The Cart before the horse...

One of my favorite questions from students is, “but how long is this going to take? I’m already (years old) and I’m not getting any younger. Is this going to take years?” It’s a favorite question because it is such a human question. When confounded by a new growth front, I still ask it myself. It’s like the sign, “Start here”. This point comes in every journey, every quest.

Back in the 1980’s when first confronted by this question I was stumped. Yea, why do this human potential movement class/seminar/workshop/practice? It may or may not work, and it will probably take time to get the hang of it and this teacher has been at it longer than me and I’ll never “catch up” to them.

Then I realized: two years from now, if I do this every day, I will be that much further down this road of choice and manifesting and living spiritually aligned. Otherwise, in two years, I’ll just have two more years of a mixed bag, a lot of which I don’t much like, including feeling like a victim. Two years down the line is coming either way. Better to make it intentional rather than just random and hap-hazard.

A lot more than two years have passes since then. I still have a lot mixed results, but that’s life. Focus changes. What is important to us changes. But has been quite a ride. I generally know when I’m tweaking myself now, feeling low and "less than" for instance, and can either judge myself for it or laugh myself out of it.

I’ve been working with the image of the cart before the horse lately. It’s a great image. I’ve realized that one of my responses to grief was to be struck dumb by the unexpected, uncontrollable aspects of death and trauma. I’d been the deer caught in the headlight that then got hit by the bus, and part of me was frozen there. For a very long time I acted from that “hit”, place; a bit frozen and arrested in receptive/reactive mode, always expecting the worst. It fit in perfectly with my always looking for signs from the Universe, which fit perfectly on top of the Roman Catholic/Marine/Patriarchal infrastructure I was raised on. Many different ways of saying, “be a good girl and wait till other’s think it’s your turn.” Don’t initiate anything – it will probably be wrong or go wrong or be taken wrong; you’re only a girl/human/mortal/whatever. I even worked at “fitting in” in the hopes that I could at least stand near the windows of someone else’s home and family life, pretending I was part of something. (never mind my own experiences with home and family life were huge sources of unresolved pain and I made sure I wasn't in that boxed in position again.) But that romanticism just made the loneliness that much more pronounced, that much harder to focus on anything else.

I didn’t know that was what I was doing for a good long time. In the past I used to kick myself for not knowing yesterday what I just realized today, but in this I see a lot of grace. Shock and its numbing aspects are a gift. Death is a huge gift. Even traumatic events are gifts. And I don't mean in an "Oh good, I don't need crutches," kind of way, but in an, "oh, my, the colors are brighter and the universe is kinder and life is sweeter than I'd thought," kind of way. There is forgiveness and adventure in the air again.

I’m changing normal by switching the order of the horse and cart. I’m switching to identifying with the horse, and not so much the cart. The cart - me as a catchers mit saying Yes to life and looking for signs, always in receptive mode, letting myself get overwhelmed then criticizing myself for not making more headway. I’m deciding to do more leading and less following in my life. Time to be the horse and give the Universe some of what it's been waiting for from me - some declarative direction. Go here. More of that.