Two steps forward...

I think I may have spoken about this phenomenon in a previous blog, and I am sure some of you have experienced it too. No sooner have you committed yourself more fully than ever to being positive, loving, healthy and uplifting, and to believing in your own path, then all of a sudden a volcano of old hurts, resentments, and inadequacies cracks open within you. Yesterday was a real doozy. I received my college alumnae magazine, filled with upbeat stories about younger alums and class notes about career successes, children and grandchildren, and my life elevator took me on an immediate descent to the basement. Next year is my fortieth reunion. Fortieth. Can it be possible that I will still have (by most people’s standards) “nothing to show for myself”?  I felt like one of those prisoners in “Allegory of the Cave,” chained facing a wall, watching a movie of my life that focuses only on the slights, the frustrations, the basics I don’t have, the people to whom I said the words “English church music” who stared back blankly, and countless rejections. It was like a slick football or tennis video, replaying my “lowlights” with sinister gusto. Bringing myself back to the present wasn’t much immediate help. All I had to do was look out the window to cars going by on the streets, and that gave me another flail with which to torment myself. Other people have figured out how to own cars. Other people seem to tolerate jobs they don’t like in institutions that don’t match their goals or energies. Other people don’t have such unusual dreams, or if they do, they seem to more easily find, earn or magnetize the means to permanently make dreams come true. What in the sam hill is wrong with me? Why is it that the more aligned I become to me, the less I want to operate as the world does, which of course makes life more and more challenging? I am so thankful to have survived, but darn it, I want to thrive, even if in some new way!

Florence Scovel Shinn’s wonderful The Game of Life and How to Play it spoke of armies of darkness that rise up within you when you make spiritual progress (or words to that effect – my copy is still in a box somewhere.) You’ve changed your focus, shifted upwards, and old nastiness surfaces with a vengeance. I can’t help but think that perhaps this is what is happening to humanity as a whole. More and more people are trying to be fully themselves, more and more people are focusing on love, and all the old human hurts are literally being “ex-pressed.”  Pressed out.

I can’t tell the world how to get through these moments. I can only speak to what I try to do. (Yes, these days “at the movies” are a frequent occurrence.) I take a deep breath. I try to connect as best I can with Source/God/the Goddess/the Universe/the stream of Life and Love that I know I am part of even on days like this. I try very hard to focus only on myself and my relationship with that energy, and to leave everyone else out of the equation. (Comparison will do you in every time, as the paragraph above illustrates.) I remind myself that Love only sees the good in me. Even these “lowlights,” to the Universe, are proof positive of my courage, tenacity, and power. I never completely succumbed to despair. I never became an addict or chose the low road. My extraordinary education (for which I am so grateful!) gave me the courage to think critically, to want more for myself and the world, and to stay aligned with the intelligence within. And my belief in Law of Attraction helps me to remember that I have chosen each and every one of these challenges. I chose to be on a cutting edge journey, to see things with different eyes, and it may be that this unusual vantage point could only be accessed by bushwhacking through the underbrush off the beaten path. I try to keep believing that there are easier days coming. It’s inevitable that some of us have simply been ahead of the curve, and that many of the old paradigm’s successes haven’t been on our energy wavelength. I remind myself that what is true today, July 14, 2016, may not be true a year from now. And heck, even if all I have to “show for myself” at that reunion is a few extremely meaningful recent trips to England and a few dedicated blog followers, I will be a happy woman because they will represent successes that were generated from within, not the ones expected of me by others.

It may take a few days to recover my equilibrium, but these days, the revolving door moves more and more quickly. It’s a hot, extremely windy day with big storms predicted, and somehow that feels appropriate. Two steps forward and one step back still means you’ve made a little progress…if you are also going through anything like this, hold on through the gusts and know you are not alone.