I was reflecting this morning on a friend and her son, who is now a young adult. I was considering the challenges that he faces being here in the world and her concerns about the masking affect of the medication that he takes for support. I was remembering a time when I was taking medication to help me be here more fully. Although it’s been stated that medication cuts off one’s sense of other-worldly guidance, and I found that to be true too, for when I was on it, there was always a sense that something was missing, something vital like an important stream or thread or a portal that was blocked off or out of reach. Despite other people’s reassurances, that little niggle of awareness, of something more, stayed as something that seemed unrelenting and possibly more true. And yet, anxiety also cuts off guidance to some degree, at least it is distorted and things can be so complex, loud, and topsy that just being here can be near impossible. I had walked around with the guilt of where I was in life and how I was going about it, feeling shame for not functioning like others. What I needed was permission to be where I was in order to soften that edge of guilt and shame so that I could build up enough support around me and cultivate my inner tools of listening and hearing guidance. I needed permission to wear the support of medication like a brace until at some point, I would be able to let go. And even the letting go was back and forth for a while until I was able to lean more into the help of friends and the internal resources. It’s still not easy, but there’s an access route that is being developed and there are trustworthy loved ones around me of which I am more fully able to receive. I couldn’t push myself the way I tend to, the way I still tend to, because I had to get Inside first, into the loving space of, “this is how we can do it, from inside out and not the way you expect of yourself.” Not the warriors way, but the mystical watery way of creating a forgiving, nourishing, accepting landscape. Permission to be how and the way I am and to know that more importantly and potently than the destination planned.
The thing is, is that portal, that inner resource never went away, and I trust it never could, but there needed to be a negotiation between the profound strength of that resource, that portal and my personality and what it could tolerate at the time. That’s the relationship that the whole of me longs for. That is the inner marriage and wholeness that I think of as loving acceptance. So in the same way, I pose the questions to myself, ‘Will you see cease to be who you are, the edge of where you’re learning is, if others turn away? And if you do, will that part of you that remains calling ever actually disappear? Or will it keep on calling to you until you are ready?' My personality sometimes just needs to know that she is good enough, and that she is doing enough, and that she’ is okay.
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AuthorAs a person who is highly interested in the inner landscape through interaction with the external, I find it invaluable to express these experiences. Here, a collection of musings; experiments, potential truths, and ultimately, my unique pathway of creative learning and growth. Blog and website edited by scholar, literary enthusiast, horticulturist and friend Peter Dryden.
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