I wrote this article yesterday and then this morning I have come from watching an hour-long programme about the war in the Middle East. I feel it’s not possible for me to say anything of value without first acknowledging the reality of the suffering and apocalypse that is present in our world. Whether you are someone who follows global news or avoids it, whatever your opinions and allegiances, at some level of our being we are all affected by the stress of living in a world in which so many human lives are being taken, so much of the infrastructure of cultures is being destroyed, and how much of life itself is under threat. We live in an interconnected world, we are all part of the same energy field, we breathe the same air, our energy and feelings communicate across distances, separation is an illusion.
Living with stress, especially when it is stress that is unacknowledged or not spoken about, undermines our ability to be fully functioning and creative human beings. Stress is a killer and we’re in a pandemic.
Let me bridge back to the article I wrote yesterday about creative tension and attempt to connect the dots.
We live in a shared story of being human
I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity over my lifetime to work in depth with many hundreds of women and men in several different countries around the world. People have been willing to open their hearts to me, tell me their stories and show me the landscapes of their inner worlds. At the same time, I’ve been on my own healing journey exploring both my inner world and how I show up in the outer world. This combination of listening to others and getting to know myself has shown me that, although we are each unique and have specific gifts and contributions to make, our most personal stories are not so personal after all but the shared stories of being human.
One of the insights I’ve had about being human is, that, for most of us, as much as we may long for freedom, we also fear being free and crave our habitual comfort zones. As much as we desire love, we also fear relationship and avoid situations of real intimacy. We may long to experience wholeness and yet we cling to limiting beliefs and habits. We seek out healing and yet we distract ourselves from the solace and regenerative power of silence and stillness that awaits us in solitude. In other words, our longing for love, creative freedom and living in wholeness exists, and can become entwined with, entropy and resignation to such an extent that we become trapped.
Let me unpack a little how this works with three everyday examples that many of you will be able to relate to.
Longing and fear are closely intertwined
Let’s say you are longing for loving touch and, either, you’ve got into the habit with your partner of not touching much, or you don’t have an intimate partner. In either case, as soon as the longing arises you dismiss your feeling and replace it with resignation or resentment. Then, instead of reaching out for touch you reach for sweet food, a glass of wine, or some other form of compensation.
Or let’s say, you have a busy family and social life in which you’re spread thin with many relationships and demands, and what you’re longing for is some time on your own in a beautiful and quiet location where you can be still and recharge your batteries. Your longing may show up as fleeting fantasies of beautiful places or surfing the net for retreats and holidays. But you stop short of taking time away on your own because you think you would be seen as selfish, and this could lead to your loved ones abandoning you.
Or, you’re an artist and it’s been too long since you took out the tools of your craft and enjoyed creative play. For whatever reason, your artistic life has become a locked room where your paints and easel are gathering dust, and whenever you feel your longing for the heady mix of challenge and fulfilment that making art brings, the burden of judgment and limiting beliefs falls heavy on your shoulders and you turn away.
These are three examples of fear winning out over longing. In each case neither the longing or the fear is being given the space to be fully experienced, acknowledged or examined. You don’t give yourself space to feel the fear and you nip your longing in the bud before it has time to blossom. And so it comes dressed up as resignation, self-defeating limiting beliefs and comfort zone habits. All of which can easily turn into depression, fatigue and ill-health. Stress really can be the starting place for serious illnesses.
Feelings motivate action, repressing feelings keeps you stuck
Feelings are motivators showing us what we want and need. When you allow yourself to feel your longing and let it grow, it will motivate you to act, and action can lead you into a creative flow which will answer your longing. When you don’t allow enough space to feel your energy becomes stuck and then stagnant.
There are all sorts of reasons why we fear our longings, too many for me to go into here, but one reason is that longing is not a very comfortable state, it can be intense, it can make you feel inadequate, it brings you in touch with what you don’t have, it reminds you of previous life experiences when you were hurt or humiliated, it brings you into beliefs about lack – I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough money, I’m not good enough. It can bring up fears of abandonment – if I do what’s right for me, I’ll lose love and respect.
