If it is true that we are all working on something, our 'journey' through this life, then my thing is 'speaking my truth'. This is true on a psychological, emotional and spiritual level.
My daughter and her little family have been staying with me, just me, for the others are on an adventure. She pointed out to me that I sometimes give off a feeling of holding onto something. She noted this as a sense of discomfort in the air and urged me to speak my truth.
I explained to her that I had no experience with this as a child and that my experience with it as an adult provided me with further proof that it isn't a good policy. I explained that I fear the reaction to my truth.
She felt that I had to try nonetheless, to practice. So, I explained that having her dogs here was not easy for a number of reasons, which I outlined. She acknowledged this information without saying very much about it. I felt a wee bit better, but I continue to feel (which I didn't say) that one dog in particular needs to see a dog behaviorist, because I feel another 10 years of not allowing it off the lead in parks seemed a far too limited life and unreasonably stressful for the adults walking it.
Today, I messaged a friend to see if she wanted to meet for lunch in her neighborhood and being someone au fait with past lives she shared with me for the first time what she felt were my past lives. I had been chatting about this huge difficulty of mine to express my truth and that's when she said that I had had that difficulty for a number of lives.
'Feeling that sense of choking in my throat?' I asked. She nodded.
I didn't ask for details. I don't want to know, but I am open to letting something, if anything, evolve in a meditative way over time.
As well today, I shared that I had been remembering my dreams over the past week or more and that this was most unusual for me. I had been remembering them in some detail and it seemed to have a common theme, that I was interested in 'charm', trying to charm people that I didn't like, or to take an alternative view, trying to like someone I didn't like; to start the relationship over. It's about two men - the only two men I truly dislike, and co-incidentally both once lived on my street.
She said it was to do with the universe's movements, or something or other. I was happy to listen but I don't understand that cosmic sort of belief system.
Anyways, for the first time ever I found myself looking up, 'how to access past lives' and listened to a couple of fairly quick explanations which relate to getting very still in mind and body and seeing what comes up, more or less.
I am comfortable in saying that I only ever have had one experience of sort of slightly touching on a past life. I was in New Zealand a few years ago and in the process of a mostly silent retreat. After lunch, my choice with part of my free time was to climb the mountain of the retreat on my own. I know I loved this time. I distinctly remember stopping at a little bridge in the thick of the enclosed landscape of palms and trees, a little water gurgling along below the short wooden bridge, and thinking, 'Remember this', which is something I do when I feel a complete sense of peace.
I had reached the Sanctuary, sat for a while on a bench, and was making my way back when two things happened. First of all, I felt I was walking along with my husband. His presence was profoundly with me; not in body but in spirit.
(And, co-incidentally, during a meditation hour at my yoga studio last night my mind returned to this experience in such a grounded way that I made a loose fist with my left hand, much as I would if I was holding his hand.)
A little further down towards the retreat centre it occurred to me quite spontaneously...perhaps in a past life I had been a slave, or, a member of royalty. I tried to feel into both states but a slave seemed more authentic. It was no more than that, a momentary glimpse.
If it could possibly be so, and I have held my tongue, swallowed my words for goodness knows how many lives, this has some resonance for me. Above all things, this seems to be my work in this life, in any case.
I somehow think that I have been attracted to people who cannot accept my words, thereby making this work as difficult as it could possibly be. Here we are, me who fears so deeply the upset that comes from speaking my truth and the other who struggles so to hear any words that might suggest they have a flaw, or that I am criticizing them.
Ram Dass or Eckhart Tolle or the Budda or the Dalai Lama would say of this that this is what makes them so important in my life; they are helping me overcome this struggle, once and for all.
If all of this has an ounce of truth about it, then to live my best life I need to learn this lesson - to speak my truth without the fear, the overwhelming fear of being rejected, annihilated, abandoned, rebuked.
A more 'feet on the ground' proposal, one that my psychologist, who I currently don't see, would propose is quite simply that my childhood experiences ensured that this was always going to be difficult for me.
In the end PP didn't see a point in seeing me any more but rather seeing my husband. This is bearing some fruit, it must surely be so, since we have been talking away in a very heart-centred way; him listening to me quietly as I reveal things that I have held onto.
Just before he left for Europe, maybe two days before that, I found myself telling him of the time I returned home from, I think, a school trip to discover that my mother had either sold or given away my books. This came as a terrible shock but what I missed deeply, then and now, was a book given to me by my ballet master. Before he dismissed us after class on that particular day, he had asked us to take a seat on the wooden floor. Sitting there in our pink leotards and tights he said that he wanted to give a reward to the girl who had made great improvement over the term and he called out my name.
This was a beautiful moment for me. The book was in black and white, of the Bolshoi Ballet with a note from him on the inside cover. It meant a great deal to me. In my absence, my mother had whisked it away from me, out of my life, my hands.
I said to my husband when I spoke about this a few weeks ago, 'why did she do that?' and of course he didn't have a definite answer. I have had two theories over time. Perhaps most likely is that she simply didn't know me; had no idea how much the book meant to me; the books, my alternative life. It's hard to handle the second theory; that the books were too beloved by me, had to go; that my attention needed to be directed more on her.
The point is I absorbed the emotional pain of it. I didn't criticize my mother, had learned earlier that my psyche wouldn't survive doing that. I stayed silent.
Last night, I did a double yoga class, yin and then yoga nidra/meditation and the teacher asked us, 'what is it that you are holding onto?' 'what is it that you are not sharing?'
My answer is that I desperately needed time to myself, which was cut short by my daughter and her little family needing to be with me for 10 days, leaving me with precious few days on my own before the guys get back.
If I review my choices, I chose, when not alone, the yoga studio, and a spiritual friend or two. I visited my mother for a few days out of duty, nothing more. I avoided friends; happily chatted briefly to strangers in the market and such, and listened for hours to Jack Kornfield on the Internet. My treat was 'Mad Men', gobbles of it.
If I am holding back anything at this point it's my creativity. A quiet mind seems right. I adore listening to stories on the radio or podcasts, far more than I want to create a story or to work with my story on the page in story form. I think that might be because just when I think I have 'solved' my story, got the right spin on it, the story changes; another peeling of the onion makes the last edition redundant.
For years now I have been working on this thought, seeking the answer. Is a bad family better than no family? We all need to come from somewhere, and it's a universal need to belong. Yet, what if we limit ourselves with this thought and open ourselves up to the thought that we belong to creation, the universal family. If there are past lives, how can the point be this family, but rather this soul.
