sacred pace

time compression ~ and life expansion

it has been a year since i returned from my freedom 35 travels to india, thailand, malaysia and mexico. it feels like a metamorphoses is completing and the creature that has come through the change is of a different time and pace than the one who unknowingly wove a cocoon for change. i had intentionally stepped into new life with freedom 35, with an idea of how i would come out of it. thankfully the universe gave me everything i needed in surprising forms, to push me and shake me and get me to places inside that i did not know existed ~ or needed.

and it is only 5 months since my last trip to india with alicia, and 3 since coming back from the berkana exchange gatherings in greece. it seems like a lifetime ago. i have felt that so little has been happening, but under the surface is the deep work of transformation.

in july, time stood still. actually it was i who stood still perhaps for the first time ever. after the vision quest, i committed to a water fast for 7 days. my first. my intention was clear and strong. in putting only water in my body, everything else seemed to clear in and around me. my body let me in on its pace, its quiet, and for the first time i understood something about stillness. last fall i had tried so hard to be still, to understand what happening to me, what was calling. but i couldn't hear my own wisdom or intuit my body's messages. i was too busy trying to be still. swimming hard against the current of transition, trying to "figure everything out" with my head. panicking, actually. frenzied. nowhere near stillness. isolation from my own self, needing the peace of mind granted in its cousin, solitude.

on a water fast, your body tells you when it is time to eat again and your tongue, which becomes discoloured, goes back to its normal colour. on day 7, neither indicator appeared so i continued for another 7 days, much to my surprise. i had no hunger. instead, a deep sense of peace warmed me, and i felt i was giving myself an embrace. my energy moved between the outward and social to feeling to stay inside and read, clean, write or work from home. i was actually listening to my body's rhythms, and my pace was so clear. decisions on what to do when were easy. i felt i was loving myself in a way i'd never considered before; i had never created such conditions to be so in tune, or aware. and i was surprised at how little i needed ~ i felt incredibly present to everything so i did not need to fill my time or my body with unnecessary things.

it became a sacred pace; my life and body moved at a sacred pace. and then i slowly came off the fast, as i stepped into my life again with a new sense of time.

a month later, in august, i was at the yasodhara ashram in the kootenays of British Colombia, planning to be there for 2 weeks and staying instead for 4 weeks. it felt like an integration of this past year's explorations and challenges. the longer i stayed, the more spaciousness emerged in my life back home. as i wished for new perspective on my life, the scheduled fall fell away - meetings and work cancelled or re-scheduled.

what was the universe calling in?

zen mind, beginner mind.
my whole time at the ashram invited humility, to face myself and my patterns and expectations, and to simply be part of the whole. to simply Be. as i am. and i found such joy in picking the kale from the garden, as a meditation, and then seeing it for dinner that night. such a challenge to make food for 100 people, have it never turn out as i thought, and yet see my small contributions appreciated by hungry guests. and so thrilled to be part of the emerging vision and practice of sustainability at the ashram, as a learner and contributor, not the so-called expert or leader. spaciousness. pace. gratitute for the lessons and the elongation of time.

so i look to this sacred pace also in my relationships ~ with shammi, with montreal, with work. i am ready to work and commit and move ahead, but at a sacred pace which honours the wisdom in my body, of our collective consciousness, of what is needed rather than what i hope for. the spaciousness means that in the letting go of those expectations come a new understanding of what is actually there. for the first time i am ready to let go and give space first, rather than in reaction to my own fears. it is freeing.

and it might take years before i reach the destination that is calling. one that that my body already knows, just as the monarch butterfly who flies south because it is its calling is not the same butterfly who shows up at the end of the journey. yet it knows to go that way ~ so what is "that way" for me?

listen listen. the knowing is there.