If waves of day-to-day reality are not crashing in on us, the tide is surely lapping over our feet. Weaving our unexplainable real storylines together with our day-to-day actualities can encourage a loving presence in the world.
*Dreamtime’s ocean followed me back to my day-to-day where thoughts and emotions rushed in. People, I love, were experiencing new heartbreaks. There was the ongoing political drama and its repercussions and poverty, war and on and on. Although all was worthy of my attention, I did not want to forget to live from the exuberance of my ocean experience.
With an exercise, similar to what I might take spiritual directees or companions through, I began threading my unexplainable real through the center of what we might call, my actual real.
Close your eyes
Take several deep breaths
Slowly inhale
Slowly exhale
Continue until you sense a shift toward attentiveness
Choose a current circumstance or issue on which you spend much of your energy. Rather than focusing on the details, sit with the feeling the situation arouses in you. Can you name the energy (fear, anger, guilt, hurt, etc.)?
You may be tempted to think about how things could be different, but stay with your emotional energy. Rather than praying to a God up and out there, picture Sacred within you and together, with kindness, simply observe your energy. This is not a time for berating others or yourself.
Celebrate the things you have done to meet the challenges, concerning your situation. Forgive any regrets. Honestly admit whether you prefer regurgitating this energy out onto others or taking the necessary transformational steps.
If you choose to move forward, call your energy by name (anxiety, depression, self-pity, etc.). Initiate a relationship with it, as if it were someone in need who has reached out to you. Sit with him or her until a nurturing image rises. How does the visual encourage your transforming work?
Open your eyes. Now, express your experience by documenting it, singing, dancing, writing or creating a piece of art. If you created a visual, place the image where it will remind you of your ongoing transformation.
Failing to convert our upsets keeps us from giving the greatest gift we have, our redeemed selves. This is how we participate in the risen Christ. As we address what is going on internally, we become more understanding of ourselves, which translates to being a loving presence out in the world.
*See previous post, Playful Offer