Anticipation and Growing Pains

A word about programs that promise to stretch you emotionally and spiritually: The experience begins as soon as you register for the course, no matter how far in advance or through what technological medium.

To wit: As part of our excursion to the overseas ecovillage on our itinerary, my partner and I each plan to partake of different courses that are taught as part of the rotating curriculum offered there.  I will be doing a week-long intensive introduction to the place, including lots of inner work/transformational mojo.  Jenn will stay on for a whole month and complete her Permaculture Design Certificate as well as training in other aspects of ecovillage life.

We each had applications to fill out for our respective programs, and I sent mine in by email about two days before she sent hers.  Somehow I remember reading that I would get notification of acceptance within 48 hours, so on the day she sent hers in I was holding the quiet hope that I would hear soon- maybe even that same day.  It WAS a weekend day, so I held space for the fact that maybe it would be 48 work-week hours.  Still, I checked my email about every 4 hours, even at work (this is normal for some people, I realize- but for me once a day is usually it, sometimes not even that).  Yesterday was an exceptionally long day.  I worked early and hard all day long, came home to shower and change clothes, then do a presentation on essential oils in my living room.  These are always enlivening and fun- I get to slather on calming oils while I help others learn to support their own health... at any rate I am always starving when we’re done, so as soon as it was done we bolted out the door for the neighborhood taco joint (yeah, I know they don’t have those in ecovillages.  There will be plenty of time dedicated to wrapping my head around that!).
An hour and a half later, sated and sleepy, I started getting ready for bed.  I was brushing my teeth when Jenn popped her head in and said, “Oh, by the way, I heard back on my application.  They said which building to go to to pick up the registration packet, where to go for meals...”  Her words kept going because it took her a while to catch up with what was going on.  That wasn’t a smile on my face, it was a holding-back-the-tears grimace.  Oh yes, it had been a long day, and the strain of waiting to hear back on my application was beginning to wear on me.  It had been six days, after all... not two, or even four (considering the first two were weekend). 

Let me be clear that there is no question for me about whether I’ll be accepted.  I have not experienced any anxiety about whether I will “get in”.  I’m very well suited for the course, there are openings, and I’ve paid my deposit.  No questions lingering here.  What it is, is that I’ve been looking forward to the rush you get when some new dream suddenly begins to move forward of its own volition, as if the “powers that be” are in alignment and your life’s new direction is being forged.  It’s the little zing that makes you suck in your breath for a second, the “Here goes!” moment. As eager as I am for the commencement of the adventure, I have total certainty that it is coming to pass.  So I knew I wasn’t falling apart because I thought anything was wrong. 

From deep inside I could see that it has to do with taking that brave and irrevocable step of agreeing to undergo transformation.  It’s nothing to do with whether I’ll get in, and everything to do with what will happen to me once I’m in there.  The ego (and understand when I talk about the ego I do so from the Eastern Philosophy standpoint rather than Western Psychology - so, ego is not about self-aggrandizement, it’s about keeping you small and separate and insecure and uncertain of everything except your own unworthiness - - THAT ego is the one I talk about), is mortified at the prospect of me delving in deep again.  It’s going to be threatened, and I will know it because I will be uncomfortable.  I will have moments when I think I am not good enough, that I can’t transform fast enough (or authentically enough, or radically enough, or....).  I will doubt myself and my commitment, I will fantasize about neighborhood taco stands, I will wonder how on earth I will sustain this experience and whether all these wonderful people think I am a fraud.  I will probably also wonder who among them are frauds, or worse- I may presume to know.  This is what happens when you purposely choose to move beyond your present set of limitations.  Your spirituo-emotional uglies start to show up.  Any old #215800-ers still out there?  Know what I mean?  And so, with all the bravery and compassion you can muster, you welcome the little darlings.

This tender young sproutling of transformative motion is what unveiled itself last night as I sat sobbing on the edge of the tub.  Since I am a staunch defender of the notion that you create what you focus on, Jenn was understandably concerned to know whether I was painting awful pictures inside this skull of mine as I mopped up my face.  I smiled at her.  “No, not at all.  Just a case of ‘back to school’ nerves”. 

This morning I returned to the email I’d received to acknowledge receipt of my application, to see how long it had actually been.  Late, late tonight it will have been seven days since I hit “send”.  I’ve had a good laugh.  Here are the words I somehow missed the first time around:
“We will contact you personally within about a week”.

Ahhh, so it’s begun...

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Daring and Delicious Life Changes!

Change is in the air, along with that subtle shift in the angle of light in late afternoon.  There’s ripening going on everywhere, out in the field and here in the life-path-assessment region of my mind.

In the last installation I mentioned that we had just essentially scrapped plans to do the “logical” thing - buy a house where we are because the market is good and there’s a window for funding that closes in three months.  We scrapped it because, at 42 and 47 we aren’t ready to close the door on adventure and a life full of meaning.  The old notion that home ownership is the primary element in establishing security is quickly fading in light of the fact that all of the things previous generations relied on for security are failing fast.  Traditional forms of investment, climate stability, and fossil fuel are no longer the reassuring assets they were to our forebears. 

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that all of these things will change dramatically in my lifetime (and most certainly that of the generation that follows); and while a great being once said, “Ahhh, What would we do without the last minute?”... I’m starting to think, why not learn to be adaptable before the last minute?

