So often along the journey of my unfolding, I've come to a place where I can actually see/recognize an old self-defeating pattern at the very moment that it's playing through me. In that moment, I am fully aware that it's leading me somewhere no longer acceptable to me. I am, nonetheless, totally unable to stop or change the behavior.
There's such excruciating pain watching myself doing something that, not that long ago, would have gone by without any conscious notice. Knowing, now, that I need to not be doing this to myself again–yet feeling powerless to change or interrupt my behavior. For so many years, these moments were occasions for having at myself. Moments for badgering, berating, criticizing and generally beating up on myself. "How can you be so dense, stupid, slow, screwed-up, perverse?!" and "What is wrong with you?!" were the sort of nastiness that I'd hurl at myself.
As I've worked with myself and with others over the years, I've watched this cycle endlessly recur along the way of everyone's journey. As I've worked and watched, I've learned to hold such moments more spaciously. To hold myself and others caught in such moments with more gentle generosity. These "feeling stuck" places actually are times of growing and transitioning. Even though the growth and the transitioning may seem invisible to us or to any outside observer.
We need, in these difficult and painful times, to lovingly remind ourselves that being able to witness our patterns unfolding is itself an accomplishment of considerable significance. As we witness, we have now become more than merely the part of ourselves playing out the pattern. We are both that self and a larger, watching self: the witness. As we continue to repeat the old patterns with the witness self present and watching, we are able to gather more and more understanding of the steps in the old dance. We begin to be able to see what the triggers and "conventions" are. We become more and more separate from the energy field of that dance. It is not the "same old, same old" when we are conscious, awake and watching. It is more like research, like cultural anthropology.
The more loving, tender and generous we can be with ourselves, the less critical and judgmental, the more we will be able to see and learn in our research. We cannot, by any pressuring or goading actions, hasten the moment of the birth of the next step, of the next "who" that we are becoming. It always emerges just exactly when we're fully ready for it. Yet, how we are with ourselves during the "between time," the period of transition to that moment, is something about which we do have options and choice.
When we allow the natural world to be our teacher and guide, we remember that growth is not always visible. That unfoldings and blossomings have their own seasons. We remember that when things are the bleakest and most barren above ground, there is a gathering of energy proceeding, slowly, deep underground.
Using this frame of reference instead of the "more, bigger, faster, yesterday" yardstick of the ambient culture, we can choose to be gentle and patient with ourselves. We can let ourselves rest in the trust that the new growth is germinating even as we do our researches.
Practice being really patient and generous with yourself in the feeling stuck times.
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.
Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!
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