ON saturday I wrote this by hand because of a disconnect from my home based computer, yet think it is significant enough to me, to make public on this, my eternally evolving blog.
Saturday, December 9th, 2006 -
Today,i was filled with a pressure much like volcanic activitiy and with as much fire as one might assume coming from an active volcano...the rumblings had stopped to cummulate into a massive pressure in my chest...it has been coming for some time. I am able to follow its trail from the conversation about the "holidays", consumerism, and what I'll call the "great slumber"...this "trail" of information has been moving in me for a while and with the added conversations about which gifts, with whom, how much, and when, added to the fuel like so many lumps of coal, I chose to seclude myself to my bed, and intentionally breathe, and invite what might have been a 911s call worth of "anxiety attack" or heart attack...move 'til it had finished doing what it needed to do.
It became so clear to me that all I needed to do was breathe and to let it be for the time it needed to be, and trust the process and the intelligence of it all.
In about 5 minutes of peaked pressure, my chest softened, the tears flowed and I came away with some clarity about who I am, now.
I live with a sense of urgency about saying what I need to say...about having conversations that matter and in so doing, make a difference in my world. I am clear about the depth of sadness that I have about the preventable suffering that continues in that "great slumber" we continue to allow. That sense of urgency I feel is measured in the context of a world that has learned to assume change at a grindingly and frustratingly slow pace...so slow in fact that for the most part, I feel it started moving backward some time ago!
I know that part of my frustration is the weight I feel crushing me to silence, against what seems to be an immovable and gargantuan force...yet knowing that those limitations are ones I set upon myself.
I am clearer now that part of that silencing has to do with my being unwilling to "hurt" others, as my perceptions would have me believe would be the result of expressing myself on the issues at hand.
I wonder, how often has "being kind" to others, been in the way of my claiming what is true for me, and if the results I presume are as unavoidable as I make them out to be?
IN the end, it seems to me that being awake, and staying awake are not the "natural" state of the world around me...and that going to sleep is now impossible and not a viable option for me...
creating at the rhythm of my breath,
RAY Landry