Growing Inside

Wisdom comes with the ability to be still.

Just look and just listen,

No more is needed.

Being still, looking, and listening

activates the non conceptual wisdom

within you.

Let stillness direct

your thoughts and actions.

Eckhart Tolle

Sometimes when I am growing inside, life doesn’t feel very comfortable.  New knowledge and insights may be coming to me about my life, places of darkness or feelings that in the past I have buried and not been fully able to recognise.  There is a part of me that can tend to resist change when this happening.  There is a part of me that wants things to always be in balance, that wants things to stay the same but life is not like that.  It keeps throwing me curve balls and showing me things I didn’t see or know before.  This is part of what recovery is for me.  There is a part of me that can judge things as bad that push me out of my comfort zone.  It is only lately that I am beginning to see that this part of me holds me back from life and growth or has in the past.

Today after a long walk with Jasper I came back to the house and went into the garden.   Over the past months things have been bursting into life, Plants that were previously dormant now are fully in bloom and starting to go over.  There is a lot of work today and I quickly become overwhelmed.

When I purchased this house just under four years ago I was pushed into it at the auction.  I made the mistake of taking my mother along and she egged me on when the price went over my budget, offering to lend me the money.  I tried to stand firm on my boundary but at the last moment I collapsed it and was pushed forward. It is a beautiful house but I now feel it was a bit insane to have committed to a house this size for just one person.  At times I can almost feel that the house is eating me alive in that there is so much to do and due to my isolation and PTSD I have brought too many things at times in the absence of finding other ways of connecting and expressing my energies.  I am seeing this about me at the moment and a little while ago I had to sit still with myself and just let myself cry.

I would have preferred to have been given my parent’s support than to have been given money or pushed forward in ways that I didn’t feel were right for me, in terms of my values and overextension.  These realisations fill me with sadness, but within that I have to accept it and see it before I can make a change.  I am seeing my own tendency to overextend, to need to be overly busy and stressed instead of just being able to rest in the moment with peace.

I’ve had my moment of meltdown now.  It passed rather quickly.  I know these outer circumstances of my life are just window dressing, in my soul I am not really imprisoned by these things, for at any moment things could change, I could make the decision to let it all go, life is not static, though sometimes I wish that it was.  Perhaps it is a reaction to having a lot of change forced on you, going through loss, learning the impermanence of life that makes the wish to hold on more pervasive.  I see at times how I have struggled with things and how I may have looked for someone or something to blame.

Sometimes people were doing their best and it hurt me, it probably wasn’t their intention but for what ever reason they could not always see my need, at other times they could and perhaps tried to force changes on me that I was not quiet ready for. In many ways I feel this happened four years ago when I bought this house.  Was it right or was it wrong?  Perhaps it was neither and perhaps it was both.  Perhaps things are not always simple, but complex too.

With a lot of planets in my seventh house ruled by Aquarius on a personal level but on an archetypal level by Libra, I tend to look at situations from at least two different perspectives. I am always open to the idea that there may be a different way of seeing things, my perspective is only mine and no one else’s though certain others may share it.  And just sometimes the perspective of others that I resist has lessons for me  Lately as hard as I try I just cannot see things from a black and white perspective.

As I sat with myself today and just experienced feeling overwhelmed and helpless, curiously things shifted for me.  I am only just beginning to see the power of my own mind to project and colour things with filters.  I am learning to remind myself to stay open to new ways of seeing and to open too to the possibility that what I think of others may not always be true.

When I am growing inside like this it isn’t always comfortable for me or easy, and nevertheless I am beginning to feel grateful even for all the difficult experiences of my life, times when not getting what I thought I needed led me along a different path of growth and times when getting what I didn’t really want forced me forward in other new ways and helped me to see tendencies of myself I had not seen before.

It seems to be that as long as I can be still at these moments when I am feeling the discomfort of the inner and outer impinging upon me and within me I will find a way through.  I wont freak out as much or whip myself into more distress than is necessary.  There is a growing witness inside me that can listen to all the different voices and perspectives and sort out the ones that relax me rather than stress me.  This witness supports me and holds my hand at the times I would have previously freaked out, it helps me to self soothe and to calm and for that change and growth, I am enormously grateful.