Yesterday I wrote about a very simple method of inner guidance I use to make decisions – following the energy. But there are times when decisions are not so easy and often we call these difficult times, when we can’t easily find our way through to the other side of suffering, “crisis”.
I’ve written a lot about crisis and transition over the last few years – it’s an important piece of the work I’m called to do. Last week something prompted me to dust off the Tribe in Transition programme I created and piloted last year. I was getting ready to offer it again when I suddenly realised I was in crisis myself.
It had been coming on for a while but I’d been running away from it, in denial, burying my head. Do you know those times when none of your tools or strategies or wisdom seems to work? You can see the situations and problems of others clearly but when it comes to your own – well, I was floundering. I could no longer escape from the growing feeling that everything I was doing felt empty and futile. I wasn’t comfortable in my skin. Angry, aggrieved voices were shouting in my head. I felt the ground was crumbling beneath my feet.
And so I decided to stop. Just stop.
I went and lay down on my bed and gave up trying. I gave up trying to make something happen. I gave up trying to get something from the outside to add to myself. I let go.
Very soon I started to relax and, as I relaxed, my sense of perspective and self love began to return. I took out a mandala I’d been saving for the right occasion and began to colour it – I always find this a very nurturing, meditative activity which calms my mind and takes me deeper. I found an inspiring conversation to listen to online to feed myself with higher thoughts. It was an interview with Andrew Harvey, a fiery, passionate mystic who always stirs me. He reminded me that the only important thing is to burn with love. In every moment.
I remembered simplicity. My “crisis” had been caused by trying to hold too many things in my mind, trying to work things out in my head, trying to make something happen. I need to make a big decision about whether to stay here in the UK or go back to New Zealand. It’s a decision about where home is. I’ve been trying to find my way home and in doing so I’d lost my connection with the only true home I have – my heart. And I’d lost connection with inner knowing and flow. I’d forgotten how to burn with Love. What a relief to drop back in! What a blessing to return to simplicity.
All I have to do is be here now, fully alive, fully embodied. Everything we need is already here. An open heart is touched by the ordinary, everyday beauty of life and, as it is touched, sends out ripples of gratitude and compassion. What could be more important?
It’s not possible to burn with love when you’re in a “crisis” – those times of big decisions, overwhelm and confusion, when you don’t know if you’re coming or going, when you’re distracted and pulled in many directions, when you don’t really want to be here, right here where you are. But eventually crisis throws open the doors of the heart, like a flood rushing through a room, everything is swept away, leaving space and simplicity.
Love is allowing life to touch and move and open us. Love reaches into the heart and cracks it open. Love burns through the body and explodes through the heart. Love is not always meek and gentle. Everything is part of Love – the crisis, the indecision, the angry voices, the trying too hard – it is all Love seeking a way through the conditioned interruptions of the mind, the obstacle race of rigid and inflexible attitudes, the resistance and defences we’ve built over a lifetime.
In this moment, Love is a pale morning sky and the singing of birds, it’s this cup of tea which has been grown and packed and transported and marketed by so many people who also love and suffer, it’s the book of poems on my bed which the poet cared enough to write and package and publish, it’s this woman sitting here at her computer conjuring words and feelings she hopes will reach and touch you.
Love is always here. It is in the connections and the spaces between beings. It’s the cosmic dance, the web of life, joy and sorrow, light and shadow. What if I lived everyday remembering this?
September 29th 2015
This blog spoke to me having been through a “similar” up the creek without a paddle scenario. Quote “I gave up trying to find something from the outside to add to myself”. Beautiful description Rose!
So I too let the new hole just be part of the “love” as well and left it to be ….. And all will be revealed! …. Three weeks later it abated and I remembered myself with relief and then an experience with women of “deep Listening” fed me and I recognised a fresh compassionate me was emerging! …..love ya!!
I love your insights and lyrical prose Rose and find myself very moved by your writing. It’s right on target for me. I’m nearly 3 years into a challenging period where I have been unable to work due to increasing health issues and have been grieving the loss of my Mum, a dear friend, and my health as well as the ability to support myself through work.
At times it has been very challenging and I am learning deeply the art of living one day at a time, of being as present as possible, especially in the routine parts of the days, and in appreciating the many small moments throughout my days where Love does manifest itself and where I can find a myriad of Blessings, of all shapes and sizes, if I open my heart and inner sight to them.
I have no idea where I’m heading and often feel mapless and rudderless. Yet presence can and often does anchor me securely in the moments and I’m coming to trust that being present and in Love is all that is all that I need; even more now, ironically, than ever before.
I have mourned stopping work, both paid and voluntary, and still find myself wondering at times what I am meant to be “doing with my life”, (as people frequently ask), as if that is the most important thing that defines me. My answer seems to be that my ‘life path’ is the one I am on right now; and being as awake as possible, whilst I walk in my life in kindness, in Beauty, IS my work.
Thank you for your clarity and beautiful prose.