It’s very still and quiet at this early hour. Ordinarily I would be half way through my yoga practice by now, but the shed is under construction, and have decided to lie in bed and watch the leaves moving outside my window. Despite the mornings of meditation, this moment feels like the first time I can really be still and let everything that’s happened over these past few months lap up against me.
I’ve been starting to make contact with myself. Just these brief flashes of….how do you describe it?? When I was in Burma it felt like a Star Wars light sabre rhythmically pulsing in the very center of me. It isn’t as strong as that now…but there are glimpses of it, and in those flashes everything I’ve been worrying about, fretting and hurting over disappear, because I guess it feels like whatever’s happened – I’m on the right path.
Many things have been changing. Not just my relationship status, but living arrangements, career, ties with my family and friends…some waning, some gathering strength…it’s the way of the world, ebbs and rises of connections and emotions and all of their sensations. It’s so easy to become overwhelmed and ill-at-ease. Swept up into things, and carried along, just trying to keep your head above water, and suddenly you start to panic about where you’ve got to. You have to reach out for something solid, something grounded, just so you can rest a while and make sense of your surroundings.
For me, that place is right here…in this light and open room, where my clothes have been partially folded in a chest of drawers, and a fragment of my book collection stacks precariously against the wall. Since December 2011, I have effectively been without a living space to call my own. Travelling, drifting, taking shelter under the love and generosity of friends and family. I have learnt so much, and have been humbled many times over. How do you ever repay such exceptional offerings of unconditional love?
Now I’m here, I feel a little bit lost. As if the earth has stopped spinning, and like suddenly getting off a fast-moving treadmill, my knees have buckled and I’m collapsing in a big heap, smashing things all around me. I don’t want to hurt or disappoint anyone, and I don’t want to mess this up….this incredible opportunity to make a home and finally…..finally…..build something of my own.
I guess I am afraid, and nervous about what lies ahead. Will the ayurvedic massage take off? Will I be able to re-integrate into a city I’ve known for so long, when so much of me has changed? Will I be able to open up and love someone, as I’ve so recently done…but lost?
In my moments of contact I feel great strength. As if all of this is possible, and everything I’ve done has got me here to this place, for which I feel so grateful. Even for the love lost, because in those moments any doubts I suffer over the genuineness of how I felt/feel, or what I thought we had dissolve. In those moments that I make contact all I feel is truth. My truth. For each of us, that is the only truth that matters. It is the truth in our bodies by which we measure what is real.
