Category: Reflections

I have been wrestling with the demon of responsibility lately, learning to live in a new kind of trust that seems “irresponsible” but is really a radical act of accountability.. trusting that the survival needs will be met, that we can lose and gain and lose without living in fear.
After journalling one morning, I sat with Andrew on the couch in front of a fire and spoke lots about this sense that I was caught in a paradox between “responsible” and “irresponsible” – knowing I was stuck in it but not sure how to rise above the black and white opposites to see the zebra. Then while I was thinking out loud, I had an understanding that being in Now blows that paradox apart, makes it irrelevant. I have been trying to “forecast” into the future and connect to the past with this sense of responsibility or control. It is an illusion. I can only “be responsible” or alert in the now – the outcomes or results are not under my control, and no amount of “being responsible” will guarantee outcomes. Too much sense of responsibility will make me feel restricted, unspontaneous. So it is not about letting go of personal accountability, but it is about letting go of control, which is an illusion anyway.
I said it was like no longer trying to be a navigator on a ship but rather like being a log tossed on the ocean. Andrew rightly pointed out that it was more like being a log on the bottom of the ocean – the waves still toss around but there is stillness.

This is not about falling in a hole but just falling to ground…

Nausea, fatigue, gratitude, sadness, quiet. Caretaking, caring, being careful to tend what is here. Uncertainty about flight but willingness to stop looking ahead, to be with what is here. Learning to breathe, to walk, to lie down, to make love, to be organized. Learning to make room for emptiness. Learning to accept not-busy and to trust body intelligence. Learning to see ego throughout the day and invite it to hush. Learning to be in sivasana, the corpse pose, without agitation or falling asleep.

So much learning when we can find ways to listen to our own bodies. In forgiving the ways I have constricted breath, I stumbled over my early belief that “I” live inside this body like a spirit wearing a heavy snowsuit, rigid with padding. Recognized that really “I” am present as cells and skin and lungs and bones… my being is embodied, these membranes are not just a “vehicle” or tool for my experience of life but are actually “me” in this moment. These filaments of connection – nerves, blood, muscle – remember past movements and the steady hum of change that has been “me” since my conception. There are likely aspects of my interconnected being-with-others and being-with-life that had essence before my conception and will continue after my last breath.. but “me” only happens once, I am this body coordinated by this brain, marked by these sensations and opportunities and hurts. I do not live “in” my body like a toddler overbundled. I am a naked sense organ, moving from lawn to mud puddle to bathtub, learning with each step and inhalation. That journey has brought protections, defenses, learned patterns of constriction – my snowsuit – but I am grateful for this growing sense that I can unzip it to live in more direct exposure.

Am noticing the additional alertness required by self-employment, and the spaciousness it offers, knowing that by not slipping into a 9-to-5 routine I have the added opportunity and responsibility to be alert today. It is like facing a fresh easel each day, knowing that there are a range of tools at hand and colours available (current priorities and tasks) but with some room to craft the day. Interplay between “crafting” and “receptivity” – true openness to what arises rather that arising from obligation or “shoulds.” The difference between should and could is slight but significant. And the key element – to which I still feel traces of resistance – is truly opening to the fresh easel, the unmarked moment, the uninjured heart. Creating daily space for emptiness so that motivation for picking up “a good brush” arises from the stillness.
On this side of the process (before meditation, buzzing from coffee and two separate drives to the schoolbus), I can also understand that there is a creative surprise in store – that the “good brush” might be a financial task, an emotional task, a creative or domestic task, etc. The act of doing that arises is less significant than the quality of being that surrounds it – and at the same time, the act of doing is the only way to manifest presence and creative energy in this lifetime.

It’s interesting and paradoxical that Sue Johnson’s work uses the word “attachment” to describe the emotional bond we crave, when I am also reading in Buddhist-inspired writing about the need to be free of attachments. The apparent contradiction may be mostly about semantics, or the need for deeper understanding of possibilities. The attachment I offer and need from my husband comes from a desire to live integrated with my bigger-than-self or no-self, the part of me that is interconnected with everything, integrated with this personality and body and history that is me. So deep attachment is about surrender and commitment and the intention to “be there” for the partner and feel secure that the partner will “hold me tight” when required. But it is also about deep trust in the web, a knowing confidence that my partner is as deeply embedded in the web as I am, and that the strength and beauty and love and pain of our relationship is part of the web that we all move along. So there is liberation in that realization, a meeting of fluid souls that change through time. And in that liberation, the attachment grows deeper and more joyful and less fearful and more conscious of how precious and unique our moments of connection are. Connection is perhaps another word for this kind of attachment, and yet I can see why “attachment” is a good word in couples’ therapy, with its associations of nurturing and security. And I completely surrender to the need for creating this kind of attachment on all levels in our relationship. But using the word “connection” to describe this kind of loving bond helps me separate it from the kind of attachment we’re also working to free ourselves from – the attachment that comes from needing another in order to prop up the ego, to feel illusory safety and permanence in a world that is full of suffering and change. I believe that if we can look at that kind of attachment – the beliefs about our relationship that are ego-inspired rather than arising from presence – and choose to let those attachments go, we can bring even more fearlessness and fervour into our experience.

I’m growing in recognition of broad deep energy flows that connect me to this universal energy, in my understanding that there is no way I can conceptualize or control or manage adequate intention to find a place of solid certainty. Instead, my liberation comes from letting go into the flow, giving up this obligation to craft a perfect life in order to really experience the chaos and ordered patterns and being that is. Recognition that I am terrified at times and ecstatic at times and loving and hateful and selfish and generous… but the more I plug in to the energy stream, the more detachment and passion and capacity I can access, as ego melts into the river. I wear ego like a dress that will float around me and expand effortlessly in the river, yet cling to me and plaster me with cold immobility when I am standing alone on the shore.