Sometimes I get a
little lost in the journey. Do you ever feel that way?
We get caught up in
the movement that we exhaustedly sit down at the end of the day and we
simply... with a sigh... wonder what happen. We made plans. We set the
calendars. We made lists. We did every conceivable organizational thing we have
been taught or promoted to do but yet we think about all that we did not
accomplish. We think back on the day and become aware of a lost fifteen minutes
driving.... or ten minutes standing in line... or the phone call or project
that took a lot longer than we had planned for.
So, what do we
normally do? We begin to think that we need to just either be more
disciplined or we need to plan better or we need to just be more focused... or
perhaps... maybe, we need to give ourselves space.
In the past four
months, I have been working on my balance and flexibility. It has been a
difficult two years and the tension of the inner struggle for health has taken
its toll on me. However, I know that what I am doing in the present is beyond my
wildest imagination. I look back at photos that were taken prior to my
diagnosis of cancer and I am reminded that I was not as healthy as I thought
that I was at that time. My body was betraying my own sense of
health. I was running and preparing to participate for a half marathon
but the whole time my body was silently dying inside. The thing that I thought
was normal was actually anything but normal. I have very little recollection of
the first month after my first surgery but I do remember at times driving
around the streets of Denver feeling exhausted and confused. I, now, realize it was the lack of glucose
and other vitally important nutrients. In that first month I had not eaten or
drank anything of measurable value.
Four more surgical
procedures later, I was walking out St Luke's Hospital for the last time.
Well, more like shuffling out of the hospital for the last time. A year after
that last surgery, I am sitting here planning on going on an exploratory /
immersion trip to Nicaragua. I will have my personal trainer certification from
the NCSF at the end of the month. We will be in the second semester of a
graduate school program in Counseling/Psychology at Regis University. We will
be Level One certified in the practice of Reiki. We will start the completion of a
book that will hopefully encourage and inspire others.
Inwardly, I smile that
it took me almost a half a century to realize that the act of balance comes not
from juggling a lot of projects or tasks. I am now aware that being stable is
not the same as being sedentary. But the journey of health and healing came from
within before it was seen from the outside.
I remember my yoga instructor,
Julieta Claire, inviting me to come back to the practice of yoga. I knew
that I was going to be very limited due to the devices that I had to carry and
was attached to at the time. To me the invitation meant more than the actual participation. Since that time, I have had not been able to
practice with Julieta but I have carried on the practice in my home. I am aware
that for me the invitation was an external gift of belonging. The internal gift
of belonging is found in being mindful of my own longing to
"be". To be authentic. To be faithful to my own practice.
To be content not in things but content within my own sense of self. To not be
judgmental. To not be critical of self.
The Buddha says that
we should only speak when these four criteria are being met:
§ Is it True
§ Is it Timely
§ Is it helpful
§ Is it kind
Christ said that we
are to love others as we love ourselves. But how many times do we forget the
second part, "as we love ourselves" The act of metta.
A good friend Rachael
Medd said, "To help cultivate a state of balance and stability; among
the suffering and noise, [we need to know] what it is to be ‘alive’ and to be
able to make sense of this, accept this and use this to not only realize, but
explore… who we truly are."
When I read those words, I was reminded of what John O’Donohue wrote.
He writes, “The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for
intimacy” It is not an intimacy that is met by the presence of another but by
the presence of ourselves. We become so deeply aware of who we are that we reflect it in
what we do. It is on the “mat” that we are drawn deeper into gently embrace the
spiritual tension that we feel. We want
to embrace the tension not in the sense that we approve of it but that we
acknowledge it. We are present with our
own situation that we learn from the emotions that those tensions create. We
become mindful that the presence of tension promotes within us the
inflexibility of being able to give ourselves the space and the grace to just
be whom we truly are. O’Donohue leads us in seeing that the intimate
awareness of who we are is the greater angel that comes along to interact with
the emotions that insecurity and doubt may create. And this interaction is not
an internal session of struggle but acceptance.
Because with acceptance comes understanding. This understanding leads us
to know more deeply and safely where we need to redeem the lesser part of who
we struggle to be. Because without this redemption we lose our
balance and stability.
Breaking script… Namaste
