As I wandered more fully into my work to release old pain and open myself to joy, things slowly began to shift. \u00a0Over months I filled my journal, paid attention to my dreaming, walked and practiced yoga and saw my healer and my Spiritual Director. \u00a0 It was like tracing a line back into the shadows or down into deep waters. \u00a0How far down would we go? \u00a0Where would it take me? \u00a0Would I be able to find my way back out? \u00a0Did I really want to do this? \u00a0I mean, I had lived without a full experience of joy for a long time. \u00a0Was it worth the level of work that I felt was waiting here for me? \u00a0Ultimately, in the wondering and the fear of this, I had to choose yes, choose life again and again and again. \u00a0The only way through the dark is through. \u00a0If you skip it, or run backwards and change your mind, you will never know and you will never get to the other side of this moment. \u00a0And let me tell you, it\u2019s terrifying. \u00a0As a Spiritual Director myself, I can tell you that the journey of transformation has a cycle like the seasons. \u00a0One must surrender to the dying in order for the new birth to come. \u00a0Things must fully decay before their energy is available to grow anything new. \u00a0I know this. \u00a0And I know that the law of impermanence means that everything, whether coming into life or letting things go, will shift and change and be something else quite soon. \u00a0Nothing lasts\u2026.not pain, nor joy. \u00a0To be available to both requires a certain flow or flexibility.<\/p>\n
I know all that. \u00a0But when it\u2019s me going through the dying, I forget as fast as anyone and think that if I walk into pain, that I might get stuck there forever. \u00a0And when it\u2019s me going through the joy, I always forget and hope it will last forever. \u00a0In this case I started entering my own surrendering to death\u2026the death of a certain way of being that kept me unavailable to joy. \u00a0Except that being immersed in that process I found out that I actually wasn\u2019t available to pain either. \u00a0There was a day when I realized that this was a choice to feel everything or to feel nothing. \u00a0There isn\u2019t a filter where you get to say I\u2019m only going to experience purely joy and sorrow and broken heartedness are a thing of the past. \u00a0The more you feel the joy, the more you can feel everything else. \u00a0Saying yes to this\u2026to more life, this is risky. \u00a0This opens you up, to yourself, to others, to Spirit and these relationships are almost always disruptive eventually.<\/p>\n
I met someone who was telling me about her fianc\u00e9. \u00a0She had been in an abusive relationship before because she thought she needed that kind of protection to be safe. \u00a0She said that this partnership wasn\u2019t safe, but it was fully alive. \u00a0Safety is its own kind of death. \u00a0For me, choosing relationships and allies who could hold some perspective for me as I went further into darkness was vital. \u00a0A beacon in the confusion of walking blind, a safety line as I sank down further and further into the unknown. \u00a0Small moments of connection, of love, care and concern were my fuel and my inspiration in the descent. \u00a0They gave me the courage to keep saying yes. \u00a0Who are the allies who give you the courage to say yes to life? \u00a0What gifts have they given you? \u00a0How do you express gratitude for their presence?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I wandered more fully into my work to release old pain and open myself to joy, things slowly began to shift. \u00a0Over months I filled my journal, paid attention to my dreaming, walked and practiced yoga and saw my healer and my Spiritual Director. \u00a0 It was like tracing a line back into the shadows or down into deep waters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":206,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}