Originally published 2018 Luminous Life Maps
This week I have been reminded of why I do inner work…both as a Guide and as a faithful student.
I have spent the past 5 days with no voice from an upper respiratory gamboo. I have felt tender and quiet…except for the frustrating engagements I have had with my 80 year old mother who is failing at managing and tracking the details of her complex life…crying for help when things fall apart then rejecting input when she wants to do what she wants to do.
I realize my sickness and loss of voice is directly related to the seeming impossible-ness of this dynamic and the STRESS & GRIEF of it all.
Being a body oriented person, I wish I could say I no longer somaticize the stress of my life…evidence this week points to the contrary! What I can say is that I listen and manage stress and it takes a lot more life stress to bring me to illness, I rarely get sick anymore. This is an outgrowth of doing inner work, and a fortified immune system helps!
I see the dilemma my mother is in…it is a life born from her own BRITTLENESS. She is a person who is pretty stuck in the way she lives her life, locked into a rut that kind of worked once, for a little while. She is stuck in her personality rather than growing into her whole, essential self. I see the pain that she experiences from her lack of personal awareness, not to mention the pain she causes for others. I see the tension of unaddressed grief and emotions piling up in her until she is so agitated she resorts to one of her chaos producing addictive behaviors – so as to shift the attention to THIS rather than deal with THAT accumulated heartbreak she carries in her body and psyche.
I see the way she tries to control the elements and people in her life so as to avoid the fear she feels when she feels out of control. Sadly, her brain is less and less able to manage the details of this lifestyle…she is losing control.
How scary. To face the reality that you can’t track reality, that you are losing your grip on it all – the one major coping strategy you have cultivated your entire life…keeping a controlling, tight grip on it all, ‘knowing what to do’, even if maladapted…it’s a strategy.
This is why I do inner work and why I have devoted my life’s work to assisting you in your inner work:
- To cultivate more tools in life, to not be a one trick pony
- To build our ability to flow with life so we are not so brittle we break
- To practice paying attention to and being with the heartache that life is all too willing to throw our way (for our growth)
- To soften beyond our personality
- To create meaningful connections with people instead of isolating to hide our vulnerabilities
- To expand the capacity of our hearts and our attention to be with all that is really happening instead of sticking our head in the sand or being a deer in the headlights, pretending things aren’t happening
- To grow into the people we were born to be…through all the struggles and disappointments, heartbreaks and places we are out of control…to feel it, heal it and grow
- To grow into some amount of grace as we muck around with the grit of life
- To get REAL
Somehow, today, it seems getting real is the only ‘protection’ in the craziness of life. Getting real is inner work. Real looks unique on each of us…and we need that collective waking up into our fully embodied REAL, not only for our own lives but for the good of our families, communities and our world.
Here’s to getting REAL.
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