Take Me to the Most Beautiful Thing on Earth: The Dance of Family, Work and the Sacred

I got lucid a couple of months ago inside a dream in which I had been frantically, and unsuccessfully, trying to balance symbols of family life and the academic pathway I am currently pursuing.  At the point at which I became conscious, I was swimming in a vast ocean, and with great effort, I began to walk on the water.  Opening to the dream, I asked to be shown the most beautiful thing on earth.  I was whisked over the ocean, to the house where I had been playing out the conflicts of work-life (im)balance, now in darkness.  Peering through the glass door, I saw my partner and our two children fast asleep.  This was the most beautiful thing on earth. 

There are many ways that our dreams can offer layers of meaning and insight to peel back.  My family, sleeping, content and peaceful, was the most beautiful thing and place on Earth for me.  Not a massive external firework show.  Warm and reassuringly simple.  

I am reminded that sometimes in pursuing the spectacular moments in life, the acclaim and success, we can miss what is really there, right now.  Achingly fleeting.  

At the entrance to the East of the Wheel, holding together the juggling act of my life and fighting to maintain the space of this process, I think about what I must leave at the threshold.  In the dream, I walked on water with great effort.  And I peered at the most beautiful thing on earth, my own family, through glass doors.

These are the layers.

The core beliefs that I leave at the threshold.  

The belief that life is hard.   The belief that I am separate.  That I do not, or can not, participate.  

I held onto this dream for a long while.  Bowled over by it I must admit!

But what if…..

What if….  I surrendered to the currents of the great ocean without trying to walk on water? (While acknowledging the effort of having done it!)

What if…. I opened the glass doors and laid down to rest in the restorative warmth of the most beautiful place on earth?  

What if!  

 

Fear and the Initiate

What is it about initiation that requires a state of fear to emerge? This is in addition to the exhiliration and the wonderment of excavating the layers of pain that have accumulated over a lifetime.  In anthropology, it is a central question in the vast literature on initiations across myriad cultures – are initiations by necesity violent and disruptive? Violence itself requires clarification here.  Yes, many initiations contain elements of physical violence, but there is also the violence of rupture in the psyche as the old ways of being are dismantled and the initiate is cast into a state of confusion.

This is where I am.  Stranded in the West, the place of purification and release, writing chapter after chapter of a life story which becomes more detailed and demanding even as the time I have to write it shrinks.  Aren’t initiates supposed to be unfettered by family obligations and parenting responsibilities? What does undertaking the deep work of examining your life in this kind of detail mean when you are NOT the ideal neophyte? To be plain, how do you do it?  Right now, I’m blundering about bludgeoning my way through without much finesse or clarity.  I snatch writing time.  I wonder how on earth I will finish my thesis, or write my way out the west when the baby is sick, school pick up is now and the laundry won’t do itself.

I see and read the wonderful work of other mothers, with more children than me, and I feel a little envious of their composure and connection to a deep well of joyful conversation with the Creative that right now seems to be elusive.

I recognise a pain story here.  The one I tell about how other people have the answers and resources, not me.  I feel this one tugging on my arm now.  A shadow that whispers if it’s not perfect it’s not worth doing, and leaves me floundering in the messy uncompleted.

In between, I scan the skies for signs and melody.   Anything to give some indication that it’s worth continuing.

And here’s the rub.  There is no choice but to continue.  And I mean that.  Signs or no signs, when you’re this deep in the woods, you kind of have to just get on with it.  Sigh!  And there’s me hoping for some dazzling sideshow of brilliance and recognition to keep me going.  Entering the Wheel of Initiation on the high of a quasi-miraculous series of lucid dreams means its hard to let go of wanting those fireworks to keep going off.

Anyway.  I’m glad I wrote this.  Gave myself the permission to write.  To be here now.  Sitting in the dark, tapping this piece into my phone for a quick upload.  Hanging in there, fearful and without the razzle dazzle.  Somehow going forward.  Inch by inch.  The state of fear is a messenger.  It tells me to watch out for those inner saboteurs who would gladly kill my fledging process because there is not enough acclaim or tangible reward in sight.  It reminds me that sometimes its necessary to keep your head down, crack a joke and get on with it.  Cheeky smile intact.  Judgement put on ice.  And if I really need a sign, just look up.  There it is, on the left side of Waterloo Bridge, crossing to the North Bank.  Fight the Nothingness.  Big Ben chimes eleven, and I’m done.