Pausing through March

"Letting go means
letting come and go, letting be.
Letting go means
opening to the wisdom of allowing.
This is nonattachment." -- Lama Surya Das

That one quote, aside from making me catch my breath just a little bit in truth and awareness, pretty much sums up the month of March for me: letting go. 

It was letting go in both its small and large forms, some of which meant simply letting go of time -- I didn't open my datebook once during that month, didn't look at my calendar on the wall once (actually forgot it even existed!), I didn't plan for anything.  Unusual, yes, and completely out of character.  I hardly live in the calendar montage, but I am quite cognizant of linear time when I am fully here, and yet even in Spirit there is that awareness, because I'm here, my contract is here, and so Here maintains a level of responsibility that I must facilitate and abide by, per "contract" rules, after all.

March has, in the past, been a month of tremendous transition and pain.  Generally coming off of frequent visits in the land of desperation ("depression") in February, March begins a purge -- suitable for Ostara and birthing and rebirthing of the Earth -- in year's past I have found myself on the surface of a volcanic eruption.  It's the one time of year where my inner bitch roars, though not harming those around me, but letting an implosion stir before an eruption around my environment begins, and I'm feisty.  Not pleasant, not sassy, just miserable, feeling my skin crawl, feeling the inside needing to purge -- I have spent 3-4 years in March in the emergency room with the most random virus that can only be manifested by my Higher Self to sit down and shut the fuck up.  After these years of painful hospital visits I made the conscious choice that I could purge without needing to be poked and prodded with needles or the violent bile that burns through my stomach... and so it just stopped.  Imagine that: conscious decisions manifesting change... insert universal giggle here!

From there I decided to rewind a bit.  What was going on in March that had me so ill every year?  What happened in February that would make me go so within my cave and my depression that I would need to, for lack of a better word, lash out?  When it was figured out, it was just gone -- it was as though it merely needed to be understood, like a complicated math equation, and once it was discovered it didn't have the same meaning, certainly not of the same intensity as it once had, and so it could be what it needed to be: part of the process.

This year I decided everything could be put on hold.  It's not to say that I didn't keep up with important meetings or classes or whatever else was actually in the datebook that was never opened, because I did, but most everything else was just put on a shelf, left to be viewed peripherally, but not actually touched.  It was freeing.  It was necessary.  I had more pressing, internal matters to tend to.  A healing and purging were rising to the surface, and I gave myself permission to process through it with ease.

I went back to the quote, my theme for March, and I just allowed.  Old wounds resurfaced and I didn't panic.  I didn't tear, I didn't hide, I wasn't afraid.  It was there, it came, it went, it was very much like the waves of the ocean, and in the end those waves became a catalyst for my healing.

It's not to say that I'm not still clinging.  I am.  I'm clinging to one major piece, one piece that isn't necessary to carry anymore.  However, it's not something I'm stripping away in a moment.  It's a mindful process of conscious release... release and letting go, not "getting rid of".  This healing gave me more clarity on this clinging piece.

I had a soul healing from a trusted friend and teacher recently, one who knows as much about my past traumas as less than a handful of other trusted individuals, even the deepest shame I sometimes am unable to share with others, yet it becomes more pressing as time continues, and as my own work develops and redevelops, that this one piece of "shame" must be shared (though not today). 

The session was great.  Powerful.  Healing.  Scary.  I vocalized on more than on occasion that the drive over was met with fear.  It wasn't paralyzing fear, just heart-racing "what will happen next" kind of fear.  It wouldn't stop me, and I refused to allow it to (and told my friend as such -- that even if I say "I'm scared" that I just needed a good arse-kicking, and this friend was willing to do so!). 

My world has been different since then.  Clearer.  My sense of awareness is so much more crisper than it had been.  Even the way I receive messages now has shifted.  Everything is... my inner voice says "easy", and yet I feel the need to clarify that "easy" is not how we interpret "easy" to be... it's just easy.  It's simple, it's profound, it's gentle but powerful.  Why?  Because it is -- because I've let it... in this format I have opened to the wisdom of allowing and attuned with nonattachment. 

I have been looking within and processing, but I have been also looking at the scope around my perimeter.  What do others need?  What can I offer?  What is ego's role (from its functionality) and when does it stand back (away from its dysfunction) and become pure?  My layers of understanding my role In Service feels like it has shifted.  In visually looking at it, it was once even, like standing on a skateboard (which is a terribly analogy for me since I can barely walk and chew gum without my clumsy nature running amok!), just even, perhaps gliding from side to side, but the foundation being even.  Now the foundation has shifted... it has tilted, which in our society would make one think that it's "off-balance", however this isn't the case at all.  The image, in my case, of that balanced skateboard was true in form for that moment, for that time I built the foundation -- it was balance then because I believed it to be in balance, just like now I believe this appearance of the tilted foundation is balance, because I label it as true, but it's just an image, something for the brain to wrap its mind around, to somehow give meaning and to make sense of what it is that I'm trying to do, or aim for.  In the end the image doesn't matter.  It's just an image.  It's no-thing.

In the mix of not being online for most of March and stepping back from most cyber connections, I let myself be in that place of doing no-thing and enjoying it.  Things got done, yes, but time wasn't wasted.  I admit I spent most of the month submerged in reruns of "21 Jump Street" (I'm currently near the end of season three!)... a program I used to watch as a kid, it was more entertaining than reading about what others were (or weren't) doing on FB... plus it was fun to remember the monster crush I had on Johnny Depp then as a kid!  Tiger Beat photos of him on my wall?  That's right!

I needed something fun as I processed through what my power animals were sharing, what Purpose was driving into me, and because, frankly, watching Johnny Depp was sometimes more fun than swimming in the ocean.  We tell ourselves we can't do this because of that, and we shouldn't do that because of this... I maintained the structure of responsibility and stripped away the "shoulds" and the "have-tos" and allowed myself to do, literally, whatever I wanted to, without any notion of guilt or feeling like I was "supposed" to be doing something... in that moment I was supposed to be adoring Tom Hanson, that's it ;)

In that time I had also been thinking of another one of Lama Surya's quotes: "Killing time is deadening ourselves."  It made me shift my mentality that every thing I do, from chores to work to parenting to pure silliness, was done with conscious choice and with a release of external (and internal) judgment of how it was supposed to be.  I'm not killing time.  I'm consciously choosing this aspect in this moment. 

I have been told that it's time to gear up for busy Service, to reformulate a plan that was, essentially, already in the works, but not so far into it that it can't be restructured.  In the meantime, this weekend begins a stir of BUSY for some time to come.  There is so much necessity in the air, I'm not sure where my foot will land first, but I know it's ultimately at the base of the labyrinth...

)0(

Comments

kijjet said…
It can be so hard to allow ourselves time. Time to sort through things, time to "just be", time to heal. I'm so glad you gave yourself the time you needed over March and I look forward to reading more of your posts in April! :)

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