Dancing the edge

What I’m noticing is that while people wish to evolve and experience greater freedom in their lives, they are scared of the deeper feelings, edginess and processing that this demands.

So while they long for their world to shift - to speak more kindly to themselves, to live a life more aligned with their heart and soul, to love more deeply, intimately, sexually, explore the depth of their emotions and truly own them, embrace their aliveness, their essence - the change that is needed is scary to them.

It is paradoxical in many ways; we long for change and yet want everything to stay the same, ordered and neat, routines, safe.

The edge is too edgy at times.

The emotions too great.

So the practices are practised, but always with a cover note – a holding back, just in case.

How might it be if we lost control of being in control?

If we let go of our conditioning that says it is so, if we bravely created a new paradigm, a way of being that is aligned with heart and soul, and quietened the noise of society’s demands and allowed life to be lived our way, not how we have been programmed.

Of course there’s fear because treading a new path comes without guarantee, no hand rail, no floatation device, just the moment as it unfolds into the next.  

How might it be if we accepted this unfolding, moment by moment and let go of our need to plan, make known, make certain, stay busy to justify our existence.

We have to be careful of the stories we tell.

We have to be careful too, which paradigm we support.

So much of our lives are work for work sake, hamsters on a wheel from birth to the grave.

The slave mentality is deeply embedded in our psyche, we have to be so careful not to feed into it.

For slaving is not freedom, whatever they say. Slaving is a distraction from an edge we don’t like.

Death tears into the very fabric of our existence, it un-weaves the threads we threaded to make life feel safe, known and certain through achievement and playing the game of life, work hard, do well, and then you’ll be fine.

Yet there is a price we pay. We are not a well society.

Illness reminds us of our impermanence, death too.

We are not here forever, regardless of our efforts to pretend that is not so.

So we live as if we may never die and in the process we run the risk of living a half-hearted life, a life where we long for change, but hope someone else, or something else will make it better for us, in the end.

And when others are talking of their angst and despair, we are don’t know what to do with ourselves, eyes turn away, mouths close in silence, because we don’t wish to be reminded of these edges and our darkness within.

My journey with grief has taught me many things – is teaching me many things – it is helping me to hold better space for others navigating the edges of life, the desolate, dark and desperate moments where we don’t know how we might find the light again.

And yet we need these darker moments for that very reason. They take us to edges that reveal a deeper light within.

As a society, the darkness has become a lonely space. The wellbeing industry doesn’t help as it seeks to deny those deeper and darker feelings, as if there is something wrong with us, that we can’t cope, that we must add in more, not less, to prove we are well, as if drinking kefir and attending a cacao ceremony will make all the difference.

It might.

But what might make a greater difference is to embrace the shadows, the dark spaces, the rawness in our life. To welcome them in with an open heart, not reject them, and push them deeper away from our consciousness out of sight.

The great cycles of our life wash over us. Life is not constant. Aging, illness, retirement, menopause, death, birth, redundancy, all of this and more ask that we explore these edges, that we appreciate that loss and rebirth are our companions on this journey we call life.

It is never too late to open to a deeper side to ourselves, to our truth, to explore the inner landscape that scares us the most. There is nothing to fear but fear itself, and so much aliveness in us if only we let go to it, allow our rawness and vulnerability, be true, authentic, real.

Grief has danced me back to life. And gifted me presence and moment.

Life is changing in such beautiful and small ways.

In their death, my friends, Marie, and later, Em, they showed me their essential nature and the journey that our soul takes. In the grief that their loss brought to me, I found a small treasure that is the biggest gift I could ever receive. Of something that I am struggling to name, but something that I can no longer pretend is not worth savouring and protecting, the essence. 

It is a nuance of gold, of the most beautiful awe inspiring sunset, the sight of the moon, the sound of a buzzard. There is something so deep, so edgy, so magical, that life can never be lived the same again.

All the edges, the sorrow, the heart-break, the rawness, the vulnerability, well without all that, how can we truly live?

It is love.

And I will no longer shrink myself to fit in, shy away from expressing the truth of my feelings, my angst, my joy, my twirling. I won’t apologise for my sorrow, for the tears that creep into my eyes when another layer of grief reveals itself to me and to you too. I can no longer make myself who others might need me to be, to feel safe and ordered, as if this live is forever lived, no death, dying, end.

We are all of us dying to the part of us that no longer belongs here. And for those treading this path of greater heart and soul, of aliveness and evolution, then you cannot avoid the edges and the rawness this brings.

There is no need for apology or to shy away, to make yourself guilty or ashamed. There is no need to make it easier for others by swallowing down your emotions and carrying on as if nothing happened, as if life never pulled the rug from under your feet, and broke your heart into a million little pieces.

We are all of us grieving in some way. It is time now that we reclaimed the powerful process that this is in our lives. It is not a weakness or a sign that something is wrong. It is instead a sign that we are finding our power and will emerge bright and strong.

We cannot play it safe and expect the changes we seek, living on hope, vision boards and affirmations alone, or neatly packaged spirituality with all of its illusionary trappings and a wellness industry born of consumerism, sell, gain.

We have to dance in the impermanence of life itself, appreciating that death hovers ever close. The ancients knew this. They used death, not to understand death per se, although many did this too, but to find greater meaning and purpose in life in the face of death.

And then to truly live, and love.

For in loss this is all that is left.

And words cannot express how grateful I am for this.

Love Emma x