Just wanted to send out some peace and love to all. Life can knock us down and toss us around at times, but we always have the choice to get back up and take a step forward. One thing I’ve picked up on this year is to stop ruminating on the why’s of life. For many years that was a major part of my life and nightly practices. Occasionally it might provide some answers or possible insights, but usually I’d find myself going down rabbit holes and sinking more into sadness and depression.
Lately, I’m using more of a what approach to life. What happened? What actions occurred? What did I do? What did life do? How did I interpret it? What can I learn from it? What can I do at this very moment to take a small step FORWARD?
We’ve got an amazing super power within called love! It never fails! Look and reach within and you will find this amazing light and peace❤️
I can’t believe it but I’m starting to think about one of my “F” words: GOALS!
You see like forever, if I even heard someone mention that nasty word, I’d be like shut the hell up, of course in my head, as I just smiled. I’d be like dude I can’t even keep my shit together right now. Have you seen my shit? Come closer so I can just punch you right now in the face. (Remember Ground Hog Day and Bill Murray punching the insurance salesman?) Yep there is definitely a Mr. Hyde inside. My thought process was I’m barely holding on here day to day and you want me to think about 1 and 5 years from now? Again, shut the hell up, what the “F” ?
This all came about the other night lying in bed, pillow over my head to protect me from all my nemesis, and as I peaked out upon my world I started to think back to five years ago. Where was I? Where am I now? You see it was just over 5 years ago that I became a very broken man. Oh I was definitely broken before that but my soul was so frustrated of providing hints and paths for me to follow, and I’d just ignore them and stay on my stagnant lily pad. So my soul decided to do what it had to do and applied defcon emergency procedures on my ass!
I was struck with a divorce, debt, depression, and enough other shrapnel that come along with all that to blow me off the lily pad and face a world I’d been denying for years. I thought we were talking about goals? I’m getting there…
At that point there was no more hiding a not so perfect life. The spotlight shined brightly on me as I was forcefully dragged center stage. The curtain wasn’t going to shut and my soul held all the cards. I was to start anew like it or lump it. I lumped it!
As I lumped it not much happened. Like a new seed planted. I went through all those f’n phases blah blah blah…more “F” words. Slowly though with tons of work a root system was started. I looked uP and worked on “me”. It took many years of crying and trying. Many new thoughts and framing to get over my lost love. Along with that it took 4 years to pay off $35,500 in debt. I made many wrong turns, dead ends, but each time I was gathering new information and learning. For all my hard work, my soul granted me a gift on February 16, 2019. I became sober. Vowing to never live life again in the fog. To face each day with whatever life throws at me and focus on my base and have faith. My roots we’re getting deeper and deeper. To many on the outside it may appear as I haven’t done anything with my life in the last 5 years, but for me, and that’s all that counts I’ve grown so much from my lily pad days.
Okay here’s the goals part. It takes a bamboo tree 5 years to even sprout above the ground. What’s it doing up to that point? It’s taking in all the moisture and nutrients and growing a deep root system. Once that’s complete get the hell out of the way. Within 5 weeks of sprouting it can shoot up 90 ft tall!!!
So that’s my thoughts from beneath my pillow. My base is there. It’s good. I looked at the past and have seen the great progress this “tree” has made. I’m now at a point where I feel I can actually start doing the “G” word.
The dragon is back. Currently noise and triggers within my mind is winning. Any breeze can toss me about with ease. A comment, a tone, an image, feeling,…be whatever strikes with intense precision brining me to my knees. Think Harry Potter with death eaters or dueling wands. Except I don’t even raise my wand.
It’s not a fun place to be. Shocked, offended, and surprised. There’s nowhere to run and hide, since everyone is pointing me out…or that’s how it seems.
If I could just reach my soul, I know I’ll have a chance.
…Depression just sucks. I thought I’d share my current spell with others just to let you know you’re not alone. I usually write about this after the fact when I kicked it’s ass, but thought being vulnerable and open may help me through and others. It feels so low and very cold where I can barely move in fear it strikes again and again.
Playing events out in my mind shine clues of how I’ve arrived here again. My defenses were nil – why – given my past ..no clue.
