Monday March 17, 2014
I find myself struggling with feelings of deep sadness and immense grief. Yes, I have spoken of these issues before. Perhaps you, my dear reader, will grow weary of reading of me expressing such heaviness...yet again. Afterall, Spring is coming, right? I'm alive, right? I'm still relatively young and in decently good health, right? Yes, these things are all true. And yet the heaviness overwhelms me at times. I had to schedule in a bit of time after dinner so I could go weep in the bathroom at the Aliveness Project. Compartmentalizing feelings can be so destructive. And now, as I stand on the other end looking back, I see just how harmful it can be. Now, as I am unlearning so much of the harmful conditioning from my earliest years of life, I appreciate time and time and time again just how much I was impacted by that time in my life.
I am grieving the loss of a family of origin who simply cannot be fully present to the depths of the feelings I have carried.
I am grieving as I realize I was seeing the world in a distorted way...both literally and metaphorically. I am grieving the immense length of time that passed in which I lived in this limited way.
Lately I want to hide. And in a very fitting way I came across something a friend posted on Facebook today. Read on:
HIDING
is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snow bound internal pulse of the hibernating bear. Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named. We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed. Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.
(This wisdom is taken from David Whyte: March 2014: Excerpted from ‘HIDING’ From the upcoming book of essays CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.)
Until last year it was as if the full power of my eyesight was hidden away. Now, each and every day I live, I enjoy the gift of amazingly clear vision. It's almost as if I am living out, yet again, the first days after I had laser correction surgery on my eyes four years ago. As my own eyes have opened with enhanced ability to perceive the world around me the world seems to have arced towards me and revealed itself to me with such an amazing panoply of textures and colors. It hasn't been very long since this phenomenon of clarified vision became something I grew to expect would become a regular aspect of my daily life. I cannot pinpoint the exact day I came to feel this 'new' vision would be with me for the long haul. And yes, one day I will die, and perhaps my vision will fade from its current glory long before I die, but for now I would prefer to savor this incredible change in my eyesight that makes each and every day I live such an amazingly vivid experience.
I hid for so much of my life because it was an adaptive strategy to cope with the nightmarish circumstances I had no ability to escape.
I am done hiding. I am now emerging. But I am still learning. I am still learning who I fundamentally am. Wasn't I supposed to be done with this already?
<Last comment was dripping with sarcasm>
I find myself struggling with feelings of deep sadness and immense grief. Yes, I have spoken of these issues before. Perhaps you, my dear reader, will grow weary of reading of me expressing such heaviness...yet again. Afterall, Spring is coming, right? I'm alive, right? I'm still relatively young and in decently good health, right? Yes, these things are all true. And yet the heaviness overwhelms me at times. I had to schedule in a bit of time after dinner so I could go weep in the bathroom at the Aliveness Project. Compartmentalizing feelings can be so destructive. And now, as I stand on the other end looking back, I see just how harmful it can be. Now, as I am unlearning so much of the harmful conditioning from my earliest years of life, I appreciate time and time and time again just how much I was impacted by that time in my life.
I am grieving the loss of a family of origin who simply cannot be fully present to the depths of the feelings I have carried.
I am grieving as I realize I was seeing the world in a distorted way...both literally and metaphorically. I am grieving the immense length of time that passed in which I lived in this limited way.
Lately I want to hide. And in a very fitting way I came across something a friend posted on Facebook today. Read on:
HIDING
is a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snow bound internal pulse of the hibernating bear. Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often in ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named. We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by a creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control. Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about our selves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed. Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.
(This wisdom is taken from David Whyte: March 2014: Excerpted from ‘HIDING’ From the upcoming book of essays CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.)
Until last year it was as if the full power of my eyesight was hidden away. Now, each and every day I live, I enjoy the gift of amazingly clear vision. It's almost as if I am living out, yet again, the first days after I had laser correction surgery on my eyes four years ago. As my own eyes have opened with enhanced ability to perceive the world around me the world seems to have arced towards me and revealed itself to me with such an amazing panoply of textures and colors. It hasn't been very long since this phenomenon of clarified vision became something I grew to expect would become a regular aspect of my daily life. I cannot pinpoint the exact day I came to feel this 'new' vision would be with me for the long haul. And yes, one day I will die, and perhaps my vision will fade from its current glory long before I die, but for now I would prefer to savor this incredible change in my eyesight that makes each and every day I live such an amazingly vivid experience.
I hid for so much of my life because it was an adaptive strategy to cope with the nightmarish circumstances I had no ability to escape.
I am done hiding. I am now emerging. But I am still learning. I am still learning who I fundamentally am. Wasn't I supposed to be done with this already?
<Last comment was dripping with sarcasm>
No comments:
Post a Comment
I invite you to accompany me as I document my own journey of healing. My blog is designed to offer inspiration and solace to others. If you find it of value I welcome you to share it with others. Aloha!