Stepping Aside

I invited her to let go of her body, to search the darkness inside herself in the way one who is blindfolded would sort through a pile of dried beans – feeling the shapes she encountered with the fingers of her mind, imaging their color, engaged and curious.  The pattern of heat she described scattered throughout her torso merged into one sensation, cooling and rising with each inhale until it reached the point between her eyebrows and we slipped out of the body with the dark and smoky wings of a giant bird.  We soared over the cliffs we had previously stood before timid and unsure.  We condensed into cloud and battered the hardened earth with our many droplets until it yielded.  We nestled beneath its crust as tiny seed, gently uncurling towards the surface with each breath until we stepped back onto the earth with human feet, reborn.

I have always felt as though I lived two lives.  One is worried about whether people like me and what to be when I grow up; thrilled by new adventures and ideas; disturbed by changes and criticism.  The other remembers, barefoot on a cold, dark street under the stars that my soul is timeless, embodied in every form.  I sleep under the marsh, draped across the sky and know that in every eye I look into is my own awareness looking back.  I am never better or worse.  I simply dwell in this body until it releases me.  Intertwining both these lives is the human mission.

Sharing this perspective with others has become the core momentum behind my days.  I meditate so that I can regenerate myself and slip between lives more fluidly depending on what each situation requires.  The fact that I feel fully unprepared deepens my surrender to the host of guides surrounding me.  They took me deep into myself.  Now they are inviting me to take others deep inside myself so that my sight can reveal to them a world within themselves that is ever-present, ever-nourishing, and ever-wise.  I haven’t had a proper day of rest in weeks, but I feel moved by the energy flowing through me, suspended between its unseen, seemingly inexhaustible origin and the point where it roots in the outer world each time I offer a word, a touch, a smile, an act of service that is openly received.

After my time being trained as a meditation teacher at Ananda Village, I returned to this community guarded.  I saw signs everywhere that I was not being received or nurtured.  I clung to the visions I had seen on the road of what was possible for me.  I stuck with the habits I had built around rising early, daily yoga, silent meals, time alone.  I avoided those who agitated me and sought out the few who understood my discontent.  In this way, I built a wedge between what I believed I was and what I was not.  And it exhausted me.

A few weeks ago, I co-facilitated my first meditation training as a three day retreat.  The week prior had been busy preparing for new interns arriving to our community, responding to an unusually high number of inquiries, hosting tours, scheduling events, covering kitchen shifts, and preparing for the workshop. Following the lead of my co-facilitator was inspiring and disorienting.  I guided meditations and responded to questions in the way I felt best, but was preoccupied with how he might be judging my responses and whether the participants were receiving what they needed.  At lunch on the second day, I walked into the dining room feeling deflated and saw the tables filled with guests from a large group retreat.  I wanted to be available to participants in my workshop, but they were filling small tables in the back and I opted to sit with some friends to recharge.  At the end of the meal, I was still feeling unfulfilled, and when I noticed my co-facilitator had squeezed into a table with our workshop participants, I felt ashamed of my withdrawal.  I dropped my dishes in the bus tubs and headed out the door to hide in my room, giving myself what none of these people could.

On the threshold, I heard my own voice say to me gently, “Don’t isolate.”  I saw myself hiding under the covers in my familiar way, washed by a sense of sadness and separation.  I understood how surrendering to that movement has so many times in the past created a mood that lasted for days, perpetuating itself as my withdrawal caused other to withdraw from me.  If I pulled away out of shame and unworthiness, I would have to push through those same feelings in order to return.  I turned around, walked over to the table of workshop participants, and let them know that I offer personal sessions in guided visualization and was available by text anytime that afternoon.  One participant who had captured my attention with her anxious and downcast affect accepted my offer.  We soared over cliffs, fell as rain, and were both reborn.

I have written about surrender. I have contemplated purpose and service and faith.  I am now beginning to understand that at the core of this is the act of stepping aside.  I do not surrender.  I do not serve.  I step aside as an act of faith that my purpose is fulfilled when service happens through me.  In those moments, there is no pride or shame, no fear or certainty.  I leave a guided visualization feeling a deep sense of peace, ease, and simplicity.  I sense my mind wanting to blow trumpets and throw streamers and shout to everyone about how amazing and synchronistic and interconnected everything is.  But what came through me already knows that, already lives it in every moment.  There is no point in getting excited, in claiming it for my own, in broadcasting it to the world.  Identifying it as a wonderous phenomenon feeds the belief that we are separate from it and seeds a future backlash of disappointment, failure, and disconnection.

My task has become inviting that part of me that doubts – that fears ridicule and abandonment, that seeks security and praise and pleasure – to step aside.  Every time I think I need to withdraw because I am too tired, too scattered, too anxious I remember how it feels when that energy is flowing through me freely and I ask if it is possible to feel that again in this moment.  It is the tension and constriction, the attachment to myself as the one who must figure it all out and do it all that drains me and leaves me feeling overwhelmed.  And if I am living that way, it follows me on my walks, to my conversations with heart friends, into my meditations, and to my bed, and gives me no peace.  But if I step aside and let what is happening unfold around me, I find myself participating in a way that is strong and wise and generous and peaceful.  And in that way, I find myself able to show up fully for far more than I ever thought possible.

Nancy