For the past year and a half, I have been living in the city for the second time in my life. To live in the city was never on my agenda, because I never thought I could cope with it, never wanted it. But having been here for this time, something has changed me. I get to see life that I never knew before. I got to see how so many, probably the majority of people live and play and work and go about their business.
I get to see traffic, smell fumes, walk past umpteen rubbish heaps, walk over and around the pizza boxes that are far too many to find a right place for. I see plastic upon plastic and I see wasted food littering the pavements for the seagulls to feast over. I witness frustrated parents with screaming toddlers and many people from all walks of life, not just one life but many.
I see people, so many people in door ways, sleeping or huddled up together finding comradeship and I meet with the drunks who are totally open about their drug of choice, I feel somewhere in my heart that I am not so different and I share a smile.
I am part of this world, I am not separate, and having lived there in my sweet country cottages I’ve not allowed myself to be part of this world. But still I know I am not separate. I know I have my imperfect ways of living as well as my addictions and my needs just like anyone else. So any kind of self-righteousness that tries to keep me separate does not support any measure of life as I know it. And in this world I see so much goodness and colour, a vibration of community, togetherness and inspiration.
Yet in this past year I have seen and found a root into the path I know I need to take. A path to unravel my life, to face the muck of it, the pleasure of it and the secrecy that I thought was only mine. I have to come clean, I have to face up to who I am. And only by knowing myself at the deepest core level and everything that has ever bugged me, every deed and action I have (even without knowing at the time) been guilty of, can I truly stand up and say ‘I’m growing-up!’
And I am fortunate to have found that new program, that I never knew existed, that knowing place that would never have crossed my path in my own perfect world. It was just outside my door step and it beckoned me in.
So, writing my newsletters have taken a bit of a backseat, there are reasons for that. One is that I notice in my life that I am breaking a pattern that holds me to a particular belief. That I must strive for perfection. That if I create something on the first of each month, then that will be what is expected of me and I should stick to it. It also touches into other areas of my life where I strive for the perfections of my own making and beliefs. Perfections that actually can become obsessions!
It isn’t that I have the kind of view of perfection that is anybody else’s idea of what perfection is, it is simply one that I have made up myself, from various experiences throughout my life. I wonder if anyone noticed that I didn’t send out a newsletter? Well they have been getting later and later in each month, so I doubt it. No, its only me that notices my own very subtle and small addictions. I’m sure others would notice the bigger ones!
And subtle mine are indeed, no heavy substance, nothing too damaging in my life, (although maybe it could be damaging to others and I always need to consider this possibility) but without a doubt they are there. My need to be seen, my need to be acknowledged, my need for whatever. I’m aware of a need for adrenaline, of drama, of sugar – usually dark chocolate, a need to fix and make right not just my life but the lives of others, probably because some part of me thinks she has the right idea and knows best. Well, I can understand having had a large family where I’ve been the matriarch gave me certain positions of authority and experience, but that is not my life now, my family has grown up, left the roost, flown the nest. I am nobodies saviour, nobodies answer to their life, still I can want to jump in with any amount of advise. My own self-important self can override my natural instincts and I can ‘get in the way’ and all to easily want to play God!
And my work can hold me in its grip, of course everyone needs to work and earn a living, but how I approach my work might be a key to what I am discovering or needing to discover. What is the drive, what is the compulsion to do what I do? What or who do I think I am? One women floating her own boat, afraid to ask for help, thinking she can do it all by herself. Driven to the very core of her dancing body that is tired of that serotonin rush as soon as the beat is heard, but that drive to reach a high – far to alluring as it stabs at her heart. Don’t get me wrong here, sharing the dance is a beautiful occupation, but if for me that dance becomes a drug, then I am once more in avoidance of letting something else through and I know that there were times that dance was that drug for me and I could escape into a world of pleasure. Other times it has been a direct link to God and becomes that deepest prayer. Am I willing to explore the differences and get to know the one that takes me closer to God, thus to my body, or the one that simply takes me out of my body, because it has become too painful to be there any longer? And getting closer to my body links me to the acknowledgement of the very fabric that was given to me to experience my life through. What an amazing gift, for it certainly wasn’t me that made it, but it is up to me to look after it, to see where I do not serve it, or even where I try to control it, yes control is another addiction for sure. I learn about the ability I have to dance consciously, to be present and to really know the difference.
And at the core of it, my addiction to abdication, shutting down incase I should be seen to be wrong, to hide the simple fact that I am imperfect, so painful to know. I have flaws, can I bare them to be seen, can I admit to the imperfect me? Yes to be really seen in the face of it all, but then once unravelled knowing I can grow up and be who I am really meant to be, knowing that only God really knows and it is time to release the burdens and the chains of holding onto what I perceive to be my own ‘ right way of living.’ My need to ‘recover’ yes, to recover the part of me that hasn’t been here for a long, long time. I don’t truly know what that is and I need to be shown. And I need to allow that knowing to come from any other place but myself. Because my way of thinking, will be ‘my way’ the part of me that always made mistakes, simply because I did it my way, not Gods way.
I might have thought I was doing it Gods way, because it felt true to me in my heart, but again that is only because of my way of thinking. Did that ever truly work I ask myself? If I look at 90% of my decisions and choices, can I say they have led me to the very best of experiences? I think not. But when I have followed something outside myself, that it seems was Gods intervention, then I can see how ‘right’ it seemed to be, even though I had no idea why and I may well have resisted it for a more familiar ‘my way’ kind of thinking.
So if you have read this far, because this is a bit lengthy, I applaud you and also I think maybe you know a little of something that I am experiencing. Great, we are on the same track.
So we have packed boxes, put our goods into storage, because our house has finally found a buyer and we have made our way out into the world.
Our work continues as long as we are able and we bring to it our experience and maintain our strength as it is in that one day, we share our hopes for the future and we move on, one step at a time, into the next phase, the next chapter and we wait to see what meets us there. In the midst of all of this, I am happy to reveal to you our ‘new look’ website, I hope you like it. It also feels like another entry into the light, to change and to a new way of seeing things. Or even maybe returning to a way that worked for me those many many years ago, a time when God was the most important part of my life, where my curiosity lay with a simpler way of viewing life and my prayers were more open and free.
Caroline Carey