This brings us to my latest plan to visit a number of ecovillages over the course of the coming year.  We’ll be exploring what it is about this intentionally designed way of life that is so compelling to us, what it offers to our imaginations, and what talents/skills/assets/resources we can offer to such an enterprise if we should choose to pursue it.

Jenn has great talents for design and putting things together, the how to do things part of the equation.  While this part interests and fascinates me, and I really really enjoy it, my real skill is more about exploring the why of it all- the philosophical underpinnings of the movement away from the extractive economy and toward real community and self-reliance.  Of great interest to me, is the inner work required to make this shift authentically and with integrity.  After all, if it should ever come to pass that we have to live together without oil, “convenience” foods, entertainment gadgets and the like, we are going to have to have some skills that have long gone dormant in most of society.  There are lots of people who will teach you how to tend a composting toilet or build water catchment, and I am So Grateful for them!  While they get that part of the equation rolling,  I’d like to help folks with the inner transition.

This very morning I’m awaiting word on my application to spend time at a globally recognized ecovillage in Scotland.  There’s nothing in the inbox yet, so it’s just going to be another delicious day of waiting.

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Forging a New Path

Ahh, how I’ve missed this daily routine of wake, stretch, write!  Oh, and of course the steaming bowl of matcha tea at my side. 

This blog has been sitting here taking up space (wait, is there space in cyberspace?) while I got my body healed and my priorities straightened out.  It was difficult to grapple with the fact that I would be better off not to follow  #215800 to its logical conclusion with the intensive retreat. Instead, I’ve done the best I can on my own.  I’ve been reading lots of writers’ works on writing, the creative life, and kicking my creative self in the butt (with greatest compassion, of course).

The big shift has come, and it is this: I do not need to hold on to the disturbing details that defined my childhood just because there is so much good material there.  I do not need to be the next Augusten Burroughs or David Sedaris just because my young self was in a lot of twisted situations of questionable benefit to developing minds and characters.

I finally had a conversation with myself that echoed one I’d had with a dear friend I’d once coached through a very dark time.  This person had put heart and soul into creating something that was practically carved out of his own being, and while there was a haunting beauty to it, while it was evocative and compelling and showcased his talents beautifully, it was not gaining the recognition he had hoped it would, and he was not having the success he’d felt sure would follow his efforts. For all its virtues, it was also incredibly depressing by virtue of its content and focus.  I remembered a time early in our friendship, asking the difficult question, “Is this really what you want to be known for?”. 

When you have received an awakening, it becomes your responsibility to shine more light on the world than shadow.  Even at those times when you are completely overshadowed by the shadow, it is up to you to find a way to, as my friend now says, “show it to the light”.

The awakening came like this: I was in a treatment room where I was expecting to receive lymphatic work to support the final stages of healing from July’s surgery.  Instead, the practitioner said she’d like to do some energetic work and began asking a series of questions.  I found myself saying outright that I resist healing a troubled relationship from my childhood because it would diminish the material I have to choose from when writing.

Oh dear.  One of my best-kept secrets was suddenly out there, and irretrievable.  Like good merlot on a white linen shirt.

Our best-kept secrets are the ones that surprise us when they’re revealed.  They’re  like some unknown bit of us has snuck out the back door, come around the side of the house and up behind us while we’re on the front porch.  We may have an inkling something is there, then it leaps out like a mischievous little brother with a water balloon, yelling, “Surprise!  Can’t catch me!”.  And the challenge, of course, is to not try to catch it.  To let it be free.  Because when we hear the secrets we’ve been keeping from ourselves, so much space opens up inside.  It’s like we’ve had a boarder in the house who suddenly vacates and now we have this whole room back.  Now we could have an office, or a sewing room, or a nursery, or a yoga studio...  We are now free to clean the space out and do something useful with it. Meaningful, at least.

When my childhood vacated the “potential material” vault in my awareness, there was a period of mourning.  There’s still work to be done with that past, if I and the other parties choose to do it, but I no longer have to keep transformation at bay in order to ensure the authenticity of my “abused kid reveals all” bestseller, because that tome is no longer even a twinkle in my future.  However popular it might have become, however many millions I might have raked in, the practice of dredging through what’s already happened, and which messed up a good portion of the first third of my life, is not a good way to spend time- recreationally or to make a living.  It’s not right living, at all.  So I had to temper my shame and anger at even harboring the idea in the first place (secretly or not!) with the incredible sense of lightness and possibility that followed in its wake.

Suddenly there is so much to write about, so much that is important and true and hopeful and imperative and useful and genuine and very, very exciting!  Suddenly the things and thoughts that are truly of value to me can breathe again!  So much passes through this head of mine that, if put into practice, could really be a transformative force for positive change in the world... and now I’ve been freed up to show all of it to the light.

Now I am on the verge of a whole new world, where everything has turned on its head.  How else can you explain the life-path that, in two weeks' time, shifted from house-shopping in a town I don’t really love, because the market is good and the timing of finances says it has to be this year... to blogging my way across parts of the country and across the ocean (hello, Scotland, my ancestral home!), visiting sustainable communities and ecovillages in search of the source of that which draws me to them. 

First, of course, comes the unloading of all the stuff that’s in my physical spare room (and back porch, and office, and... you know the story).

More soon!