Living My Element With Sylwia - Day 63-76 (Flying Trapeze)

During this period, I had a huge epiphany.  It's as if all the little whispers I had been getting from my body and all the information I have been receiving from Sylwia connected.  My body knows what it wants.  It asks for it.  I feel it.  I can feel it if I give it a chance to speak to me.  It's pretty amazing.  There's no set way  except BEING KIND to it.  My body needs kindness... from me, especially me.  It's been such a revealing epiphany.  Simple and profound.

As I spoke to dear Sylwia yesterday, our conversation reverted to my anxieties... Ones that I have been shoveling down with sugar fixes.  The more I discover and conquer a tiny area of my life, another one unfolds in the dark.  To make it clear and bright requires work from my part and digging into myself again. The work is relentless.  I'm not afraid of the work so much, but I admit I am afraid of finding out that what I think I know about myself isn't 100% congruent with my priorities at all.  A tiny tinge of fear lingers inside me.. "Am I doing the right thing?  Am I saying the right words?  Am I being true to myself?"  Those are the questions that haunt me during the night and wake me up from a sound sleep.  They bombard my head while I play with my daughter making me second guess my job as a mother.  They nag at me while I interact with others, making me doubt the person I say I am.  "Who am I?"  That is the ultimate quest and question.

The certainty of something sometimes slips away and leaves me with this vast void of unsureness.  I look around and evaluate my life.. There is no room for unsureness.  As Sylwia told me last night.. "Maybe your body is asking for a break."  I think she's right.  It's time to reconnect.  Cease the intellectual from taking over and let the heart do some exploring.  Allow the soul to soar and re-discover, re-create itself.  My endless attachment to the ego can subside once in a while.  I understand that the fear to let go of what is known and dive into the unknown is not only a fear of mine; it is a fear that is shared amongst all of us who dare to become more, do more, learn more.. infinitely.  I realize and accept my duty to peel off each layer of myself until my vulnerable core is exposed, no smoking veil to hide it.  At this core, where I am my truest self, I am.  I do.  I have.  So many factors play together, it is soothing to know there is always time.

After our healing conversation (in more ways than I can express, and she can possibly imagine) Sylwia sent me this beautiful piece.. I read.  I cried.  I began to reconnect.

The Flying Trapeze 

Sometimes, I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments, I'm hurdling across space between the trapeze bars.

Mostly, I spend my time hanging on for dear life to the trapeze bar of the moment. It carries me along a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I'm in control. I know most of the right questions, and even some of the right answers. But once in a while, as I'm merrily, or not so merrily, swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see? 

I see another trapeze bar looking at me. It's empty. And I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart of hearts I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present well-known bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens, I hope—no, I pray—that I won't have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moments in time I must hurtle across space before I can grab the new bar. Each time I do this I am filled with terror. It doesn't matter that in all my previous hurdles I have always made it. 

Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless basin between the bars. 

But I do it anyway. I must.

Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call faith. No guarantees, no net, no insurance, but we do it anyway because hanging on to that old bar is no longer an option. And so, for what seems to be an eternity but actually lasts a microsecond. I soar across the dark void called "the past is over, the future is not yet here." It's called a transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs. 

I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and the bars are the illusions we dream up to not notice the void. Yes, with all the fear that can accompany transitions, they are still the most vibrant, growth-filled, passionate moments in our lives.

And so transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to "hang out" in the transition zone -- between the trapeze bars -- allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. 

Hurdling through the void, we just may learn to fly.