When It’s Time to Wake Up
I’ve been out of the work force for 5 years, slowly trending out of a capitalistic system for 8. All I knew as I received my last paycheck was that I was following a feeling, a push into the arms of the unknown and undiscovered.
I followed these feelings through the familiar and remembered confidence of physical service, namely guiding classes of yoga and fitness. After all, the thread of gymnast, cheerleader, and dancer in my younger years was the very foundation for which I began this life. But then something strange happened, I stopped. Dead in my tracks as another feeling forced its way into my awareness. More than a feeling it was a core-centered knowing that the runway was ending. Only so far was I allowed to go before the edge gave way into yet another unknown abyss. As though confidence and comfortability was given only just a few short years to live. I knew this feeling, but I avoided it at every turn, until the wave became tidal and the inevitable doom came knocking. Grief.
This scary, and all too real pit of uncontrollable dread found its way out of my heart and every pore of my skin. Over the span of two years, I died. Over these years every emotion I’ve been repressing in order to fit in, to conform to, to hold onto the safety of the established familiar becomes known to my conscious awareness. There was no more hiding from the inevitable sacrifice of choosing human life. I couldn’t cease the impetus to seek and my life path is one of bringing light into dark places. Of course, it had to begin with me.
This healing had to begin through the outworking of my own psychology, the mental make-up of beliefs carried down from the ages informing me of who I am, what I am, and why I am. The past, a vast repository of memories and stored impressions of human history. A caldron brewing the unconscious deeds of karmas, ready to be served up as medicine for the growing healer.
This process taught me a lot about strength, the kind that doesn’t come merely by willing the body to work. But will is essentially vital in the outworking of personal and collective karmas. I’m referring to the strength to still the mind long enough to allow the surge of some greater force to clean sweep out generations of rage. I’m speaking of the kind of strength that overrides the system when it’s screaming for help and reaches for the familiar distraction. When the self turns its eyes upwards and says, take me, I give all of me unto you. The strength that replaces will for faith and trusts in the order of some higher plan.
Having and cultivating awareness through these experiences has aligned me onto a path in which I understand all of my past as a prerequisite. The Ageless Wisdom teaches that in order to embark on a spiritual journey, a well rounded personality must serve as foundation. For awhile I saw my shortcomings as personal failures, that I hadn’t done enough or worked hard enough to see my wants to completion. The gymnast never became the Olympic athlete. The cheerleader never stood atop the pyramid at a collegiate game. The advertising exec didn’t bring home six figures. The fitness enthusiast hadn’t gained thousands of followers. The woman never became a wife or mother.
These experiences were never meant to fulfill me, not in the ways that my soul desired. These are roles, storybook characters fit to serve as temples for gaining awareness through their respective experiences. So if the roadway ran short, was it truly a track I was meant to keep treading, or had I gained all I was meant to gain there?
As the years went by and more experience was gained tending to my inner world, awareness began crystalizing around the notion that the outer world was a hall of mirrors. Everything outside of me has its roots within me; every want, every desire, any feeling of unfulfillment could be cultivated towards contentment by aligning myself in full faith with the force of the greater. Call it God, Creator, Higher Self; but know it’s not a blanket surrender. There is a willed intention of co-creation; and it is my personal responsibility to be in response to the outpourings of divine Self-calling. To know that I am required to generate experiences in order that more of the soul aspect can crystalize into all levels of my being.
The difference? I am no longer unconscious. Every beginning has its endings and every action has its reaction. Knowing my place in the grand scheme has softened a lot of the hustle. Knowing that I am here to sample the flavors of a variety of experiences without fully rooting in any, offers a gentle stroke to my forehead when the rational mind stirs forth the memories and feelings of inadequacy for not committing to one thing. The difference is knowing myself and embarking on the journey within. Self study of my actions, what is motivating me; questioning everything and asking those fundamental questions of who am I and why am I here; seeking to understand — above everything else — seeking to understand has been the guiding force through the cave of shadows and into the light of freedom.
Ironically, the freedom is that from incessant questioning. Revealing to myself the answers that I seek, when at first I believed something in the outer world had them, some person or some place could give them to me. Realizing the self as teacher has instilled the kind of confidence that is everlasting. Knowing that I need not depend upon another to solve my greatest fears and hangups is profoundly empowering and humbling.
Having the understanding for why something happened in the past has regenerated stagnant emotional energy into unbelievable joy. When the nature of ones true self is no longer a mystery, the mind can take rest in the nest of the soul. The rebirth from this place is utterly exquisite, and it does require the experiences of building a new kind of foundation, one not rooted in the limited wants and fleeting desires of the personality, but rather a composted soil that contains the fragments of many weathered storms of treading the path back to Source. Like the madrone tree that bears her milky skin at the turning of the fall season, raw and exposed waiting for whatever winter has to offer; this is the kind of foundation that is built by having one foot in both worlds, listening for the whisper of spirit and the rousing discernment to respond.
So this is where I find myself today, building a new kind of foundation. Understanding that my past has offered me the kinds of inheritance that has prepared me for this journey of initiation. The pivotal point in all of human evolution where one stops dead in ones tracks, seemingly lost and confused, unsure of which way to turn, lays down their past and listens. The path that leads one through quicksand to learn lightness of feet; into caves to see through the darkness; across barren deserts to remember to have faith; to climb mountains to develop steadfastness. The path that leads us deeper into our own version of suffering to show us how to build the ladder that we ourselves must get ourselves out of.
No one else was born as me, thus it is my responsibility to set myself free. When I didn’t know which way to go, I stopped. Many right angles fills the corners of my past. Not because I didn’t will the path hard enough, but because there was something else in store for me to experience. There was an area of consciousness requiring my tending which meant many many episodes of loosening the grip I had on my previously envisioned destiny.
It wasn’t the path of the gymnast, nor the dancer, yogi, executive, mom; but rather walking the path of synthesis, extracting from each experience the essence of their teachings to build me into the brand of authenticity that is unique to me. I take with me what is required and leave the rest, eyes ever on the horizon, heart a cosmic magnet radiating from my chest.
