Thursday, September 26, 2013

Peering Inside

I wrote this a year ago, and thought I'd share it here.  Some of you may be able to relate to this post.  Especially if you have unresolved issues--and who doesn't have those?

I'm takin' a squint right now at my innards. Peering inside at the inner workings of the Rita. It's amazing in there. Oh yeah. Really messy. It looks like Chaos, but it's so very synchronized. Quite a thing of beauty.

Over there is the place where I harbor my fugitive emotions. The ones that never got expressed because I was too Busy, or too Bad Ass, or too Frozen. They're all over actually, just waiting to wreak havoc in tissues throughout my body. A sore muscle here, a tight tendon there. Scars and so on.

All the experiences, the good and the bad are jumbled in together, building my inner landscape. 

Peering deeper I see the faceless ones that want to remain hidden. They burrow down, not wanting to be seen. They keep me hidden, and invisible. They keep me from seeing myself. They keep me from feeding myself, from expressing myself, from contributing anything of value, lest it draw attention to me. They keep me anonymous and "safe". They would be happiest if I would just stay asleep.

Now that I know they're there, I wonder what they fear. In spite of their best efforts I have outgrown them. I look at them and they cringe away into the dark shadows, trying to blend into the back ground. I turn away from them and look out into the infinite within my borders. I see galaxies forming and stars being born. I see a landscape of amazing light and color. This is what I am now. I begin to move into that landscape, and the small ones clutch at me. I turn back to face them, and hold out my hand. "Come on", I say. "We'll go together".

This is what I am building now. This creation of me. As I tell this story, it becomes what I am. All the darkness and chaos is every bit as beautiful as the light and color of new forming suns. Even the small faceless ones are evolving. They know they must come along. They must transform to survive. It is inevitable. We cannot help it.
I often use this inner landscape to work something out. It's a natural process for me, and happens spontaneously. In it my emotions become characters in the story with personalities of their own.

I had a small scream one time. It belonged to a foolish memory that I allowed to torment me. It would lay hidden and then it would creep up on me when I least expected, and jump out and scream at me. I tried to ignore it for years upon years. One day when it snuck up on me and screamed it's scream, I realized it was like a small child trying to get my attention, by misbehaving. So I turned around in my inner landscape, and looked it in the face and said in a rather exasperated voice, "What?! What do you want, for heaven's sake?!" It looked at me with big eyes and said in a voice I could barely hear, "Nothing". And then it turned and ran away, and I haven't seen or heard from it since. 

In fact after that, a lot of my more tiresome memories stopped gnawing at me, grew up and moved out. And high time, too. How long can you be expected to support a house full of emotions and memories all feeding on your energy and draining your resources--raising a rumpus and generally just messin' up the place? I ask you.
Their contribution is that I learn from them. I find creative solutions to grow beyond them. And when my perception changes, so do they. They grow up and move on. The result is that I am no longer afraid to look into the shadowy landscape of my inner world.

So now I want to ask you to consider this option the next time one of your unresolved issues won't stay tucked away in it's carefully packed box.  The next time you are wasting your energy trying not to see what is tormenting you, I'd like to invite you to look your tormentor in the face.  See it for what it is.  Maybe the only way to end your struggle with this thing and to heal the wound is just to acknowledge it.  See if it has anything to say to you.  And if not, then allow it to go.

Sometimes when you stop struggling against something, it softens.  Sometimes the only reason you hang onto something is because you haven't heard the message you were meant to learn.  If you can sit with this thing and truly put your attention on it and acknowledge it--letting it have its say, then maybe you can be done with it.

I wish you well on your journey.

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