4-24-17 This prior weekend I went to a spiritual retreat lead by R.J. Stewart, where we explored the Further Path...basically a Faery teaching. It was profound work and it seemed like the right time in terms of matching up with some of the changes I'm feeling internally. There's this feeling of movement...and a sense of stillness coming to an end...or maybe just a transition. There will always be stillness work to do, but ho do you come out of stillness? That's really what I'm gravitating toward at the moment. It's like this slow awakening and stretching is happening.
4-25-17 In order to grow you have to be willing to leave behind what will you hold back. I had a lesson in that this last month and it culminated yesterday. And it's not easy. You get this idea that people will stay in your life and then you discover that's not always the case. I've learned a very valuable lesson in the experience...and it makes me realize that I need to continue working on healthy boundaries in my life, particularly as it pertains to my community and friends.
4-30-17 In the Tao of Letting Go I ended up doing a meditation on the feeling of strength. The author made a really important point, which is: The feeling of strength brings its own tensions with it. I never really thought of strength in that way, but it actually makes sense and as I've been doing the dissolving work around strength its unlocked some feelings and tensions in me that I'm going to work with. It's a good reminder that we can hold onto things in ways that even seem positive for us, but may not be.
5-2-17 Kat said something yesterday that I've been sitting with. She said I needed to give myself time to grieve. I am grieving right now over a friendship that's ended. And I realize a part of me just wanted to skip the grief stage and get on with my life, but I can't do that. Allowing myself to be sad is something I need. It's not easy to feel, but pushing it down is worse. So I'm just holding space with my grief each day, being patient with the process.
5-11-17 I've been thinking a lot about image versus reality. When you do stillness work, you encounter a lot of images, because that's when they come to the surface. What your images force you to do is come face to face with the ways you lie to yourself. And then you have to decide if you'll continue lying to yourself or if you'll face your images and discover what's underneath.
5-12-17 For the last couple of days I've been using the water breathing meditation to become present with the feelings of physical pain and discomfort in my body, to see what it shows me. One insight I've gotten is just how easy it is to suppress pain or other feelings...but what you miss out on is what that pain can tell you and how it can help you. Sinking into the pain is allowing me to listen to it and discover what it reveals, which is more than just being in pain. I think the same applies to any other emotion a person can feel, or any other sensation...there's always something you can learn from it.
5-13-17 I've been rereading The Hidden Adept and The Inward Vision again and there was an interesting point made in the book about the choice of purification over power. In some ways my stillness work has been as much about purification as anything else. When you open yourself to stillness, you open yourself as well to whatever lurks in that stillness, and so afford yourself an opportunity to work through it. And the choice of purification is a liberation of sorts from attachments that might otherwise hold you back.
5-21-17 I feel like the last couple of months have been a wake up call for me. In various ways I've gotten confirmation about the direction I'm going in with this work and my spiritual work in general and at the same time have seen that the dross and distractions have fallen to the wayside. Purification over power. Or perhaps power through purification.