Has my body become more sensitive or is it simply that I’m becoming more aware of the incredible depth of its inherent sensitivity?
Wherever this inner quest is leading, it seems that a greater spiritual maturity corresponds to a deeper embodiment. And the more embodied one feels … well, the more one feels. Wherever I roam, wherever I situate, wherever I take this nervous system, it is touched, tickled, brushed, shocked and seized by its surroundings. At this point, it’s unclear where my nervous system ends and another begins.
A simple glare or a sharp word and I feel my soma’s profound recoil. Like a sea anemone retracting its tentacles and closing right up at the prod of a prurient finger. Or else, in feeling safe in my surroundings, with other bodies my body trusts, my somatic answer is a state of relaxation akin to a cat arching its back, yawning, and bedding in for the night. Melting when safe, contracting when threatened, and all the other countless feeling-states in-between.
We’re living in a time of a great many transitions and returns. We’re having to learn how to return to our bodies. This involves not only a deep listening to our physical bodies, but to the larger planetary body as a whole – Heaven knows, she’s been calling out for long enough.
We’re exiting the age of an imbalance between the masculine and the feminine. An era ruled over by an immature masculine, overbearing and subordinating its feminine counterpart. That great mistrust of the feminine – the fear of what might happen if we just stop and let ourselves rest, sink into our ancient tiredness, appease our wearied bones, drop the burden, hitch the horse and sit by the fire – had caused us to live in a state of disconnect.
Or another way to say it: a state of disembodiment.
Now, we have no choice but to drop into the body’s intelligence. To pay attention to its signals, alerting us to our soul’s leanings, towards our genuine feelings on whether a situation is wrong or right for us. For too long we have lived our lives in functional freeze: appearing outwardly capable, executing on our daily to-do lists, but all in a state of background anxiety, numbness and disconnection.
We pushed our bodies to the extreme to keep up with the accelerated pace of living the modern world demanded. All in the name of output, productivity and profit. Caffeinating ourselves against the bothersome need to pause, slow down, sleep. Enjoying those coffee and cigarette breaks throughout the working day. Drinking at the weekend to suppress the feeling that something’s off, that somewhere deep down this is all seriously hurting.
These, our drugs of choice, permitted by the system to keep us docile, compliant and functioning members of the economy. Food breaks. Tea breaks. Ciggy breaks. Weekends. The only moments of respite we felt safe enough to take.
Because to take out any more time was to fall behind. We’d been trained from the get-go to endure the race, to finish on top. Or as close as we could manage it. Our status as winners displayed in the acquisition of titles, property, qualifications, investment portfolios, numbers on a screen. In constantly expanding our influence, our reach and our borders – even where that meant to diminish someone else’s.
We’d been schooled in the cold hard fact: resources are limited on a finite planet. To the victor, the spoils. To the loser, a government hand-out if you were lucky. Though not without a serious dressing down. Not without the induced shame and guilt, the patronising bedside manner, the thinly veiled reminders that others more successful at this game were dragging along your weight.
You’ll have time to rest when you’re dead.
So we were told.
And so often it was the case.
After all the material gain, status and legacy we’d earned in our back-breaking slog, – all futile cladding against death’s certainty – when we’ve finally arrived at the heralded moment of heading out to pasture, we would find our bodies knackered, blasted, totally caput.
Grateful to finally recuperate, our bodies dropped into such deep rest, that few of us woke up from.
No thank you. That’s not for me.
I’ll find another way. I’ll make it if I have to.
x
Dear Readers,
I’m an imperfect creature, as all are, of endless questioning, of constant stops-and-starts. One moment I feel pulled in a certain direction, the next I’m taken in by another obsession. Constantly improvising, constantly testing. Plugging away to find what captivates me.
When something no longer holds the same captivation, or when I feel I’ve come to the end of a thread, I know then that it’s usually time to revisit the drawing board.
This is one of those moments.
I’ll be returning shortly with a new series of blog-posts in mind. Something that feels more aligned to where my latest obsessions drive me. Truth is, I’ve been horrified by everything going on in the world and endeavouring to find some ways my words might meet it.
There’s a fire raging and I want to offer a blanket to dampen the flames, rather than cause a greater combustion. A blossoming of love exists alongside the immense turmoil, anguish and suffering of our times. And I believe it is only with the power of love that we can answer.
Even where we feel like children all over again, looking out at the crazed state of our dysfunction, unable to make sense of it.
The unimaginable broadcast of horror, the undeniable acts of genocide before us, and the intersecting chess game being played out by world governments (the Great Game, as ever before) while the greater lot of humanity are caught, as ever before, between this fear-based lust for power, influence and control, has caused me to wonder: how on Earth did we arrive to this point?
Where we find ourselves is the consequence of policies, forces and attitudes that have been in play for centuries and remain in play today. Moreover, it is the consequence of a humankind that still struggles desperately to meet all of its parts.
Where I return to blogging, it’s with a hope that I can bring attention to more of this, with a view that my writing not tear us apart, but bring us closer together.
Please permit me a short break. If only so I know how to bring myself back, a little truer, a little more authentic, a little more aligned with a mission of love.
For those of you who read me, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. What may seem like a simple blessing of time, on your part, is actually, for me, a dream on the runway, gathering momentum.
Your support is life-changing.
With love,
Josh
Thanks for your book! I got it and Laminate all pages. Now i can read this book even next to my kids. I waiting for your new book!
I love you too! It is me, your big, crazy fan!