Thursday, February 23, 2017

Making Space

Creating. Producing. Working. Making. Doing. Consuming. Maintaining. Achieving. Striving. Providing. Fulfilling. Protecting.

This life can become a conveyor belt of actions, automatically re-energizing and defining who we have always been. At times, it becomes important to strike out and declare an identity. I am! What happens when the opposite occurs? When the need to release and let go creates an ego death that outweighs the productivity design, you must heed the call. I find myself here today.

I am a natural born doer. Even as a girl, I could never zone out to the television screen, but would require a number of tactile projects to occupy more of me. This feels like a primary need to me, resulting in great productivity. However, when what I do becomes who I am, the pressure to keep doing is equivalent to survival. The question arises: Who am I when I stop and become still, the way that I teach you to do? What happens when the teacher becomes the student again?

Relief.

I stop. I become stillness. Stillness inevitably becomes movement. Life is cyclical and nothing is static. I am in a constant dance of becoming. There is no such thing as emptiness, because all of life is a movement. I begin to feel moved by nature. Not by my need to prove myself, or to keep what I have. I allow myself to let go; to release what I think I know. I hold space for something new to bubble up. I feel my own nervous energy and become more attuned to it; more comfortable with the feeling of the internal buzzing that charges my body like caffeinated consciousness. Something rises that isn't me, but it lives within me. Is it my spirit, my life force, or nature?

Breathe.

The way the light hits the building across the street. The cacophony of voices in the upscale coffee place where I write. My empty belly. The self I see tapping at the computer, mining my mind for a jewel of a thought. Who am I to say what is valuable? Streams of thoughts running through me and rivers of people passing by my eyes. I feel a part of. Today is a day when I feel merged with all. I feel no desire to define myself with achievement. I watch and I wait for the inspiration. Today it wants me to be present in the moment as a practice. I don't doubt or question. I trust it. I trust my path. I trust that this is where I belong.

It doesn't look like what is expected of me. It looks like a woman with a well-worn face, but feels like a little girl who is her own parent. It looks like someone you remember for some reason, someone you once knew in school...or maybe someone you've seen before, a friend of a friend. She reminds you of something. Was she your teacher? Was she your entertainment? Was she your support system? Your guide? A memory of....something you can't quite place.

Being. Allowing. Releasing. Opening. Sitting. Receiving. Feeling. Not-doing. Meditating. Waiting. Listening. Merging.

Making Space.