Fibromyalgia, Asperger’s and EDS may feel like three of the most defining things I ever discovered about my three-dimensional self and, yes, they might consume a lot of my thoughts due to how minutely they affect my daily physical life…but they do not define me!
The fact of my “having them” may speak volumes about parts of my intrinsic self that want to come forward, to express in the physical…including my non-conformism and the prioritising of the extreme kind of of fluidity, liberty and creativity that enable me to explore off-the-beaten path corners of experience, morphing in and out of structures playfully, trying them on for a while…then quickly moving on again…according to my highest desire, but they do not label me; I came first. Having come to know myself as well as I do (thank you for that, my physical experience!) I can perceive in myself how there’s a kind of disdain in me for the strictly conventional rudiments of body function as they stand because, by choice, I will always throw away the instruction sheet, learn “hands-on”, feeling into the practicalities as I “have a go at them myself”, making up my own rules…even if it looks like a mess to begin with. It’s easy for me to extrapolate all these traits that I recognise about my core nature and get to my health situation!
Were I to make the above health labels, hung around with all their concepts, into the very definition of my physical reality as though to empower myself with such defiant, radical, self-acceptance, this could (ironically) limit and even, quite likely, imprison me “for life”. If I took it too seriously, I would become the jailer, holding my own key…and ever more reluctant to use it.
I see this all the time in online communities and in the social media flow of people who have made a name for themselves writing about a particular ailment that is “theirs”. Radical acceptance of who we are can be empowering, yes…so perhaps this is where this trend stems from; and yet there is a militancy to this new trend, from where I am looking, that seems to shoot far too many people in the foot. It is also lop-sided; because radical acceptance is only transformative when it accepts the whole….so what about accepting the part of you that knows everything is perfect yet unfathomable, thus wants none of these catch-all labels and slogans.
It’s a bandwagon I discern gathering its army, under the heading “its cool to be diagnosed with…” (fill in the blank), across numerous social media outlets. As soon as they brandish that t-shirt, whatever it says (Aspie Girl, Fibro Warrior, etc) I know they are done for….or at least until they burn the t-shirt and throw their own “I saw the light” liberation party. When they grind axes about their right to wear their issue proudly in the face of whatever pushing-point they have come up against in third-dimensional life (the health system, other peoples attitudes, lack of information, their health condition itself…as though it were not part of them…) they are entrenching themselves on “their side” in a long-running war.
The thing is, there will always be a pushing point in 3D, where we (necessarily) live in a state of polarity….but when we make it into a “thing” about taking sides (duality), we very-quickly become invested in one side or another, so we move into 3D as our permanent full-time residence, no longer seeing the wood for the trees…and then we only have 3D solutions at our disposal which, as all these people know, are very slow coming. This can, self-evidently, lead to bitterness and disappointment…a kind of wholesale jadedness with life and a long-running passive aggressive tone with the world, which only feeds the whole issue of long-running health challenges. Meanwhile, to wait out a whole lifetime for such slow-arriving solutions would be to spend that life tackling this and only this (which is the decision you take when you entrench “in opposition” to any circumstance that challenges you). In my case, I know I can’t afford to become so limited, I don’t feel my “solutions” wait for me in such entrenchment, plus I have other stuff I want to play with, much wider themes of exploration beckoning and a built-in desire to take a much broader view on whatever life is about. The last thing I want is to get anchored by a health label (or two) so when I notice this trend in myself, I bring myself up short…and soften my grip!
That “other stuff” I mentioned lies beyond the 3D reality that seems so dominant, so obvious….so stuck. This week, Ive been deep into the flare-up of EDS symptoms, widespread pain and chronic fatigue that was already getting going when I last wrote and I won’t pretend it hasn’t been hard or that my mood hasn’t been affected. Yet, when it doesn’t define me, it’s also interesting. It tells me clearly that my three-dimensional version of self wants to go soft; to let go of its edges, to noodle around with some different possibilities…and to allow in those higher dimensional realities, which is where things get really interesting.
As it happens, I’ve been deep into some multi-dimensional reading this week, a craving that came over me quite strongly, though I hadn’t done this for quite a while, having been into a trend of much more practical (yes 3D) reading around the topic of Asperger’s for months. So it’s been powerful because, when I go into these kinds of perspectives, which don’t inform so much as remind me of things I already knew, in a layer of awareness that doesn’t see daylight as often as it should, I make giant leaps in my own conscious awakening. Especially when I read just before bed…or in that early morning quiet-time where my day starts slowly and my critical mind is offline; or, it does if I don’t have a strict schedule to keep to.
