Yes to What?​

I had a discussion with a friend about the creative process and the idea that Life comes in all forms, even if at first it looks ugly or unsettling.  Sometimes what we turn away from holds a profound gift that we never get to if we are unwilling to look deeply, look past appearances and see what might be there for us.  The process of choosing Life is a parallel to the creative process as our engagement with Spirit can quickly move from what we thought we knew into a more complicated, wilder, more dangerous feeling arena.  Holding with grief, pain and sorrow is uncomfortable.  We would rather get their gifts of wisdom without actually having to touch them, feel them or hear their stories.  But they don’t give their wisdom so freely.  You have to be present to win.  And not just in the room either.  They demand our complete attention at least for a time.

This is also true of those beautiful versions of Life that we say yes to.  At first it may feel easy to say yes.  There is at least some enticement or attraction.  But even this may feel just as terrifying as facing sorrow.  The beauty too comes in inexplicable and unexpected forms.  It can be profoundly disruptive.  One session with my healer, we worked on the pericardium energy channel.  We talked about what my pericardium might look like (This is the essential sac around the heart that keeps out infection).  I imagined mine as more of a masonry wall then a flexible membrane and part of my work was to dismantle that wall and free up the beautiful and soft covering that kept my heart safe, but would allow me to feel everything pressed up against it.

This was something I could say yes to!  What a beautiful and lovely vision.

And then there was the gritty work breaking up the wall; piece by piece with a heavy maul, and my bare hands, and my broken fingernails.

And then there was the terrifying prospect of feeling decades of pain I had shut out.

And then the even more terrifying prospect of feeling a new sense of ecstasy and belovedness.

This is what I was totally unprepared for.  This shocking and familiar sense of belonging that I have experienced in brief transforming bursts before is beyond my ability to explain.  But now…. now it was infused with a deeper, more profound love than I had ever felt or imagined.  It came wrapped in a form I was totally confused by.  I had no idea even how to say yes and to tell you the truth, the power of that ecstasy probably said the yes for me.  It was a baffling, stumbling and clumsy yes.  But worth staying engaged with, worth sitting in the middle of disbelief and anguish with, worth the risk of my life falling apart.  It felt like the only Truth and the way Home.  It takes that much to move completely into the process…to give yourself over in surrender to what makes no logical sense, what feels impossible, to what Spirit is moving through you.  It takes everything.  What is calling you to surrender?  Are you brave enough to engage it and say yes?