the seeds of october
oct24
originally posted on rthwrms.com/blog
today im choosing to feel my pain without armor clamped around my heart like a vice grip,
and say "what is this pain trying to tell me?" and listen, i mean actually listen, and open the
possibility of there being something good that could come from knowing what this hurting
is saying with the only instrument my brain can use to understand: my body.
cause when brain talk to brain only,
brain become spiral forever inward,
because to move outwards would be to consider the body as a knowledgeable and intimate source of information on what is happening to us,
…one that we should not only be considering but being compassionate towards as well,
which is not what we've been taught about the body even a little.
my throat tightens because i’m trying to stop myself from speaking something out loud (which then makes it real),
my shoulders hurt because i need to put my burdens down for once, i hold tension in my gut because i'm trying to keep everything inside of me.
my ears ring because i'm trying not to hear anything at all
i was always so curious about why the head of the year in jewish
lunar time is at the beginning of autumn, but i learned today
that a better translation is the pregnancy of the year, not birth.
rosh hashana occured this year on the night of October 2nd.
that night i did not celebrate. I had wanted to, honestly.
but despite best intentions that night no candles were lit,
no food was eaten, not even fruit.
for the first two weeks of october, i was in a deep darkness,
the deepest i had been in a long, long time.
the high holidays passed me whistling like wind in my ear.
and now here in the mountains, its the end of october.
what is called "leaf season" is in full swing.
This is my first autumn here, and it's breathtaking.
i cant even describe it.
and as the leaves turn and begin to fall,
another important component of life begin
to drop to the ground as well: seeds.
the seeds of next year's new growth now
litter the sidewalk to be kicked by a shoe
into the grass, or picked up by a hungry squirrel for later.
the past three days have been unflinchingly painful,
the culmination of the deep darkness that had been growing
within me for well over 4 years now.
yet they've also been poignant
so deliciously and powerfully healing
that i feel consumed with the feeling of it.
and the night after that (yesterday) i began to understand
what the Universe is asking of me: Where are you? As in,
where is your heart right now? As in, meet me where you are;
we experience together
what is available to us
in the present moment
that is where we are.
There are at least four entrances to anything:
the front door, the back door, and two doors on either side.
i want to wake up, so i try the front door
by overdosing on stimulants.
but that doesn’t work because it denies
the body of its autonomy and its unhealthy
and bad for my mental health.
where the front door is a direct approach, or sometimes
just the most obvious, the back door is the opposite of
the front entirely; a reflection. which indicates that the
back door would then be waking up by not taking any
stimulants at all. and probably sleeping a bunch.
it seems antithetical, but sometimes
the moment you stop looking for something
is the moment you find where it is.
so if the front door to waking up is stimulant abuse
and the back door to waking up is going to sleep,
what are the side doors then?
the side doors balance the extremities of the front and back door dichotomy. Instead of a line, the side doors make a house, implying a space where all four lines are connected into One Thing
i referred to my tarot deck to reflect on this question: what are the side doors to waking up?
on the right hand: flexibility;
on the left hand, opening.
i can be flexible by thinking outside of my initial expectations to consider other possibilities available in the moment. Maybe i don’t have to get from point a to point b and then point c, i could go from b to c to a if that makes it easier for me to fully embody the truth of what i’m trying to do.
or i can be open by receiving the moment as it currently is, with all its baggages and feelings included. i can allow the doors of my chest to crack, just a little more every time. not a flood but a stream. not a stream but a creek. not a creek but a small spill tracing the topography of the floors inside our hearts.
yes, i know it hurts.
but this hurting has meaning to be uncovered yet.
and, like a drop of rain in the right place can wake a seed buried beneath fallen leaves, so too this spill can wake the seeds buried within my quiet heart.
tomorrow is born from the body of today, and so i honor these seeds of potential. i keep them tucked safely in the warm dark of my chest, where they will be secrets until the sun returns in spring.
