Whether this is Waking Up or not, I sure don't know. All I know is that there are a few themes going on, and they repeat over and over during each day.
Dreaming
Off and on, at different times during the day, I'm conscious of the fact I'm dreaming, even though it appears I'm awake, and my mind thinks I'm awake, and there are other folks around me who believe they're awake.
Each time, it takes my breath away. It's so incredible, so wild, that I know my eyes widen as I stare at the brilliance of color, of content. I've always had a child-like energy going on, an enthusiasm and delight, but now it comes on like rainbows bursting out of my heart and I want to sing arias of Yes . . YesYesYes . . . Yes! in the middle of Trader Joe's over by the fizzy water section.
My brain is having tiny hiccups of whaaaaa? as I move through my days, at how outrageous Life is in its attempts to delight me. I need things, and they just appear in front of me, or I need for things to not be there, and they miraculously disappear. I want to give examples, but it'll give your minds the cud to grind them into bs, so instead I'll just say: hot holy freakin wow.
(& this isn't wanting {which pushes stuff away} or fear {which cleaves things to us}. just some sort of connection to Life that's forged a strong enough bond so this delight thing is appearing very regularly.)
Passage of Time
My whole existence, for many many many years, has been about pushing, shoving, racing. And it showed up as running yellow lights, both hands on the wheel, trying not to be late, or trying to get home as fast as possible to the kitties and the supposed chillville that lay at home. It appeared as doing several things at one time - filling a jug with water while feeding the cats, while fixing dinner, while trying to plan for the next day, in between back and forth doing laundry.
I've worked 60-70 hour workweeks for the past six years. For three years of school, taking a 4 class full time course load (even in grad school) and working 15-25 hours part time or internship each week, then launching Integral Shamanics for a year, then working in Hiveworld/Cubicleland 45 hours a week while putting in 10-20 hours a week still doing the shamanic thing (~4-8 hours of session time + all the admin and emails and phone calls that go to support it).
I have no kids, no husband, so really, all this work just meant that my life in terms of demands and time and stress, was much like what most of you working moms out there (and working dads? not sure if it translates) deal with on a daily, yearly, never ending basis.
I loved all of it - so much good work to do - the holistic work, such a gift, and even Hiveworld just so lovely in how it took care of me and gave me freedom inside of its boundaries. And yet I never really had time off. Ever. It's been years since I had a real vacation. And my rare day off - maybe every few months or so - a single day, usually a Sunday - was some variation on catching up on cleaning the house and running errands and then napping with the kitties in the afternoon sun for an hour or few.
Now I have so much time off. Outrageous. I leave the house at 8:10 am, am back home before 5pm. Because of the "wellness benefit" at work, I work out during the day, so coming home is just about chilling, hanging with the cats, making something healthy for dinner, watching my latest tv obsession - The Stargate series from the 1997 pilot episode up til it's 2007 ending. Bed time by 9:30 or 10.
Weekends are a gentle wandering around. I wake up and hang with the kitties, then get up and do the regular routine stuff. Then: what do I feel like doing? Mostly I'm just exploring the local food environment - dozens of farm markets and farms - yesterday I picked strawberries. Today: lots of coffee and this writing, then some vacuuming, then maybe yoga.
Time seems to have both compressed and expanded. I don't how to say it otherwise. There is a sense, in my body, that I have all the time in the world. There is nothing to rush for. Nothing needs to be done except what I feel to do, and then it just happens, it gets done. When the "push" feeling arises, it's so noticeable, and I'm confronted with the fact that there isn't an outside agency telling me I have to be somewhere, and I'm forced to acknowledge that the "reason" for rushing isn't real, and so I disconnect, and relax, another cord severed from the "unreal".
Even work - I literally make my own schedule on a day to day basis. I do a regular one, 8:30-4:30, because that's what I'm used to, but literally, no one follows up on me, no one is looking for me. I have meetings each week, that sort of thing, but beyond that, as long as I do my 40 hours (5 of which are free for lunch & exercise and can be used however I feel to) and my online schedule is listed and I note day-totals on my biweekly filed time sheet, it's fine. There is no "running late", only coming in and then adjusting leaving, or moving the time to another day. There is no "leaving early", only adjusting time another place.
