i have had the most wonderful experience, these last few years, of having and being a neighbor.  my favorite neighbor is a womon named jackie who has lived across the street from me for as long as i've been here.  she's been here for 20 years, i've been here for two.  when i first came to live in the house that has been my sanctuary, i looked over at her yard, full of veggies and flowers in a beautiful, santa fe style tiered garden and thought, "i wonder who lives there.  i want to know".  so when i first saw her out in the garden with her powerful arms, her brilliantly wide green eyes and her awesomely earthly presence, i went to engage her.  from that engagement blossomed a wonderfully enriching and totally unique relationship for which i am eternally grateful.  today it changes, as she has pulled a moving truck our of her driveway and is on her way to oregon with her daughter.  as i was walking by the house today (when she was supposed to already be gone), i saw her moving the truck, and she called to me.  she came so we could hold each other once more and give thanks for the blessing this communion has been for both of us.  there was a beautiful stone in my pocket that i had carried for a few years and that she had seen before and loved.  i love it too, but it called clearly in that moment to go with her and hold her in love for her journey and beyond, so i pressed it into her palm with all blessings before flowing back out into the river on my own journey.  i am so proud of her.  it is so huge for her to leave this hermits nest of hers and go out into the world to start new stories in new places.  and she does so in service, so that her pregnant daughter has her support in the journey of inviting life into the third dimension.  they go in honor of the indigenous family model, conjoined in support for one another.  it is so very, very inspiring.

it brings me into contemplation of movement, change, loss and invitation.  there is so much of all of this right now, as people graduate from various places and move into new eras of being, as people move, as people kinverge in love or separate in love, as things die and are born...  there is so much that i've been thinking of as i am on the cusp of my own change, on the precipice of my own cliff, spreading my wings before flight through the canyon.  where there was a lover and an engagement there is space that i have no drive to fill with another body.  i am relishing the subtle and dynamic unfolding of the energies of loss and liberation as i relish the transparency of cactus-flower petals saturated with rain.  it is their fleeting saturation that so enriches their color, and only stillness allows me to experience it.  i can only suckle the water from their contours if i lower my lips to the bloom with utmost care and awareness, for there are thorns to stab me all around that luscious tenderness.  and so soon, so soon, will it all change, and i do not want to miss the earth under my feet by only looking ahead and up because i think that's what i should do.  now is the time to look down and in, to see all that is tiny and magical and changed by time and circumstance.  it is time to learn from all that has been in these weeks and innerstand the ways that i have been affected and the new ways that i will arrive to reality because of those effects.  precious moments, these.  i could not have scripted them better.

as the storm of my emotions subsides and the stillness of the nourished earth resides in the present, i am able to be clear with what calls forth to be honored in this moment.  i still yearn towards the magical valley of tree, mountain and water that i did when i had a lover to go to there as well.  the land still calls me, and to that call i give due heed.  i still revel in the miracle of synchronicity that continues to be my experience, and that reveling continues to push me towards a kind of deeply settled nomadism that will lead, i feel, towards a home that is actually mine to rest in, sometime in the future now.  there is much to offer through this vessel of myself, and its gifts are requested in many places.  my dear friend the musician offered me to tour with her for the summer as a guest.  my colorado family invokes me for ceremony and art.  my northern family invokes me for re-integration.  there is much to learn, to do, to give and receive in these coming moons.  and there are great and immediate changes looming overhead, the magnitude of which cannot be predicted by little human minds, because they are the type that shatter all limitations by being beyond the scope of imagination.  curiously, i feel that an unrooted groundation is the way that i am meant to serve creation in these moments.  interesting.  i have allies everywhere i go, love and family everywhere i go, and infinite potential for more.  i love towards the valley community, but have no attachment to immersion if now is not the time and work is not the way.  perhaps because the akashic wisdom of my eternal self knows of a trajectory far more complex and unusual than the one that i think of casting for myself.  that would seem appropriate given my story so far.

it's funny because i don't have this perspective on myself, but when i struggle and wonder, everyone who knows me says "you've always got it together, so relax and let your together come".  i laugh and wonder at the stories i tell about myself.

part of this expansion is in the patience required to let the whole wave flow through me.  we are, as a collective, very good at starting things, carrying them through and receiving the benefit of our dedication up to that point of investment.  we are, collectively, very inept at completion and closure.  in our little society working to become a culture we are very enamored with the positive arc of the journey, and very allergic to the negative arc of the journey (value neutral, this concept of pos/neg).  we love to start things and feel the rush of inception (falling in love).  we love to sink in and feel the rush of expansion (the beauty of deep immersion).  we start to squirm and look outward in difficulty (turbulence and boredom after the high of the new has passed and you are just there with each other as you each are and no dopamine to make each other sparkly pretty).  we really struggle when the shit-or-get-off-the-pot choice comes along where you have to decide if your invested or bored, then we usually totally dissociate from completion and closure, because we have no working models for that aspect of the journey - most of us don't even realize that it's there to attend to.  people also resist the completion and closure aspect of an engagement because in our society, being done with something is usually imbued with all sorts of negative connotations, like abandonment or rejection.  in business deals it's different, in projects it's different, but in relationships this plays out over and over again.  people jump ship when the going gets rough because we are afraid of being hurt and not being able to heal, and we are afraid that attending to the end will be too hard for us to arrive to, or we just don't want to show up because by the time we admit that we're done, we've already been done for awhile and resent needing to give more energy to the process.  or perhaps we are afraid that we will miss the next beginning by being present for the present end.  so many different things to consider, yes?  every situation is it's own reality.

but i grow.  i make closure with my lover, bless him, and then sit with myself for as long as i need to to truly understand what's happening within me.  i don't reach for the next body to "scratch my itch" or to "experience divine communion".  now is not the time for that, and i would miss something really valuable if i did.  i reach into myself and my work and my community to nourish what in me is wounded and needs support, and i rest into ceremony to light up the learning that i am gifted with in this journey.  i celebrate what work i have done well, i celebrate the love that has continued to be free-flowing in the journey, i celebrate the way that i have triumphed over old demons in this process.  

i celebrate that i am not a slave anymore.  this is what i see more than everything else.  i am not a slave anymore.  i am not a slave to men, to attention, to sex, to fear.  i am not a slave to my insecurities.  i am not a slave to circumstance.  i am not a slave to my wounded past.

that's fucking HUGE.  that's the fruition of years of work.  that's no minor thing for me, and the whole journey is beyond worth it to have that truth revealed.  this whole journey is the completion stage of those years of work.  the invitation to arrive to the challenge to all of the work that i've done.  it is the saturn that says "how far did you go, really?".  i have gone very, very far to be as deeply within as i am, and i cannot lose that center anymore.  

i see a cycle in my life that is fascinating and beautiful.  i pass through a period of external experience that affects me and fills me with information through challenge and nourishment.  then i go into an internal phase where i reflect on all that has passed and work with myself to integrate, heal, empower and prepare for re-emergence.  then i go to the external again in a series of new endeavors and engagements wherein the work that i had done is called up and reviewed through challenge and nourishment, and the next phase of the work is introduced through the same means.  in this process, i am constantly forged by life and experience.  as i grow in linear time i realize that all of my experience colludes to sculpt me in a cohesive vision that i can now begin to own as My Path.  in this process i realize, as well, that there is no past and no future, there is only the expansive and contractive movement of omni-dimensional time proffering circumstance for personal and transpersonal development.  the communion of the transcendent and the terrestrial.

i accept.  and thank you, universe, for being present with me, for nurturing and supporting me in all if my challenges, and for being there so fully for me to worship and adore as i do.

so good...

may it serve