muhabbah
“Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself. ”
One mosquito stayed in bed with me last night. As long as any lover is insistent on satisfying their needs.
I thought to turn on the lights and hunt it down, and decided to leave it be. To be tested by one small bug is small compared to the tests life tosses my way.
Yesterday, I listened to a podcast where a man said that the Greeks only entered relationships with those who would challenge them and make them better people. The idea of partnership was to couple to develop and strengthen your beau.
To the Tantrikas, a relationship was the deepest form of Sadhana, intimate or not, as the other holds up a mirror to present you with reflections of yourself you may not have seen before.
I disagree wholeheartedly with the former point of view. Work on yourself and leave your mate alone to do their thing. Why do we always need to work, strive, and take things from each other? Why can't our relationships be an expression and opportunity to give and offer the better parts of ourselves to inquire into the human experience?
I want sacred partnerships. I want to meet someone as devoted to preserving their individuality, someone who's invested in spiritual play through intimacy.
I want someone willing to ask the hard questions.
How do I avoid death? Where do I go when frightened? When was I shamed into submission? Have I chosen denial over accountability? What do I do to support the community? Where do I give more than I take? What anchors me each day- what am I creating?
It is not enough to align through a shared vision of what one wants. I've had that, and it did not work. It must go deeper. It is not enough to say I want these things for myself. What do you want for others? Are you willing to drop everything, to give all you have away if it means total transformation? How much of yourself is for the spectacle, and how much is designed from a call you've felt within?
I am learning to listen to my guts. Every morning I wake up at 4:50am. As the swallows swoop in the waking light, I place my palms on my belly and breathe in and out until I feel the thing pulse at my navel, and sometimes something sticky wiggles beneath my fingertips, and this is when I focus on the exhale. Let go. Surrender. This is the cue to release. Whatever it is wants to get out, and rather than hold it in, I free it from my form.
I envision a pale yellow light in these moments surrounding me like a golden halo or egg. I can feel when the thing is mine and when it is not mine. Usually, it's not mine. It's been placed in my abdomen through some event I didn't properly digest or clear. I don't allow myself to be distracted by the details. How or why is not important. The focus must be on letting it go. Loosening the knots and unraveling the records of trauma.
I am grateful for each rupture I've experienced. I am in a place where I can be thankful for the turbulence of my youth, and I've forgiven myself. If I've been corrupt, it was out of negligence and a deep desire to belong. I've done things out of a need to escape, a futile attempt to be free. We are never totally free. We choose our cage. This is emotional maturity, acknowledging the limitations, and being blissful anyway!
I will never choose misery- I never have!
If I've one flaw I will carry to my grave, it is hope. And I am happy with it.
I used to look to others for admittance. I used to check myself against what I saw or heard from those around me. Am I beautiful? Am I intelligent? Am I enough?
My past self thought that these answers came from outside. This is the appropriate training for a Christian Woman. My core does not need a religion. I've learned many things; I am just discovering how to put them into words. I am becoming a writer by contemplating all that's been steeped into my soul through experience.
One of my first memories of the upheaval occurred when I was around ten. There had been a fight, a big one, in the kitchen during a meal. My stomach was in coils, and my hands were numb. I went downstairs to my room, sat under the wooden desk, and threw up in the waste basket beside the chair.
I was a little older, a handful of years, when I started babysitting for one of the neighbors. A single mom with a little boy who had fiery red hair and a personality to match. We'd play with the wooden train set until it was time for him to go to bed. I'd read books to him about trains and then go sit in the living room to watch Sex and the City until the boy's mother returned.
I don't know what prompted me to vomit on those occasions. I remember the beige rug and the brown couch with purple flowers. I remember the bathroom floor was yellow, a bit like Tumeric, and I'd leave the water in the sink on so I wouldn't wake the child. My stomach rolled, and I'd tie my hair back with one of the small white elastics I used to tie the braids I put in my hair.
I eventually kept one thin black back on my left wrist, just in case.
Reflecting now, I feel that events had piled up inside of me from my navel to my throat, and in the privacy of that home, I could relieve myself of the energetic toxins I carried inside of me.
I would never say I lack boundaries. I am strong and sensible when I need to be. I would say that I lack the attunement to what I am picking up and taking on that is not mine.
What's mine, what's yours, and what's ours; this is the question to consider.
I was not attentive to each moment as a child. I was too caught up in the event, sensing the excitement and arousal within and preparing to pounce! I love trying new things and meeting new people. Perhaps the last one to plunge into the pool of water upon initiation, you can be sure that my entrance will be much faster each time!
I enjoy reading and reclusion as much as I do adventuring into the uncertain ways of the world. I am curious and cannot get what I need from a book. I knew this very young; to evolve, one must act. I would stay up all night with novels and then commit myself to each event of the day.
My tenacity and dedication to understanding a character in a story I projected onto the people in my life. I would enter their being with such fervor; I would lose myself! I loved escaping into daring tales of heartbreak through heroes! The Chronicles of Narnia was my first venture into the fantastic. I was five.
My desire to identify the personalities, feelings, and symbols in stories was applied to the people I meet in the physical world. I've been playing with energy since I could grasp letters and string together simple sentences on the page.
When Lucy Pensevie stepped into the wardrobe, I felt the jackets brush my cheek. When she peeked out into Narnia, I was enraptured and inquisitive. I embodied her actions and emotions as if I was in the story walking beside Aslan and wandering the forest.
I did not understand how I projected this fervor into my daily life. I opened such portals with every person I met, my power for taking in the other's experiences such a strong from what I'd practice with the characters in my story books.
I read every night as a child, book on my lap, eyes blazing, feverishly consuming the words and lighting up the parts of my brain responsible for visualization and empathy.
Did you know that the empathy center in the brain is like the imagination? The supramaginal gyrus (SG) helps us understand our emotional state and how our emotions are separate from those around us. Through this action, develop sympathy, empathy, compassion, and awareness of self with others.
Photo source.
