28 September 2011

No worries- something happened to me in the desert

What happened to me in the desert? This year, the playa drew me in again. I was so ambivalent about going to Burning Man but at the last minute I decided yes, I have to do it. I must go to that strange mystical event in the middle of nowhere yet again. Good thing...

Something shifted in me this year big time. I recall saying to a friend that each year I go it feels like it is still the same me going through the same struggles and feeling the same inner resistance to the dust, to the heat, and my indecisiveness shows up everywhere. Not this year though.

I am not sure what to call what happened to me but the word that best describes it is Grace. There was so much inner stillness and peace within.  None of the old patterns that had reemerged in previous years were emerging this year.  Why? What was going on?

There is no reason for it that I can "figure" out. Listening to more than my fair share of Adyashanti on the ride there and in previous weeks maybe had me ripe for some sort of awakening but the truth is that there is no logical explanation for these shifts when they occur. I guess some part of me was ready to give up the inner struggle with which I had grown so accustomed to all summer long. Creating and resolving inner conflicts as a means to keep from being bored seemed to be the cycle I was in. I didn't even realize it.

I am sharing this because this is my truth. For one week in the desert a platform of inner stillness and grace was built. This stability anchors me now. The previous worry bug that use to plague me seems to have gone to sleep. I don't know if this will last. Most likely not, because I can recognize this as just another state. It doesn't worry me that it won't stick. Nothing seems to stick anyways, as much as I want it to. Relationships come and go, jobs appear and dissappear, laughs ring in my ears and then become echos. water falls from the sky, soaks into the ground, evaporates and becomes a cloud, a dream, and then rain again...


What I want to transmit is that now that I have been living with this experience for an extended period of time I feel like my cells, my overall energy body, and my physical body are infused with this intelligence and the sparkle that comes when one is more at ease with reality and is not in a constant state of resistance to what is. I am in a sense, being recalibrated to this new way of being and feeling in the world.  don't misunderstand me, I am still experiencing struggle, pain, sadness, loss and other traditionally labeled "negative" emotions but the difference is that now when they come up I go sit with them instead of busying myself so I don't feel them. I am cultivating the practice of not creating an additional story on top of the feeling that perpetuates and increases (unnecessarily) the original sensation that was coming up.

In a way it feels like I am reverting back to how I was as a child, only doing it in a way that is infused with wisdom and a groundedness. What I mean by this is that I am allowing feelings and sensations to arise and not be resistance to them as I have been in the past. for some this may seem like a no brainer, but for me this has been a constant challenge. I have a certain image that I was trying to uphold, the archetype of the calm, collected and intelligent, and independent woman who has it all together. well, we all know these can be true parts of me but they are not the truth of who or what I am, and there is certainly no way that I can be these things all the time until I first let go of trying to be them all the time. I have tried so hard to be a certain way that what I was missing is that I need to let go of the trying and just BE who i am actually am. its interesting how I have to go through all of these learning and felt experiences in order to arrive back at the natural state of what/who I always was.

ok, I am done rambling. this is a huge topic and I don't feel like I covered everything I wanted to but I must get outside and go run around the lake! We are having our last days of summer before autumn knocks its crisp little hands on the doors of the east bay.