Lately, my triumphs have been all about getting back into some sort of a schedule, starting new activities, meeting some people, creating healthy structures to help project myself forwards into a healthier routine than what was an incredibly solitary life…which has been great, powerful, transformative in so many ways; and will be again. However, when my body goes this soft, and (crucially) when I listen to it, I hear it urging me to make room for something more fluid, more abstract, more plastic when it comes to creating new shapes.
Its not unlike the way we can built a beautiful tall structure, woven out of sturdy willow…an obelisk…so that the soft green tendril of new growth from a newly breaking seed can curl around it anyway that it likes!
Taken another way, I can simply say that what looks like crash to an outside viewer is most probably, according to my not inconsiderable experience of these things, a giant leap forwards in some way that will, no doubt, surprise me with the direction it takes and be something I could never have anticipated or planned for.
This new growth doesn’t have to make itself known immediately; in fact, if it did, I would suspect that it was probably just some other, previously subconscious, construct of my mind taking its opportunity to assert. Rather, by nature, these “newnesses” need to emerge in their own steady, quite organic way and my part is to sit back, not getting involved or thinking I always know better. Certainly, my part is not to be so quick to judge, to give it a label or become frustrated, angry with my own body or with life itself. I simply have to allow that the mystery has my back…and have faith, heeding the clues that a few days of doing less might not be such an unproductive thing (quite the contrary).
In 3D terms, this looks like “crash” or relapse or time for some stronger meds with even more confusing side-effects (by the way, I don’t take any for this very reason, amongst others…as I like to keep myself clear so that I can respond to my body’s innate clues). It looks like “poor me” and long faces of concern (which we willingly lap-up or cultivate from those around us if we are in that mind-set) and so it looks like self-pity, woe or even anger and frustration. To counter the risk of this kind of entrenchment, do yourself a favour and respectfully ask that friends and family don’t join you in a self-pity party when you have the kind of episodes that “seem” like setback. They can usefully offer compassion and practical help, yes, but not lamentation.
Beyond 3D, it looks much more like its time for another leap; an exciting potential I wouldn’t miss out on for all the “sense of identity” in the world.
If it also loses me (temporarily) the confident, reliable, gung ho, yes-I-can-do-that identity I’ve been cultivating lately then that is a small price to pay for whatever comes next. Important things, the more worthy of those life structures, will bounce back when we are ready for them again. So I need to trust my new friend will understand that I might not be able to get to the walks, and possibly even choir practice, that we normally attend together this week; then I can step back and notice the lurking fear of letting her down, of missing out on something, or risking what I’ve built there (acknowledging those fears and letting them go)…but, right now, I mostly need to listen to my body and take pause.
THIS is strength of a different kind…do you feel it?…and it’s an important acquisition in these times, because it’s the strength that comes from softness. The world needs some of that!
This is also, self-evidently, all about self-love, which is the universal key to everything…as I keep on saying…so I’m not about to over-ride that in the name of “commitments” that, if they are loving me back, can wait one more week. This level of give and take is a paradigm I choose to bring in from a higher dimension, to remind the 3D what its back-and-forth rhythms of duality are capable of…if only it tries to remember. In 5D and beyond, no explanation or forgiveness is ever required and both the structures of life…our robust health, our prior-arrangements or whatever we are taking about here…and their very antithesis…the breakdowns, the cancellations or whatever…are already unconditionally accepted, coherent and NEEDED as integral parts of the whole. After all, the universe is made up of both of these ingredients, equally, and we are playing our part perfectly when we enact this polarity with love, which then leads us gently back to our own wholeness, which is what true healing looks like.
When we lose sight of love, we enter into fear. There is a great deal of collective fear out there in the world right now; I feel that deeply too, if I let myself go there by becoming more three-dimensional than all those other layers I tend to play with more consciously when I am on my own. When I go out into a more structured life of involvement with other people, I hear about (and above all, feel) this contagion of fear all the more keenly so its important that I take regular pause to remind myself these chaotic, fear-driven, panic-stricken, out-of-control, overwhelmed feelings are not inherently mine. I dwell in a different place, beyond all that and making my life more involved than it used to be does not alter that, ever…but I have to make sure to remind myself!
