Eric ... as we ease up onto our first retreat, I am becoming more anxious (in all senses of the word), more wary about what adding a slice of quotidian reality to this extraordinary journey will mean.
As our life review is revealing, we are, in part, two lightly bonded children somehow embarking on an intentional bonding adventure. While we don't know where this will go, my fantasies, as well as phantasies, have grown like Jack's beanstalk. I try to keep pulling them back to now but they just keep escaping. And, every time they do, I realize how much I want this experience of deep connection. Experience seems like the wrong word ... like wanting a roller-coaster ride. This is different. This feels like finding the missing piece of feeling whole ... like maybe this IS the Holy Grail, for me at least.
I keep trying to understand what's happening. It feels like falling in love ... and maybe it is ... but is it falling in love with you, or falling in love with myself and my life ... or falling in love with God/Universe/Mystery? Maybe that's why I'm waking up in wonder, trying to make sense of something that's beyond rational, something that I can't put into a spreadsheet and tally the pros and cons, determine if X, then Y.
Apparently like you, I have been searching for this missing piece, this connection to spirit/life/other, for as long as I've had thought and feeling. I've chased it up a lot of mountains and down a lot of rabbit holes, but I've never felt so close to finding "it." And that is making me a little crazy ... to the point of inventing elaborate ways this won't work: for some perfectly understandable reason (or not), you won't show up on the 24th, we'll be bored with each other, our imperfections will sing and dance in glaring spotlights, one or both of us will bruise the other, or on the 27th, as we drive away, one or both of us will be thinking: "that didn't work," and silence will reign ever after.
Life offers no guarantees. I know that. I also know that all of this fantasizing is unproductive ... unless it is. I have to think that you aren't immune to this. (making assumptions here) Perhaps sharing our fantasies is as important as our Life Review. Perhaps we should have periodic Fantasy Reviews.
I have convinced myself that if this goes bad or nowhere, I will survive. However, I don't want fear and my self-protection mode to sabotage this lovely seedling, pulling it up by the roots before it has a chance to see what it wants to be. It feels like life has handed me (and, hopefully, us) an amazing gift and said, "Here ... try this, you might like it."
What we have is a seedling. I want to be a good gardener and see what it might grow into. I think that might mean accepting fantasies as something like weeds that need to be tenderly removed in order to make room for reality to flower.
There's an awful lot to think about there, and it's all worthy of our attention. I am going to, for now, eschew delving into the fears and potential disappointments (which are always possibilities) and focus on the "falling in love".
ReplyDeleteI seek vitality and expansiveness in my life, and a transformation of my way of being in the world. I think (hope) that this involve some deep feelings and joyful, even ecstatic, moments, but my Buddhist friends caution me not to expect or seek them, and to treat them with caution if they do emerge. I am inclined to heed their advice.
I have been in love three times by my reckoning, and it was massively disorienting each time. My intention is to be open to my experience with a kind, self-accepting, observing awareness. And yet, there is a danger that this will prevent me from recognizing the moments for what they are, and tamp down and modulate my emotions to the point of blandness, as I have done in the past, in an effort to dispel anxiety.
And so, with that, I am going to just put one foot in front of the other, and see what happens. And my mantra remains, Que será, será.