We Were Doing So Well

Going back to normal isn't an option. It's not what we want as a collective anyway. We can do so much better than before. But right now I'd say we're doing worse than before, and if this world continues with the shaming, blaming and hatred, I doubt we'll ever find anything better than we had. 

We were doing so well: educating each other, helping unravel past traumas by sharing and talking about it, giving permission to speak about history and opening up about social, ecological and economical disparities. We were on our way to reconciliation, to forgiveness, to allowing humans to be faulty and move towards healing.

It was all too positive and well-meaning. Not enough fighting. Not enough war-like mentality. We were treading the language of love and well-being, and we can't have any of that. It wouldn't represent us as a culture. We sure couldn't step up and out of our old patterns and ways of interacting with each other to form a better, more beautiful world ... no. We had to find people to blame for our discomfort, for the difficult feelings we experience because we live in a paradoxical world right now, in between stories of old and new, instead of continuing to talk to one another and learn. Grow, with the accompanying growing pains.

...do we remember why we're fighting?

We picked up our weapons so long ago we may not remember why we came out to the battlefield in the first place. Is it time to re-evaluate what ground we stand on, why we took our stance, where we'd like to be now? Look around; has progress been made amongst it all? Did we choose our weapon, or were we given a weapon and told using it was the only way to win this battle?

Done with Mystery

can I love without mystery?

can I love when it's obvious, when it's easy, when it's right in front of me?

can I love when there's no question, when there's no uncertainty, simply transparency?

can I love with laughter and play, with discovery and learning, with being in this material world?

can I love on a trip, in the forest, in my house, at the lake, close by, far away, playing, working, resting?

I am afraid that I will always need mystery in order to be interested.

Overflow

There's something refreshing and new about 2022. I'm not sure what it is. There's a lightness in my being that I've not felt in a long time. Perhaps I just needed that much rest, that much nothing. Maybe the company of old friends by the fire with days of no reception or technology unlocked the dark dungeon in which I had put my shining self away. Could there be a certain length of time that allows me to get to empty so I may fill my cup again? I had overflowed, overwhelmed. I had poured over, helpless on my side, wondering when I'd ever get back up. I was depleted and frail.

But something, somehow, brought me back to standing. Empty. Upright. Ready to be filled again.

Caught

Illness.

Not just any illness. This one is freight with bad karma, with assumption, with judgement, which are all projected by my own mind onto the world. This one isn't a regular flu, and as much as I told myself this for two years there was no way to know for sure. It's uneasy. Dis-easing. 

For the first few days it was really easy, my mind still somewhat clear and able to "gogogo" (at a slower pace of course). But then came the long fatigue and the exhaustion, the need to oversleep and to stop, to really stop. I'm no good at stopping, even though I had been trying to stop for months since the summer's work was over. The symptoms aren't sharp nor alarming; they're nothing to really fuss over. I feel like I've had more painful flus. My symptoms so far have been:

loss of smell (and therefore taste)

fever and chills

unregulated body temps

can't sleep a full night

painful eyes (so painful)

headaches, close to eyes

aching left side of neck, almost electric

hypersensitivity in my upper back

generally aching muscles

dullness and lack of interest

get full quickly, stomach hurts

quick heart beat

I've had to nap for 2 or 3 hours daily. Covid friends have come by, but it seems to deplete rather than replenish. I have eaten soup every day, tea concoctions, taken medicine every few hours. The lack of tastebuds helps with taking these down, but it hinders my joy for cooking up comforting meals. It's been about 8 days and I still feel really rough, each day surprising me with one step forward or one step back.

I'm into it - into this interesting battle - but I'd much rather be done now. I'd much rather be done, and yet I still don't wish I had been vaccinated. The fear of the vaccine's side effects in my body is greater than the fear of the side effects of Covid. I think many of them are similar actually, but the illness seems more natural for me to go through than an injection. And once I pull through to the other side of this, I can rest easy with immunity. The same can't be said about the vaccine. Maybe I'm foolish. Maybe I'm choosing to find facts that argue my position. If I had side effects from the shot, I'd be silenced and gaslighted. Having side effects from Covid, I would be heard and listened to, and maybe even made an example of in the media. "She could have avoided this had she been vaccinated". Yes, but at least you trust my illness. You wouldn't trust my cry for help after a vaccine injury.

It's always been scary to be sick, pre-Covid and all. Now my mind wanders to wondering what will become of my heart, of my lungs, of my active mind. I meditate on health and love, I bring in the light. Yet no matter, there is still fear inside, fear of being someone who doesn't recover, who recovers 90%, who dies. Yeah, extreme, I know. I've never been in this position before, and I never knew what it would be like. I didn't expect myself to feel so weak, but weakness is the truth: there is no control over this body other than what I choose to feed it. Don't worry, I don't feel like I'm dying. It's only a mind-based fear.

I "wanted" to write this, and yet there is so little of wanting anything in me. Even the sense of wanting is dull when I experience it. So this isn't elegant, it's not artful. I wish I could say this sickness brought visions or poetry or higher states of consciousness. Nope. It's boring as fuck.

Initiatory moment

illness allows for the closest thing to an initiatory moment (moments lost in mythic time and space); the emergence into light after so much somatic experiencing of the darkness, the pain and suffering, the fear of death.

Accomplish

Hard to know if I have ever accomplished enough. What is the measure? What is the scale? When will I rest, in peace, able to look back on accomplishments and be satiated, satisfied? The ego is strong, pulling me into constant motion, relentless in its search for approval and atonement. What is my measure of success? What must I prove, to others, but most importantly myself, in order to truly and fully surrender to nothingness?

Divine Principle

"Consider the Spirit as a warm, pulsating, reciprocal thing. It presses against us, it flows through us. It is our intelligence. It is a great universal urge and surge. It is a warm colorful thing. It is a beautiful thing. It cannot be put into words. You can only feel it. But consider the Law as a cold fact, nothing else. It has no motive of its own. It is just a power, a blind force, but it is an intelligent, an executing and immutable force. The law is the servant of the Spirit. Consider creation -- whether it be the vast body of the Cosmos or the suit of clothes or dress we have on -- as some effect of intelligence operating through law and you have the whole proposition as clear as can be that there is a power in the universe which knows, a law which does, a creation which corresponds. Creation does not respond; it only corresponds. Now that is what we mean when we speak of Divine Principle. Divine Principle is not God any more than electricity is God. It is a law of God, just as electricity is a law of God. It is a mental law of cause and effect. When you impress your thought upon it, it is its nature to take that thought and execute it. If there is destruction in the thought, it must destroy. If there is good in the thought, it will execute goodness or healing. This is the principle governing spiritual science, and unless such a principle were, spiritual science could not be. Know that there is something more than law; an intelligence to which we may come for inspiration, for guidance, for direction; a power responding to us, a Presence pressing against us, an animation flowing through us, a light within us."

- Ernest Holmes, "Science of Mind"