Writing it out helps connect some dots. No cries of poor Dwight please..that isn’t this intent.
The dragon is quiet. It’s time to form a new plan.
A huge voice is screaming don’t publish this you fool. You’re not anonymous! Another small faint voice says go ahead.
In my endeavor to do five actions daily for 30 days, I completely ignored most of them in week 2. There wasn’t one activity I did consistently each day. I have no excuses. I just didn’t feel like doing them. The interesting thing though is I feel absolutely no guilt and actually feel better then I have in months.
I did go mountain biking twice last week and that actually propelled me up. As shitty as it can be at times huffing and puffing up hills it’s actually fun in a sick way pushing myself beyond my controlled comfortable numbness. There’s no faking it. It’s also a rush to try to stay balanced wizzing down a hill going over rocks and roots and trying to take sharp turns…all at the age of 54. You can hear me nervously giggle the whole way. And even though I’ve only gone three times now I feel like I’m improving.
I feel frickin alive. I feel challenged. I feel good.
“There is only one person that’s responsible for your life and that is YOU! Not your boss, not your spouse, not your parents, not your friends, not your clients, not the economy, not the weather. YOU!”
– Marc Reklau, 30 Days Change your habits Change your life
For those who don’t know, I’ve been down/off I’d say for the last month and a half. All appearances I act and look fine, but behind the scene I’m doing a lot of lying in bed with a pillow over my head hiding from life and craving peace and to just check out. I’m not about to analyze all that here, but I am going to discuss next steps.
For me, I eventually get to a point where I’m basically sick and tired of being sick and tired, and realize I need to pick myself up. No magic fairy dust is in sight. I’m so beyond “these are interesting trying times”. So I came up with this 30 five ACTIONS idea to share out here.
Here are my five actions that I’m committing to daily for the next 30 days:
I purposely didn’t get specific on these. My goal is just to take action and make small changes that will improve my human experience. After each week, I’ll create a new post with an update on my progress. If you’d like to participate and come up with actions of your own, I’d love to hear about it in posts from you. The number 1 rule though is..there are no rules. Whatever works for you. Yours might be the 20 two actions. You get the point.
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
-T. S. Eliot
“As a Wanderer, an apprentice to the unknown, you long to be initiated into the fully embodied life of your soul. You will have to wait. The fallow time of the second cocoon, the time between death and rebirth, cannot be dodged. To catch up to your soul, you will have to learn, as T. S. Eliot did, to place your faith and love and hope in the waiting.”
-Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin
These two quotes reasonate with me. There have been multiple times in my life where everything within just shut down going into safety mode to cause no further damage. I’d scream come on already, but nothing. Just darkness. Eventually I’d start back uP, and think I died and re-birthed. Like a one way trip from caterpillar to butterfly. Oh how I was wrong. How many re-births will it take? For the waiting isn’t something I do very well. The thought arises there are still parts that obviously never died, and I indeed have some catching up to do. Now I attempt to sit with and trust the waiting 😊
In the last two days, I’ve come across the reference to the Greek myth of labyrinth and the Minotaur. Once in the book Callings, Finding and Following an Authentic Life by Gregg Levoy and a blog entry here on WordPress by Kachaiweb – Food.for.Thoughts. Now this isn’t something that usually happens to me coming across Greek myths.
It’s a story of Theseus slaying a beast in an underground labyrinth, and guiding himself out by a length of thread given to him by the king’s daughter, Ariadne. Allison Stieger wrote a wonderful article on this where I found the quote above:
As Allison says, “Monsters are often the guardians of treasure, who must be slain in order to bring the treasure out. In a creative journey, we must often find our way through a labyrinth. We take wrong turns, hit walls, get lost. Often, this is what must happen to find the creative treasure at the center of ourselves, that one thing that must be brought into the world through our creative efforts.”
I know for myself and for many of you we feel like everyday we’re fighting a battle within. Many times the path ahead seems dark and bleak and we’re very much scared that if we go deeper we may not be able to return. I feel like these references pointing me back to this myth is indeed a sign to remind myself and you to keep finding the courage to take another step in our own labyrinth. This journey is so worth the rewards of finding our true self.
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” 
