As I look from my current vantage point what I can see most clearly is that the parts of our lives we give focus to are what grow. Currently my world consists mostly of doing homework, working out or doing yoga, teaching yoga, doing massage and watching Netflix to turn off my brain. Not much room in there for spending time with my friends, being outdoors, cooking dinner, keeping the house attended to, making music. This isn’t a complaint mind you, it’s just how things are at the moment. And I see the distance I feel from the things in my life that were so prevalent a short time ago, and the intense pull that I feel from the things I have currently deemed Important. It’s a seductive room, that room of Importance. I usually have my eyes wide open when I walk in, but once I stay a while I start to forget that I chose to walk into that room and decorate it the way I did, eschewing certain things for others. It starts to feel, increasingly, sneakily, like that room comprises pretty much most of the world, all that matters anyway.
So I’m glad that I’m just about to start The Presence Process again. It should help me get a little clearer about the room. This time I’m doing it with other people, and we’re going to check in with one another periodically as it goes. The independent rule breaker in me doesn’t want to have “meetings” or be held to a “schedule”. Funny how hard it can be to just simply say yes sometimes. But one good thing about it is that I really will have people holding me accountable, and me doing the same for them. Teams can help us get through stuff. That’s why I love public yoga classes. Like it or not, we’re on a team together for that hour or hour and a half, holding each other up and relying on each other at the same time.
Either way, for me I am hoping that this time through the process I can come closer into contact with myself. I am observing myself in a number of unfamiliar (and too familiar) scenarios, watching my behavior, thinking about it and trying to understand it later. I know this means I am closer to being able to shift it in the moment, but I’m not quite there yet. I still freeze up and revert to type, or let the saboteur run the show sometimes, though perhaps a little less extremely than I used to. I am really looking to understand what is real for me, and what of me is working really well, and what of me I need to kindly but discerningly work through to shift, and try to love it all. It’s so damned hard. And I find myself scared of what will come up next; what new emotional/ethical/philosophical/primal/soul-searching paradox is on my horizon? But the fear isn’t in charge. It just is there. Among all the other feelings.
Anyway. That’s where I’m at, in the dawn of the new year. Here is to walking the path as truly as we can.