Right now, in the build-up to the full moon (yes, the moon mirrors back the collective consciousness as electro magnetic frequencies that can be felt by that collective, a crescendo effect that is measurable by the fuller-than-ever hospital wards and the world-wide increase in emergency calls) I sense the need to pull back from all that, just for a few days. I have some solo travel coming up and, before going into that, I need to recalibrate according to my innate take on such fear, which is that there is always a choice to engage or not engage and that this stance alters outcomes. Perhaps I especially need the chance to deep breathe, to visualise and to get back to my core, beyond the reach of the tendrils of contagious panic that are all too quick to infiltrate when I am physically tired (and for a beautiful description of how to visualise that, in order to recalibrate for increased resilience, here’s a fantastic blog entry by Jessica Shepherd that I came across yesterday).
Having edges again is a relatively new thing for me; edges being something I have to work at self-creating (per my earlier post) and which I am never comfortable having so close to me that they feel like a straitjacket. This, in my view, is a positive…it keeps me expansive…but it will always mean there is the potential for me to let a lot of other people’s stuff into the parameters of my world. In short, I am not guarded enough for full time 3D involvement…but the trade-off is the need to pull back, to go soft, take pause and, again, I consider this all to be “by design” as it orchestrates the means by which I will aways make sure to take these (if necessary, enforced) pauses, pulled-back from the fray; an interpretation which turns so called “illness” into something much more akin to a super-power, a compassionate gesture from the universe or a lifestyle enhancement, in my view. With its help, I have learned to explore the void…without getting in its way!
This void is the creation zone. To recap, its meant to be the pullback from the rigours of three-dimensional reality so its important not to define it according to 3D labels, which is to put it into a tight fitting t-shirt that reads something like “not getting better soon” (which, astonishingly, was something I came across yesterday, amongst other rather aggressively brandished catch-phrases that seem blatantly self-defeating). Not labelling myself….anything…during these times offers the greatest scope for a leap; and the “leap theme” seems to be everywhere this calendar-defying week of a year that, as I’ve said before, feels like it is all about the potential to enter into a different cycle; an up-cycle to new new possibilities.
So now I take that opportunity; and so I take the amorphous day ahead, without judgement, frustration or comparison with other times…but, rather, softly and with curiosity.
And then this happened…
One small anecdote to add to the above: as soon as I “went soft” and rearranged my day not to meet the friend or do the walk, allowing myself to surrender to “whatever”, I received a surprise message from a waitress I met on a holiday in Italy two years ago; not someone I had heard from for a very long time. This lovely soul had fallen on hard times and was obviously quite upset about things and no longer working at the almost too idyllic vegan hotel in the Tuscan hills but at a gas station. In just forty minutes or so of messages back and forth, the last of which came from her at a beautifully synchronised 11.33, I helped her to recalibrate the whole way she was looking at things.
Mostly, I reminded her about self love, giving her some simple practices to try out, and I introduced her to the concept of Buddha at the Gas Station…how she could change the lives of people passing through with a smile or a small kindness; which could then, in all likelihood, open her up to a whole higher-vibe slipstream, which would carry her to some other situation as yet to be imagined, where she felt better about things (though life would, no doubt, be transformed beyond recognition by the breakthrough of self-love itself). She just told me “you make me so joyful today…I cant stop crying, my heart is full of love” (I now have this mental image of bewildered travellers passing through services somewhere near Rome wondering about the weeping cashier). The win~win was that every single pearl of wisdom I offered to her was equally offered to myself, in the most timely of ways; and, from the warmth of our unexpected conversation, I am now fully tanked up with love too; in fact, I am quite aglow with it!
Something made her contact me today; perhaps she felt my receptivity as she stood there at her mundane and previously unfulfilling job (she said I suddenly came into her thoughts and made her smile). One of my main motivators for doing things in my life, even when I don’t necessarily feel physically capable of it, is a “service to others” impulse to make a difference to other people…like I was initially determined to be there for the friend on my walk today, because she is going through some health stuff. Yet, even when I changed my plans, supposedly, “down” a gear, into the softer version, I somehow made that impact (probably much more of one, I strongly suspect…), even from my sofa. The opportunity came to me in a way I could handle better; yes, in a completely different form to anything I expected today, yet the desire wasn’t wasted, it just got expanded into a wider catchment area. Perhaps the universe wanted to take the opportunity, as I finished writing my blog, to show me this in action; that, even from softness, we make powerful inroads into areas where we can’t necessarily see, plan or measure our impact but we do anyway.
Knowing this, and trusting it, is how we become agents of something far bigger than our so-called physical “labelling” would suggest we are capable of taking part in and is a crucial part of the expansion that leads to achieving the sense of wholeness I am talking about. Today, I may feel physically under-par but, where it matters most, I feel strong and coherent, which is the recalibration (or, if you like radical self-acceptance…crucially, of all parts of me) that I spoke about above.
Living whole 