Seeing Clearly

The faint early morning light is glowing outside the window, and there is a chill in the air. I am not used to being up so early, and after a night that was later than I would prefer. But the cobwebs are clearing from my wakefulness, and I am feeling pretty good this morning. My eyes are tired, as is my body, but a glow fills me. My body is still, vibrating with goodness and flow. I feel energy circulating within me, and I am light and open, radiant. I am grateful for having spent my Earth Day in creative, heart-centered playfulness, in love.

And now, I am back in a school subbing for the first time in months. Today I am playing science teacher – chemistry, physics, anatomy & physiology. An easy day, I am hoping. A day of handing out random assignments and keeping a bunch of high school kids from burning the place down. And a day of reading and pondering. It's not the most meaningful work, but it's also not bad. I am serving a need within a system that is serving a need. Today I'm willing to play my part in that.

Feeling deeper now. Connecting with the part of me that comes here to the page to express, to contemplate, to celebrate and mourn. What within me yearns to speak in this moment? Oh, yes. There has been something stirring within me since Wednesday, my day of inconsolable sadness. I am wanting to touch in with resistance and abandonment, these two elements that seem inextricably entwined in my life.

When I was 18 years old, I fled my hometown. Not in any kind of teen angsty kind of way, but to go to college in Baltimore, to the Peabody Institute, the music school of my dreams. I was ready to leave behind my family, to leave behind this small town and all its conservative, small-minded values. I was ready to walk away from who I had been, and to become who I really was. That choice was perhaps the best one I ever made in my life that far. I entered into a community of creative people, and found my tribe. I entered into school, studying and practicing what I loved most, and dove into it with my entire being. I had the most incredible experiences, and met the most wonderful people, many of whom are still dear to my heart now. I entered into the life I had always wanted.

And at the end of four years, I was burned out and tired, and I walked away. I couldn't care less about playing the flute or about Peabody. I was done. Once more, I fled. Not geographically, for I have remained in the general area of Baltimore-Washington, DC ever since. But still, I fled. I didn't want to be bound by the smallness of the Institute, or by the smallness of the classical music profession. What I am seeing now is that this began a pattern in my life that has carried forth ever since. I have walked away from many things – from people, from work, from my art, from just about everything that I have been deeply connected to. It came to me in waves earlier this week just how profoundly this pattern has affected my life, too. It almost seems that everything I become close with I must eventually choose to leave. And I want to dive deeper into this pattern.

Push pull energy. I want so much to be deep into what I love. I love the intensity, the feeling of being absorbed, of merging in unity. I love the feeling of my boundary being blurred into something larger than myself. I love the feeling of being utterly absorbed in the creative process, of making music or writing or art. I love being utterly absorbed in learning, feeling my whole being become devoted to the process. I love being utterly absorbed in relationships, too, losing myself in the larger picture, feeling how my living and loving contributes to others, and how their living and loving contributes to me. And at some point in this absorption, I become overwhelmed. I begin to feel lost and scared, and something deep and primal within me yearns to reassert my identity, my separate self sense. So, I push the world away from me, and re-establish my own boundaries. I feel my me-ness re-emerge. And so I have lived, feeling the tides of connection coming closer and then retreating, ebbing and flowing like the sea.

This ebbing and flowing is the ebbing and flowing of self and other, of fear and love. Of wanting to be whole on my own, and of longing to live deeper than that. Of fearing the possibility of losing myself in the midst of togetherness, and of love that couldn't care less about that, yearning to drown this little ego identity in the flow of radiant living love. What will happen if I surrender to love, to the whole, to connection, to let myself be completely engulfed within that? In essence, I see this as the yearning to return to God, to surrender to the divine, to give it all up to what is most holy in the universe. This is the deep yearning of the spiritual path I have been called to follow, the yearning that awakens my heart each day upon this Earth. But it is also terrifying sometimes. It is annihilation, it is death, it is being swallowed as an individual ego being, and being transformed into a spark of light in the whole. And that is terrifying! So, I resist, I pull away. I am not ready to die, I still have lots of living left to do here.

Resistance at this deepest level makes so much sense. Resistance at this level, at the level of this ebb and flow of human and divine, is the dance of Life. It is a dance of resistance that emerges from deep within my cells, a dance between my primal animal nature and my profound spiritual nature. But this resistance ripples out into my life in ways that are far less profound as I assert my identity and self in the world. I have been caught up in this resistance so many times. I resist that which attempts to define me, limit me, consume me. I am Angela the intellectual, the flutist, the pilgrim, the writer. And I have balked at each of these things. I am intellectual, and can speak about many diverse things, but I am also deeply intuitive and don't care to rely on knowledge alone. I am a highly trained flutist, but sometimes would rather play a drum around a fire, or improvise on a simple bamboo flute while sitting on a riverbank. I am a pilgrim, travelling the world in search of the divine, but I am bound by no culture or religion, I am making my own way. I am a writer, but don't seek money or approval through this form, my deepest commitment is to my own soul as I approach the page. It is all on my terms. I will offer only what I want, I will be only what I choose, and if you challenge me to be what you imagine is most logical, or most purposeful, or most practical, I will spin on my heels and walk away from you. Who the hell are you to limit me or define me? I pack up my ideas, my music, my language, my heart, and I stuff it all into my pilgrim's rucksack, and hit the road.

