This week, I woke up every morning, actually craving to sit before work. I had time almost every morning, and was able to sit about 20 minutes each morning. I could feel my nervous system wanting to slow down. Like I said in my last post, I turned my cell phone off all day at work, and it made such a great difference in my days. I wasn't worried about hearing my phone go off, and checking it constantly to see if I had missed a message. A huge burden felt lifted off my shoulders, even though I had placed the burden on there myself! But something wasn't right. I felt unhappy this week...unsatisfied. I have felt a bit unmotivated in general this week. I just wanted to sit all day like I did on the retreat. I had too much to swallow, and not nearly enough time to digest everything that has happened over the past two weeks. I haven't practiced yoga nearly as often as I usually do either, which threw me for a loop. I wasn't motivated, and most of all, my body has been really sore.
Since I got back, my body has been doing some weird things...maybe it's releasing some stuff that I stirred up on retreat, but whatever it's doing, it doesn't want to practice yoga right now. My neck and shoulders are endlessly tight and sore, regardless of massage, or adjustment. My hips are achy, and my back...ugh my back. I am a strong believer in listening to your body, because it knows better than our minds what we should do for it. My body is saying 'stop! rest please, and be with this achiness i am making you feel!' So I stopped as much as I could this week.
In stopping, I had some realizations that I was not very excited about. For those of you who know me very well, I think it's safe to say, you know that my heart is often quite open, and full of love for pretty much everything on the planet. I have often wondered if it's possible to be born with a heart too big. I am a very grateful, passionate person...and I really love to take care of people. Well, my heart has proven to actually be too big for my own good. I often feel so overwhelmed by how big my heart is, and I have interpreted this in the past to be my ability to see the beauty in the world, and appreciate it so much. This might still be the case...but underlying all the beauty in the world, is a girl who has not given nearly enough of all her love to herself. Yes, my friends, that's me. Why do you think I cry so much...about everything, good and bad, happy and sad?! I realized this week on a deeper level, that I am always spreading myself way too thin for my own good, and leaving not enough love for me at the end of the day. And, it's one thing to receive love from other people, which is always appreciated, but it's a whole other ball game to really truly receive love from yourself.
The ironic thing is, that I felt like I had a lot of shit figured out, and that I was really happy, before this retreat! It's not to say that I don't have a lot of shit figured out, but I do think that I was a bit deluded in thinking what genuine happiness is. In Buddhism, through meditation the Buddha talks about experiencing suffering that leads to the end of suffering. That's what I feel like I am experiencing this week. Suffering, that leads to the end of suffering. The beautiful part and the frustrating part about this is that things are always changing, shifting, creating. I won't always feel like this every moment of every day...quite the contrary actually. But it's so frustrating to feel like I can't count on anything!
This, my friends, is my big issue right here. I don't like things I can't control. Not easy to type, not easy to read, not easy to believe, and not easy to know. But it's true. I like to have things go the way I planned, so I can count on something. This is my way of expressing my resistance towards what actually just is, every day. And this week, I was feeling it creep up on me really strongly. I said this week, 'I wish I could just let go a little more, and have fun.' This is my first year living on my own, paying all my own bills, and trying to save a little money for later on. This has taken over, because it's expensive to live alone and take care of everything by yourself! I have a real job that pays me enough money to be able to do this...but that also means giving a lot of my time to this job (which I LOVE, but nonetheless is a job). Finding a balance to being a responsible adult, and still being able to let loose enough, is not an easy gig!
I have always thought of myself as not a very good person at transitions. I have changed my mind: I am not very good at really big, life altering transitions. But in reality, life is just a series of transitions...and so far, I think I'm doing a relatively good job at dealing with most of them. What I need to work on, is accepting the fact that transitions, changes, and fluctuations of everything, is consistent. Finding the consistency within the chaos...and loving it for what it is. It's not good, bad, great, or horrible...it just is. So much easier said than done.
So, in conclusion, my big heart and I have decided to take time together to grow into each other. No one person can do this for me. I'm sure that people will help along the way, by being their beautiful selves, but that's about all the help I can take. This is a journey that I have been avoiding, because it's scary to be alone, and it's scary to actually realize how much power our hearts have...and how much power our brains have over our hearts. I truly believe that if I take this time to figure this out, by myself, then one day my heart and my mind will be so connected, that I will be able to make decisions quite easily...because my heart will always know the answer. I need to get out of my head, into my heart, give myself the love that I have been constantly been giving everyone else around me. It's time.
Thanks for reading :-)
Light and Love,
Sarah
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