During the summer I joined an online writing group. We had a few tasks to challenge us. One of the last was to meditate in silence before writing the alotted 500 words. I found it both excrutiating and exhilarating. I rediscovered my love for meditation. It has been re-established as a part of my everyday life.
If you have read my posts you will be aware of issues with my hands. I wrote this as a message to myself from the perspective of an outside force. If you can relate to your own needs please follow the guidance of this higher power and enjoy.
If you have read my posts you will be aware of issues with my hands. I wrote this as a message to myself from the perspective of an outside force. If you can relate to your own needs please follow the guidance of this higher power and enjoy.
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.”
Rumi
Rumi
I found this task of meeting the silence initially spun me into anguish. I became an angry pirate-self. It took me a while to discover the gift in this change of perspective and seeing myself from a distance. The writing was alchemy. Seamus Heaney guided me to begin. So. It was how he began Beowolf.
I don’t know if it’s true that pirates wore eye patches over one eye so that as they stormed the interior darkness of a vulnerable ship’s cabin they could flip up the patch and that eye was already adjusted to the dark. This angry, irrational me felt like a criminal and all at sea.
Meeting the Silence
So.
This pirate self.
She’s down here in the dark. Her senses are blank. Her preparations for enduring the dark of silence inadequate, incomplete. Her eye patch is lost.
She pauses. Enveloped by the hostile shadow. It takes time to adjust. In this frame of mind she wants instant relief. The gloom sucks her into its clutches and she grabs for any straw, ready to take everything down into the depths with her.
Blind and lost: Disorientated, discombobulated. The blackness swirls around her. Disturbed. Bewildered. She is wild. Accept. Be wilder. Wild in tooth and claw the animal within cries in fear and distress. Backed into a corner, defensive, afraid.
This brute organism is her means of defence. Listen.
This visceral beast has been mistreated. It yearns for love. It cries to be nurtured. It cries out for recognition, respect and appreciation. Look again. Do not reprimand. Do not strike out. Do not try to soothe. It’s not ready.
Stop and bow.
Close your eyes and see this creature’s agony. It’s your pain.
She is angry and afraid, neglected and imprisoned. Trapped and mistreated. She is right to cry. Open your mouth and howl with her. Share the pain.
Stand your ground. You belong on this earth. You are folded. Unfurl. Take up the space assigned to you. Breathe deeply of the air that is your birth right.
It is time.
You have played small too long.
It is not safe to pretend smallness and to shrink; feet neat, arms close and closed.
Stand in your space, legs solid. Feet planted. The ground will support you. You belong. Stop rushing. Be long. You do not need more time. You have all the time you need. Now. Be here. Share your feelings. Your wilder, wilful wanderer needs your sweet embrace. You have given your love indiscriminately to so many who have no recognition of its beauty, its power, its wonder and value. There is one vital key you have missed. This beautiful mortal body that you possess. She has missed you. She is hungry and thirsty and angry and afraid. Give that love to the one who can drink deep and eat heartily of its wonders.
She has waited so long. Been steadfast in her companionship.
We are space ships, as Anthony Gormley says, but we are multitudes.
Interstellar.
Internal.
Stop this quest for what is not yours. Take time in the darkness. Hear its song in the stillness. Know the love that will wrap its wings around you.
Embrace the dark. It takes time to settle and let your focus soften. The light will seep through those cracks. The shell that has encased your heart for so long needs to expand. Allow the light to touch your heart. Soften that wildness. Open the doors and windows.
Feel the breeze stir your spirit. Awaken the wild. It needs to clamber. Go and find the space you crave. Take the pirate on an adventure.
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