A New Day

I have been sleeping with my head in the same direction on my bed for many years now. Last night I was sitting on my bed in the evening and felt compelled to put my head down in a totally different position, so I did. I slept like I was in another world.

I had many dreams about doing things differently than I have done before and spending time with new people I hadn’t met yet or didn’t know all that well. I was really enjoying it and learning a lot, but I was also very concerned that the new ways were going to disrupt the old ways, familiar consistent habitual ways that I thought I needed to maintain in order to be okay.

And disrupt they did. In a way that showed me the old patterns were not as stable or supportive of me as I had imagined. I was angry and hurt at first. Then I began to recognize. I was also freed.

Even my breathing pattern changed as I made this shift. I started to notice that although there were things that were passing there were also aspects that seemed to thrive in the space that was freed by putting myself in new positions, by moving in new directions. There had been no time or room to grow being stuck repeating the same old things, even if before it had felt familiar and therefore safe.

As I woke my perspective was quite different, literally and figuratively. My cat was really happy to get to lie in the spot I usually lie in that at times we fight over. As my granny used to say, “It’s a new day Neissy.”

Can’t hold on to the old day.
May as well face the dawn.

I mentioned to my son last night I was going to sleep in a new direction and he said he changes the direction he puts his head all the time and encouraged it.
Evolution.

I awaken with the resolve to keep stepping forward into the reorganization with less fear of the accompanying dissolution. To just keep going, see how it grows.

The Full Pallette of Wisdom

Right now, it’s the tenth night after the nine nights of the goddess in the Indian holiday of Navaratri, see https://deniseporterkemp.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/navaratri-the-nine-nights-of-the-goddess/ for more explanation…

Something I’ve been experiencing in all this is that being open to the wisdom that comes to me includes being able to stay open to the things I don’t want to see, too – in myself and all around me. Without trying to block it or fix it. Or fix how I feel about it, no matter how raw it feels sometimes. Or feel too sorry for myself or others about it, either. Well, maybe a little bit at first…yet then letting that veil drop, too, and just breathing it in, letting it integrate, no matter how uncomfortable it is to sit with it.

For wisdom, truth as we are currently capable of experiencing it, doesn’t always show you the things you think you want to see. And being aligned with “truth” doesn’t always mean you get what you think you want. It – the wisdom, the truth – holds all sides of the spectrum. None cancels the other out, the beauty or the tragedy or the mundane that lies between. Fighting or ignoring just prolongs the suffering and keeps us from seeing what we actually have to work with.
So on this day that asks us to begin again, my intention is to continue to clear and sensitize and strengthen myself so that I can stay awake in all of it, as best I can. Not shutting any of it out just because I don’t want to have to see it. Observing, learning. Reorganizing when I realize I have been confused. Letting go of grasping for what’s not when I realize I’m doing it. With as little judgement as possible, beginning again. Embracing the potential of what lies before me, as best I can. Right now.
(written last night, October 24, 2012)