January and February felt like a runaway freight train, and March felt like whatever happens when that train smashes into a mountainside.
Crumpled box cars, cargo littering the embankment, fuel seeping into waterways; I welcome the growth that is trying to occur, but that doesn’t mean I want to lie there in the wreckage.
When this happens, I ask for help. From myself, by way of someone else.
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“I should be able to figure this out myself, but I never do until I talk to you.”
The answer is within, but the vector can be without.
So, with my train utterly derailed and my capital stock in disarray on the tracks, I lay awake staring through the ceiling, and asked what I was supposed to do next.
And I found myself on a journey. Down into a cave, into the lower world, where the fog on the mirror of the subconscious can clear, I sat on the floor, and the floor opened up.
Falling, falling, into total darkness, below the warm glow that was to invite a gentle guide, I dropped, until I was in a deep cavern, and across from me were glowing eyes.
They were the eyes of the jaguar, and they were a threat. Those yellow eyes were a challenge; “I am not here to coddle you or to make any promises. You must take responsibility. What are you going to do?” was the message.
Despite my fear, I knew I had to approach, towards that merciless and immovable stare. I felt the muscles beneath the hide of the jaguar’s shoulders, and I climbed onto its back.
As we walked deeper into the cavern, I heard in my head the instructions. “You must make an offering.”
And suddenly I was walking beside, and I knew what I had to do; such a small thing, and yet, so big.
I had to give up coffee for the month of April.
Just that. Just something hard, completely in my power, that would force me to test my ability to keep a promise to myself.
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My favorite part of my day is my cup of cofee after breakfast. Usually everyone has left, and I can sit in the sun, or by the fire, and collect my thoughts, and create a space before I begin my day.
To change that ritual, which involves multiple levels of addiction, is to contend with everything about how I create patterns for myself, how I justify, or change, my behavior, and how I generate a construct that I then become beholden to.
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It’s hard. It’s really hard. And that’s wonderful. Because this is work that is entirely within my power. There is no one else that needs to do anything in order for me to generate this growth for myself.
All I have to do is sit with the anxious energy and the emptiness of an absent crutch, and find that I am okay.
The flower essences that come to mind to support this process are Hornbeam and Crabapple. Someone who needs hornbeam is having trouble facing daily responsibilities; putting one foot in front of the other feels like drudgery.
While this doesn’t apply to my feelings about most things, it is hard to get through that time in the morning when I am used to curling up around my favorite coffee cup. It doesn’t feel the same with tea in it.
When needing crabapple, the feeling is of being cast out, broken and impure; this is a wonderful flower essence for dealing with the hollowness that comes from breaking any addiction, no matter how mild.
If it has taken on a quality of dependency, such that losing it leaves us feeling incomplete, then Crabapple can help return us to a sense that we can be okay even without it.
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You know the way. This must be what Lent was meant for. Many years ago (1984), as a substance abuse prevention facilitator-in-training at a 4-week training in the mountains of Arizona, we all had to choose an addiction to refrain from. I chose caffeine, but learned that I was not as addicted to it as I had thought and had to switch to anything sweet, no matter what sweetener was used.