I’ve been struggling all week with how to articulate what has
been going on for me during this juncture.
It has been a long, protracted set of experiences that have been
building and receding since juncture started.
We are close to transitioning out of early winter and into the throes of
late winter. This past week or so has been
challenging, but not in the typical way I find myself challenged. This is why I
am struggling to find language for what I’ve been going through. I think if I break it down into a few smaller
pieces, I might have a chance to convey some of what has been going on.
Digging out the
Shells
As I look back at my meditations building up to the
juncture, I can’t help but pause at the one in which I was digging out shells
from the dirt that filled my hip and pelvis region. It was imagery that was irrepressible in the
meditation. I kept digging up those shells.
Little ones at first. But the shells grew in size, eventually becoming larger than my body. The release of these shells compromised the
dirt to such a degree that I fell through.
I fell into a deeper darker place. It was not heavy and wet,
though. It was dry dirt that crumbled
all around me. There was an odd
lightness to it. It was unlike anything
I’ve felt. It was a weird combination of both the holding heavy energy of kapha
and the arid light energy of vata.
I see now how much that moment was my entry into
juncture. I was taken into a new space that was beyond any habit energy I
have come to identify in myself and beyond any clear marker of doshic
categorization. I had (literally,
meditatively) fallen into juncture and I felt as though I had landed on a whole
new plane of existence. I felt like an
alien in my own body.
Thinking about those shells as various obstacles I have
internalized over many years, their movement unsettled everything inside of
me. It is no wonder that my catch phrase for
the past 10 days has been, “everything just feels off.” And it has. My rhythm for class, for work, for my
relationships, has felt out of sync. For
much of this juncture, I have been trying to get back in sync, but what I
realized yesterday is that I am not supposed to get back in sync with those old
patterns. I realized that it’s time to fully embrace a whole new set of life rhythms
and patterns.
First the Breaking,
then Kintsukuroi
My love of the word kintsukuroi cannot be overstated and it
has been fused into me as I’ve been engaging in my winter journey this
year. The understanding that something
becomes more beautiful for having been broken is both poetic and freeing.
It is in the cracks that the creative juices flow and the uniqueness of
our self emerge. But before that
uniqueness can ever be revealed, we must not just break; we must
acknowledge and pay homage to what has chipped away, shattered, cracked.
If I take the imagery of falling deeper into my inner world,
I watch myself falling deeply into the sacred pelvic area of my body and
cracking it. Breaking it.
And this happened smack dab in the center of juncture. Last weekend I broke. There is no other way to say this. I fell and I broke.
Clinging to Kapha, Clearing
out Vata
What did that look like in my world? It looked like me crying uncontrollably for
what was ultimately a minor spat between me and my significant other. It took the
whole week to make sense of what had happened. I still can’t tell you why I was crying so
deeply. It was a crying I haven’t
experienced in years. It was deep. It came from such a depth within my body that there
was nothing I could do but try to soothe myself and just let it happen.
What I started to understand was that I was desperately trying
to cling to a part of myself that was no longer sustainable. It was like
something deep inside of me was in a tug-o-war.
I was trying to hold onto the small fragments of a narrative that
insisted that I am a victim. That things happen to me. That I am alone with no
recourse, no way out. It is a terrible
story, but it is a story that is comforting in the worst of times. As I tried to tell that story to myself to
soothe my tears, the tears came out faster and more furiously. I was scared. I was scared I might lose my significant
other with this transition in my story and I was scared that I was losing a
significant part of myself.
The imagery of my cracked pelvis is the best metaphor I have
for telling the story of what was happening to me. First
the breaking, then kintsukuroi. The
energy of kapha was trying to hold tight.
Terrified of change, it wanted to go back to that old story, but I
couldn’t. Kapha knew that, too, but denial is
a powerful thing. Yet those broken bits
and pieces of my pelvis kept moving and shifting, demanding a way out. I had to make room; it all couldn’t fit
anymore. And when I think of the odd
heaviness inside of me all that week, I can see now that I was struggling to
get something out, but I was terrified to let it go. The clinging and holding was powerful, but it
was existing simultaneously with the deep desire driving that underlying layer of my
pelvis. It is a layer that wanted air, it wanted to push up and through and
show its beautiful, stronger, more resilient self that has been working hard to
clean the shards and insert that beautiful gold glue that holds me together in a
powerful way. But that power is
terrifying to me. I don’t entirely understand
it. I’m not entirely comfortable with
it. But it is here and I need to start learning it.
Earlier this week, there was a clear release that
physically transpired. My body just let
go, but it wasn’t like the sun suddenly appeared down on me with birds singing
peacefully in my ear. In fact, at first, I had no
idea what was going on. I felt like shit. My body felt like it was revolting and after
some of that revolt released, it felt tired and stripped.
I felt more off than ever. Slowly, though, over the remainder of the
week, I started to feel my way out of that.
And it is as I sit here, writing this down, that I understand better what
was happening over the past 10 days or more.
I can’t explain all that was released. I don’t think that is
the point. My sense is that some of it
was very old shit that just finally found its way out. What became clear to me,
though, was that I needed to fully release it and that meant not
examining. Not analyzing. Just releasing. Expanding.
"Expansion": Paige Bradley |
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