Lean into the abundance, Lot
"Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention. Just as people lost in the wilderness, on a cliff face or in a blizzard pay attention with a kind of acuity that they would not have if they thought they knew where they were. Why? Because for those who are really lost, their life depends on paying real attention. If you think you know where you are, you stop looking."
David Whyte
Last week I heard myself saying that I felt lost in an emotional vacuum. Somewhat ironically, I used these words in conversations with dearly and clearly listening friends. It took a couple of days to fully realize this was mind created reality. Somewhere the last couple of weeks, I felt rejected. Or so named and tamed my mind. The sting of ‘rejection’ sang through my organs and bones, orchestrating a symphony of projections upon those dear and near. My muscles ached and wanted to flee the situations reminding me of supposedly unrequited love.
Hold on, I thought, I have been through this cycle of suffering before. Rusty attachment patterns kicking in for sure.
In the moments of despair, I did not know what to do. My mind re-read the experience of that vacuum, saw the feeling of being lost and abandoned, wild if you will, and reframed the situation as deeply complex, as being interconnected with a wild web of mine and other people’s aliveness. Uncertainty is the name of the game.
What a wonderful gift, the guide that only attention can offer us, the territory overruling the map. I started to pay attention after the first heaps of emotions (internalized maps of the world) came to rest, I felt listened to and loved as such, also by myself, and my body was ready again to receive stimuli from the outside in. Looking at the world from the perspective of uncertainty was, this time around, not frightening my limbs, but stimulating my awareness. Gosh, what a practice indeed, as the slogan on my company’s website gently reminds me:
"Appreciate the complexity of the world and don't shrink from it.”— Stephen Nachmanovitch
The complexity of my world transformed from appearing painstakingly alone to abundantly connected. Lean into the abundance Lot, it might just show you what is here already, all along. Some part of me wants to grasp reality and fixate it into small bits of security, but the whole of me knows only how to love from a place of letting go. Joy is reentering the scene, and I am getting acquainted again with the full emotional spectrum of life’s vitality. I paid attention just long enough to know it’s perfectly fine to let go of control and laugh myself back into the world again. It is kind of funny how, nearby clearsighted attention, every laugh is just waiting to be unfolded.