So, you think you can be more comfortable if you put a lid on your longings, better to numb yourself, better not to feel. Longings can carry you into the unknown, change the direction of your life, shift your identity and your ideas of who you are. Longings can be dangerous, unpredictable, irrational and counter-cultural.
I get all of that. It’s safer to stay put, it’s safer not to take risks.
As I’m writing this, I’m thinking of how our consumer society has conditioned us to desire things that we want to have, things we can add to ourselves to make us feel more lovable, more successful, more comfortable. In following these surface desires we can easily become distracted from the real meaning and purpose of life and contribute to the dangers of the consumer society.
But what about our deeper longings?
In my experience, longing can be the call of Soul. It can be life calling you out and pointing you in a direction where you can expand into more of your beautiful wholeness and creative potential. It can be the key to the door of spiritual freedom.
How can you know whether your longings are distractions based on old limiting habits or gateways to life, adventure and fulfilment, if you don’t stay long enough with your longing and touch your fear, so that you can know them? I’m not saying it’s easy – the more you allow yourself to feel, the more the creative tension inside you builds. As it gets harder to hold this tension between longing and fear, the impulse to collapse the tension and choose distraction get stronger. If you are on a conscious path, a path of service to the emerging whole, it’s vitally important to build your transformational muscles.
The first step is to bring awareness into your body, feel and witness whatever is arising.
When we recognise and allow these opposing forces of longing and fear and how they set up a tension within us, we can practice holding the tension.
Hold it all, contain it all, experience the tension, notice the limiting beliefs, be discerning. This then opens the possibility for moving into the creative cycle of transformation and experimenting with the creation of what we truly long for.
And if you do this with intent and with curiosity, one day the tension will release and propel you towards what your soul is truly longing for. And you may not know what that is until you make the journey. Then the tension can transform into intention and the real work of creating can begin – and that’s the second form of creative tension we need to practice holding.
So how does this relate to where I started, with the reality of war, suffering and the destruction of life on our planet?
The way I see it, we can either choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution. I can’t be part of the solution if I’m closed off from my feelings, if I’m closed down by fear, or if the only feelings I will allow myself to have are rage and righteousness. To be part of the solution, I need to be willing to feel all my feelings in response to what is happening in my world. This is the beginning of response-ability, the ability to respond.
As I sat watching the programme on tv this morning my heart was hurting. On any day, feelings of outrage, deep grief, fear, total inadequacy, raw frustration and compassion, can run through me like a fast-flowing river and I’ve trained myself over the years to allow this flow of emotion, to be present with it and aware, to make my being into a container for it and to transmute it. This takes its toll; to feel so much, so intensely can be exhausting – and that same exhaustion is going on in the background even when you are unaware or in avoidance. We are interconnected, there is no place to escape from any of this. The only way out is through.
As I sat with my aching heart this morning, I recognised I don’t have any answers, I don’t even have any opinions worth expressing. The situation in the Middle East and in the world, is extremely complex and way beyond my abilities to solve. But, when I recognise I am in the presence of a situation which is life threatening and I don’t have any answers, I can surrender to compassion and beginner’s mind. And that is the place where I can begin to be part of the solution. As long as I’m consumed by righteousness, judgment and opinion, I am part of the problem. When I surrender into beginner’s mind and compassion, I am free to live as if the way I choose to live makes a difference. I am free to set my intention to be the peace the world is longing for and to hold a space for the transformation of life on Earth, right here in my heart.
Choosing to be the peace the world is longing for is not a cop-out or an easy option, it’s the path of emotional and spiritual mastery and very challenging. I’ve been on this path for decades now and I fail at it every day and I forget every day that this is the path I have chosen.
I realise everything I’ve said here is inadequate and there is so much more to say. But if anything I’ve said has touched you or given you new insight, then it was worth the effort.
I’m in the process of getting my Build Your Soul Sanctuary Programme ready and pulling together the threads of The Transformational Learning Community, so that those of you who could benefit from transformational practice can join me. Everything takes longer that I ever think it will and I’m working with an emergent process. Before next weekend I hope to have the final stepping stones in place.
