This is about clarity. A huge moment of it, which came just on the tail end so to speak of making love with my husband. I know some use nicotine to focus their mind, for others maybe meditation is the catalyst of choice. For me this morning, a big piece of the puzzle lay waiting in the arms of the man I love. As partners often will, he's watched me struggle with myself for years over one particularly persistent pattern that dogs my being. You see, I don't often stick with people, places, or things. I've made choices that manifest in much being left unfinished. Big things sometimes, like marriages, jobs, projects, even parenting when I was younger. You get the picture. Nothing too remarkable here- except that before this morning a piece of connective tissue that had been missing as to "how come" would finally get connected.
I call these missing pieces loose threads, and they're potentially transformative when they poke out your sleeve end at just the right moment. I lay there contentedly in my bed, beginning to contemplate the day as is my habit, and the feeling came. The one that always comes. The one that judges me for being directionless, lazy, lacking in meaningful goals and is accompanied by intense inner restlessness and impatience. "I must be in the wrong place on the planet- that's it. It must be time to move somewhere new". Or, it used to be "I must be in the wrong relationship", or "I must not being trying as hard as other people who deserve to live self-fulfilled lives".
So goes the refrain. Day after day like some irritating bit of plant fiber stuck between my teeth. The difference is that today this thread this time had a new context. The context that has come from a moment on the Isle of Iona while walking completely on my own down a windy dirt road in cold light rainfall one early July morning. Suddenly I just was. Walking. Nothing added or taken away. I noticed it. No needs and no mental static or distractions. My soul alone animating my two feet, each unhurried step following the other. Non-linear, totally awake, and completely at peace. This was it, and it was self-evident. No more searching. I was Rumi's poem come to life- I was what I was looking for. Like an answered prayer on two legs, I spent the rest of the day in perfect alignment with all that ever had been or would be. A gentleness, born of pure love and effortless appreciation shone from every pore of my being and I knew my Self to be timeless and perfect.
"You'll lose this when you're back home" I reminded myself. It wouldn't matter. Surely. I had walked through a gateway and that had to mean a door would remain open if only by the tiniest of cracks. It had to mean that somehow, back home in a very quiet suburban life I could still find my way back as many times as required until living in a place of enlightenment was easy.
Well, it hasn't been easy. The resistance to letting go of the old messages and mental patterns has been huge. Instead of the static becoming quieter it's become maddeningly louder. If you're an advanced spiritual teacher or an inherently wise soul reading this, you're most likely smiling or nodding at the perfection of this kind of angst following on the heels of a profound revelation.
But what about my Dad? He's been gone for a long time, which any good psychologist will tell you doesn't matter. A message from him, spoken to my eight year old self had taken root in my consciousness and was thriving like the root ball of a weed. "God gave you a gifted mind and you're going to waste it--because you have no self-discipline". He was probably just frustrated at the time, maybe I'd dropped the ball at school and disappointed his ambitions for me. Dad's expectations were high and his opinion was who I was- was how I saw myself and what I cared about most-- namely, pleasing him. Earning his hard won approval was everything. I'd seen this before- had waded through my family of origin work-- but this time I saw it. Classic, obvious, simple. Juxtaposed against a back drop of a mother who loved me unconditionally and whose one request was that I finish high school; I have been a self in limbo if not at war between ambition and ambivalence for forty some odd years. How wonderfully silly.
My husband stopped and looked at me and smiled. "That was the key message" he said. I looked at him and got it. Got that I wake up each day in a place of wishing that just for today I could stop feeling as Jackson Browne sang " I guess they've got a lot to do before they can rest assured, their lives, are justified". I'd been praying to God that she would let me slide, because I wasn't about to. Until now maybe. For just today...the mind my Dad said would be wasted, because that was his fear, his way to love me--that same mind has forgiven us both.
