02 Apr Who likes to be anxious? The problem is the gift.
“What if I didn’t run away, didn’t turn away from what was plaguing me?” I asked myself.
What if…even when experiencing intense fear, anger, distress, and/or anxiety…instead of finding a way to get away or change and modify…I moved closer to exactly the state of emotional disturbance that I hated?
That had been a central inquiry of mine in the last year or so, after having five friends, my age or slightly older, die rather suddenly and unexpectedly.
(I still feel myself groaning inwardly when I remember being in this inquiry…..)
Along with the grief of loss, I realized of course that I too am getting older.
This will be my fate as well. Maybe not now but yes, it will be so someday.
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It led me to think about my dad as he was dying six years ago. I remembered being with him as he struggled to let go of this body, mind and heart that had been his home for 94 years.
During the last week of his life I asked him if he was in pain, if there was something we could do?
He choked out a few words, “not physical… pain…people.”
All those incomplete ruptures with people haunting him at the end.
Then the inquiry became: How do I spend my days now so that those days then are not a struggle but more a quiet release?
At that time, it catapulted me into unknown states. There’s something about thinking about death abstractly and something else when you, shall I say, stop hiding from the topic quite so much…
Instead of fighting, maybe it’s time to turn and be with that scared me, what I’ve run away from, tried to shift all my life?
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This practice, which I seem to return to in different guises time after time in my life, was partly what helped me move towards healing the shame in my life…in turn this nurtured the wisdom that arose with the recognition that: Shame is an Attachment Wound
It’s part of the centerpiece of my books and teaching.
Now, in more recent years, it seemed a different stream of inquiry catapulted me into channels of intensity I didn’t know existed….
Well that’s not true. I had always known they existed but tried very, very hard to get away from them.
After all who likes to be anxious?
Not me.
Sure, I’ve experienced and taught the Alchemy of Transforming Emotional Charge inherent in anxiety and excitement for close to 40 years.
Yet, there remained the deep imprint, tucked away in multiple layers of my body mind heart.
In one meditation I realized, as long as I held anxiety and excitement in separate poles there wouldn’t be union. There wouldn’t be yoga. The simple definition of yoga is union, the yoked connection of everything, everywhere all at once.
I knew there was more than these two polarized parts. At least I knew it intellectually.
I remembered when I was studying Jung and the great story he told about we have nightmares because we’re afraid to be with what’s there.
So I gave myself a task. Find out how they are one, not separate.
Then I went into dread. After all who of us wants to REALLY enter into becoming one with what we’re running away from. And, believe me, when you’re in it, it feels anything BUT a hero’s journey!
Someday I’ll have ways to tell you about that process that started to truly free the anxiety I had, even knowing how deeply it was carved in. Someday I’ll have the words in coherent sentences to describe.
At this point what I know with great certainty is there is a way through.
That prana really is the clearing life force grinding away that which is in the way of our freedom.
That we can get through.
And it comes from cultivating an inner world so solid, steady and secure that we can be with everything.
That which has plagued us is a gift.
It’s about strengthening and opening our Vertical Axis, connecting the Divine spirit and earth with our hearts, parts, thoughts and feelings.
Lining up inside so we feel coherent and connected making it the easy next step to be with our external world reflecting back that which we already know…. our goodness.
There’s a bit of a map I’m going to offer. An exercise or exploration if you will.
As a professional you give a lot, a whole lot.
Sometimes, in giving a lot, any of us short circuit our own receiving. As I tend to those who consult with me, I’m aware of all you’re holding and all the caring that you’re doing.
As people who connect spiritually with the world and in your work you know the importance of spiritual connection, guidance…and how access to goodness and love makes everything easier. When we do, the hard times don’t feel as hard, alienating and overwhelming.
When we’re grounded in our Vertical Axis, connecting to spirit above and the great earth below, energy flows more easily in and through us, grounding and centering.
That makes it easier for us to flow through our hearts out to others, connected internally/vertically and externally with others on the Horizontal Axis.