The words seem to be pouring out of me lately, and my fingers are hungry to find the keys to the new laptop and splay these words on the page. As I am hungry to write, I am reading and listening/watching voraciously to books, podcasts and videos where I can learn from others what they have discovered.
My most recent listening pleasure is The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. It is a best seller and tells the story of a couple who decide to walk 630 miles of a trail after their lives are gutted. I will not say much more than that at this point because I am not finished it yet. I will say it is a very enjoyable listen and I highly recommend it. As I read these adventures such as Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Finding Ultra by Rich Roll I feel small in my “devastated” life. I feel unworthy to put myself up on the same podium as these folks who seem, yes seem, to have suffered more than I have. It begs the questions what are the depths of suffering? How low must one go to be worthy? Worthy of what?
As I read these journeys, I compare my life to theirs and think to myself, “have I suffered, really?” and it puts me on a journey of self-discovery to find the ways in which I have suffered and I wonder if this is fruitful. I have been reading the work of Alberto Villoldo and he teaches a medicine wheel that begins in the south. The direction of the serpent where we must shed our past in order to freshly look into the future. At group yesterday I spoke of this teaching and was saying how in his lessons he teaches how our current form of therapy is to remove the past scale by scale, painfully and with extreme challenge. Casting it off with greatness and taking a bow when done.
Letting go of the past and choosing, like the serpent, to shed it like a restrictive skin, must be done with purpose and with pleasure. It is a choice to honour our past experiences, realize they are painful and yet they are in the past and must be left behind if we are to move forward. Never forgetting, only respecting and taking the learning forward with us into the other directions.
This is where we start. In the south, shedding that which no longer serves us, carrying the beautiful lessons we have learned, and finding our way to the west, the way of the jaguar …. Ready to face our fears and freshly begin another day.
I spent time yesterday with two of my grandchildren and we had a dance party. I freely danced with the boys under the disco light and let them choose the music. I shed my skin of grandmotherness and let them go. I watched as they freely jumped, danced and sang, their energy clean and free. I took that into my vision quest to be more like them and jump from couch to couch, fearless of the possible dangers.
I have suffered in my life, unlike any other person can suffer. Not because my suffering is greater but because it is unique to me and me alone. I can dance like these boys or, in my grandmotherness stand back and watch fearing the dangers. I have shed the skin of my past and choose to be free like these little boys who have yet to learn about suffering.
The skin of my past is laying there behind me and I as move further and further away from it I feel the freedom. What do you need to let go of? Are you shedding on yourself or shedding to let go of the crap in your life? Come on the journey with me! Come join the shed show!
#breakingstibah 