A passage is arriving
As a passage is arriving, time is ticking and creating heightened consciousness of where I was and where I am going. My eager heart and symbolism craving psyche try to run ahead, try to see beyond the enticing horizon, at times neglecting the existential truth that is found in the longing only uncertainty births vividly.
There may be some grasping, but it’s just a wave of emotional intensity rising in oceanic awareness. I try to keep my head above water, and then I dream of sitting on the bottom of the deep sea, peacefully awaiting how the rock-bottom means I will rise anyhow, anyway. Air bubbling up from my mouth symbolizes the first eruption of artistic outlet.
Years of existential unrest have come to an arrest, so it seems, and the slowing down that wintering invites us to, gives rise to a clear awareness of this new-found sense of direction. A sense of direction born out of release, anchored in the motionfull now, increasingly embodied in the relational realm of life, shaping the conditions for a creative spurt. Even if my body intuits a yet deeper integration of life’s presence in this life form, a gracious rest offered by listening to my being's need for relaxation, mediation and contemplation, there is nothing to steer or direct, for now. A settlement of the sense of direction on a new plane of development without some inner repressive force pushing the way forward to the detriment of my intrinsic trust. Not coincidentally this transition coincides with our daughter’s passage to school. My mind is thinking along with my pelvis, co-creating a home will mean the world to her, to us. I hear myself saying aloud: “I want to be sensitive and alert with respect to her wellbeing.” Practically, we are putting effort into making this parental awareness possible with the help of lively communal ties and most of all, moments of untroubled presence.
An embodied hierarchy of values is immerging out of four years of reorientation. That which gives voice to decisions vital to our parenting resonates with that which shapes a new creative, intellectual and social road. Suppressed ideas, critical questioning, and intuited road maps for my work in emotional development rise to the surface. This process is, next to being an offspring of, amongst others, motherhood, also inspired by my regular visits to the monastery House of the Beloved, a space and place, a gathering of people seeking deep connection, that surely fits - and 'awakingly' transgresses - the curiosities, values and passions driving me to study emotional development since many years. Less suppression leads to a firmer belief in the integration of many different disciplines, practices and perspectives in this life’s study and study of life; a loosening of my limbs stiffened by internalized power structures, stretching the emotional, intellectual and imaginational reach of my creations. As if everything that I have been delving into all those years, a grateful broadening of interests and social connections, is now ready for a ‘vertical integration.’ From head to toe, letting real life existential research guide the way (as it essentially always has), breaking the apparent walls between the personal, professional and spiritual, walls that were conditioned by cultural dominant narratives and personally endured hardships. An intensifying and sensitization of awareness, actually to discern what to focus on. How gratifying it is to look back on intensified ambivalences and sense how a shaking of the system encourages an actualization of seeded potential.
We will see. The eye that sees is one with the ‘I’ that shakes.
Not letting fear dictate this free fall called life, leaning into intuitions and questioning: what practice leads us to positive disintegration?