Not Yet

Yesterday I reposted a piece I wrote 2 years ago about 'the still point'. It is a borrowed idea, from where I'm not sure, but these found words are apt for something that has been my awareness, although not always within my reach, for as long as I can remember.

Life does not wait. No matter how much we might need or want the train to stop speeding along the tracks it is something that will always be beyond our ability to control. Whether it feels like a speeding locomotive, or a giant boulder rolling inexorably downhill, 'time' (for all of it's constructed meanings) will not pause long enough for us to catch up.

In some way, I am aware that this is where regret comes from, this sense that we missed an opportunity that was ripe and passing by as we muddled through some other turmoil, eyes to the sky, or the ground, or gazing back over our shoulder to puzzle out something long gone.

In the past month I stopped consuming coffee, in some part because I knew that I needed this body and mind to slow down in the midst of a difficult and confuddling period. It came from a realization that I had missed something important, and that something was  within me, silenced and hidden away and just waiting for an opening. I restarted a more regular yoga and meditation practice, which I had let slide over the course of two years or more. All this happened in a crux of 'busyness' at work, a stretch of time where I am being asked to give more of my life away. Simultaneously, I had was heeding some inner guidance and was making a commitment to make a practice of 'wanting what is here' (see http://artofstaying.blogspot.ca/2017/04/wanting.html). Over the past two weeks in my busiest time of year, I have felt more calm and grounded. I have not taken a break, or quit my job, or gone into hiding. I have just invited myself to attend to my days in the light of my own compassionate attention. At work I am surrounded by young people and trees, which are two of the most awesome things I know of.

Of course, because of all this, everything has slowed down. Not what is happening outside of me of course, but rather my need to try to keep up with it. Here I find it, my still point, doing it's utmost to remind me that although that the pace I have been moving at has seemed too slow, and not result oriented in the material sense, it has been absolutely needed.  I have done many things messily, and seemingly out of order, and retreated when I could have opened at times. But I am not alone in being imperfect. All of us humans get to inhabit that way of being, and maybe it's actually just perfect after all. All of it leading us to the dark places that are begging for more light.

There are external events that have led me to go deep into self reflection, but I know the movement has been building in these underground tunnels over time. I can track it in my writing - signposts that perhaps only I can see, but they are there, having emerged from the unconscious realms to occupy the page. My process over these few years has been frustrating and slow, but was made more so by my own inability to wait it out, to say no on occasion and let myself be. To forgive myself my imperfections. To understand that 'not yet' is an acceptable and valid answer to the heart's ardent call. I did not let myself off the hook. I was being pushed and was pushing myself for answers that I did not have, so I created one out of ether and circumstance. But the real answer was simple; not yet.

Not yet can be terrifying, because in sitting with it, we sometimes allow things of great beauty to pass us by, as some realizations take time. But it can also be a place of deepening readiness. If we fail to honour the speed at which the heart chooses to move, it will sink us, every time. Trying to rush to a desired end, forcing the wound closed with patches sewn together from the strands of hope, distraction and desire, we fail to reckon with the true nature of the injury. More importantly, we miss the gifts that lie hidden behind the veil of our deepest struggles when we get locked into the 'want it now' mentality. All beings deserve happiness, but sometimes this can be found most potently in the pause. In the expansive wonder that permeates the here and now.

I drove home yesterday evening along damp country roads, the spring forest leafing green and whispering the scent of blossoms and wet bark through the cracks in my car windows. The dog's nose lifted to the other messengers that were wafting in, detected by him alone.
All things unfold.
And I see now with an almost-clarity, that the things I thought were the most painful losses, have actually been incredible gifts, enabling me to sink below the level of words and explanations, blame and judgment, to a wellspring of life not yet fully received.

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” 

― Pema Chödrön