And there I am, alone with my rucksack, filled with the jewels from within my deepest heart, and feeling alone and abandoned. Where did everybody go? Hey, don't you want to come along this road with me? I see how I have walked away from everything like this so many times. I have fled conversations, I have fled gatherings, I have fled my art, I have fled work that pays the bills and work that fulfills me, I have fled relationships and friendships, I have fled what gives me grounding and history, I have fled anything that questions me in any way, I have fled whatever makes me uncomfortable, I have fled whatever feels too close or threatens to limit me. I have fled my music career. I have fled my massage training. I have fled my mind. I have fled my heart. I have fled my own skin. And each time I run away, I am fleeing myself. I am abandoning myself. Instead of sitting still with a situation for long enough to gain real insight, I have sought escape at all costs, fearing my own annihilation. And yet, on some deep level, that annihilation is the very thing I am seeking...

The very things I yearn for most deeply in my life at this point are requiring that I stop fleeing, that I stop resisting, that I face myself. I can push away any person that makes me feel uncomfortable, who questions me, who challenges me, who threatens my sense of self in some way. Or I can see past that fear and stay present and true to who I really am. I can feel the discomfort, the questioning, the challenge, and not flee. I have enough clarity and integrity to be able to discern when I am actually being challenged or threatened in a way that is harmful, and I can have enough faith in myself to know when walking away would be the most self-loving choice. But instead of that, I see how I have made it a practice to push people away as a visceral response to anyone who comes within my sphere of living who might make me the slightest bit uncomfortable, even when it might be in alignment with what I need to learn and face in order to grow. I have been impulsive and fearful a lot of the time in my relationships with my fellow human beings. I have formed deep and meaningful connections, for sure, and have felt great trust and love in these relationships. But I have sometimes also been bored by the safety of them, yearning for something else, something I couldn't quite name. I have longed for total acceptance and I have also been bored with that, and felt like walking away from that, too. What a bizarre pattern, spiraling into every facet of my relating with others.

I have also fled the very things I love to do. I love to play the flute, and at this point, I have walked away from performing, and have only the bare minimum of work needed to get by in the field of music. It is true that I no longer have much interest in classical music. I am yearning for something deeper than that, to enter into a deeper relationship with my art, with improvisation, and with creating music in a freer way with others who share the same vision. But I am in a holding pattern, not yet freely entering into this creative process. I have yet to redefine my art, and I feel it stirring within me. Will I get out of my own way and allow Spirit to create through me? I love to write, and at this point, I have never really, fully given much chance to it beyond my own needs. Do I really want to put my writing out there into the world? I think so. Writing fulfills me, and I have been told that it has touched others, too. I have plenty to say, and I love the dance of entering into life through the written (and spoken) word. Yet, I have hesitated. I have a 600+ page master's thesis on pilgrimage sitting atop a shelf in a closet, essentially three books waiting to find their way to the world. I have a poetry blog, a pilgrimage blog, an Ayahuasca blog, and this daily blog, all drifting in the ethers of cyberspace, finding people here and there. But is there some other commitment that writing could become in my life? I haven't ever made any serious attempt toward being published. What if I began to explore possibilities for that? What is there to lose? And my most recent pursuit, massage. I have been finished with massage school since mid-December. I have made no effort at this point to get licensed, and to begin a practice. Will this become the next path I walk away from? Or will I push past my own resistance and enter into a dance with my creative offerings, and allow them to become sacred offerings from my heart, sacred offerings in service in the world?

A couple of weeks ago, when I went into ceremony, I was surprised to feel my resistances fall away. I stood there, and couldn't quite remember what had been wrong in the first place, why I had resisted the community and the spiritual practice that had touched me so deeply. I had been so afraid of losing myself, of being overtaken by something that was dangerous. But the only danger was in surrendering the kicking and screaming of my own ego. The only thing to lose was my separate self sense, my aloneness, my own feeling of being abandoned. I can see that I have been afraid of the very things I have longed for in the deepest corners of my heart and soul. I long to feel deep and meaningful connection. I long for tribe, community. I long for a deep, soulful relationship. And I have resisted both of those. I long to know that my life matters, to make a meaningful contribution to the world. And I have resisted offering my gifts, the very things I have to offer from the purest place within my heart and soul. As I sit here, seeing the truth of this more clearly than ever before, I am stunned to see how I have been blocking myself constantly. I have sabotaged myself. I have denied myself the very things I have wanted most. It has never been true that what I long for is not possible. It has only been true that I couldn't stop my fearful patterns – I couldn't see my fearful patterns – for long enough to allow my heart's desire to manifest in my life. I am sitting here in a place of quiet compassion right now. I am practicing having compassion for myself, for the truth that I have not seen this pattern, and that it has ruled my life in my unawareness. And I am grateful today for seeing clearly.