And I went from dealing with a couple dozen influxes each week of folks needing holistic work of some sort, dozens and dozens and dozens of phone calls and emails, to only one or two. Mind blowing to me. It all just fell away. I haven't done a formal session in a month. Just a few folks dipping in to ask a few questions, ask for some directional guidance then away.
The phone doesn't ring. The email box stays quiet.
Time. So much of it. And sliding by quickly, like a river, like faster-than-light, like Nothing.
Wonderful. . .
Metastasized Fear
Which leads to what's happened to my nervous system. This push, this shove, this pressing of the mind's will to the belief that time is short results in fear wreaking havoc on all of my bodies - physical, mental, emotional - like an electrical charge that's kicked the circuit breakers off and on so often for so long that the wiring is kind of shot.
I've been pretty dang sick for a really long time now. And now it's very acute. The pain is so intense some times that it's like my CNS is lit on fire. And then it's gone. And then it's back. And then it's gone again.
Grains of any sort are sure to set some of this off. And dairy, too. Sugar, less so, but when in combo with either of the previous two: muthafrakkin argh.
A smart, balanced person would simply stop eating grains, dairy, sugar. But the fear inside of me, utterly metastasized now from years of virtually unchecked growth, has me addicted, bound, cleaved to them. Poison as medicine: soothes one aspect, as it tears another apart. Even simply by my stating this as "a smart, balanced" person shows how deep the wound goes, how prevalent, virulent the infection.
I do a restorative yoga class on Wednesday afternoons that have my body humming with well being, pain free. Sunday evenings is a "medicinal yoga" class that has me detoxing for a day or two, and then opening up pockets of freedom in movement and range. Daily green smoothies help keep the colon functioning, bio-available nutrients flowing. Pasture-raised, locally grown, humanely slaughtered meat. A big box of veggies and local, organic eggs from my CSA each week. Greens three times a day. Two or three rounds of The 5 Tibetan Rites each day. 10-20 minutes of self-massage and stretching before I go to bed. Energywork on myself 10-60 minutes a day. Random, spontaneous, full-bellied singing. It all helps, is all unwinding bits and pieces of No that lives inside of me.
And I do all of this even as I understand on some deep level that it has nothing to do with grains or dairy, or even exercise, green smoothies, or yoga. These are all symptoms, vapors, of something more pervasive, of something I can't quite see clearly, don't really understand.
Maybe it would be better to simply stop doing everything. But it doesn't feel that way. What it feels like is that I've become conscious that I'm buried underneath several tons of some hard granular substance - like energetic stones or packed earth - and I'm slowly digging myself out.
Do you remember that scene in Kill Bill 2 when Beatrix escapes? That's what it feels like, in those moments of super clarity: I know where I am, and I don't have to be here, even though it appears hopeless, and I'm horrified, scared out of my mind at the predicament, but what else to do but use the skills I've honed for several decades now to punch through, dig?
And the last piece I'll add is this: over and over I acknowledge the fact that everything I'm doing might be about Waking Up, or maybe just be some sort of mental illness, fantasy, more of Maya and her games.
But I understand, either way, if it stays like this and never changes, never empties out into some sort of "enlightenment" thing, it's okay. I ask myself over and over: are you okay with this? that this is it? this right here, right now? no regrets?
That's what I go on: if this is all there is, this digging, this letting go, this life with kitties and silence and time and dreaming, is it enough?
It is.
Katherine is still alive, but she's fading. And nothing steps forth to save her. Nothing that makes sense anyway.
Maybe this is what mental illness looks like, when someone gives up on their life.
Or maybe it's Waking Up, where a fictitious being dies so that something else can shine through.
But it doesn't matter what I think. Or you think. It's all that makes sense in this life anymore . . .
And the outrageous pervasive joy as I move through my days . . .
And the acute pain of back and belly and CNS and joints . . .
Is all part of it.
What to do but what's next?
And this is what's next . . .
