Written a month ago, but explains very well what I’m feeling now.
Feeling a little wobbly and a little nauseous. Gosh — I feel scattered and confused. What does it need? A container. Can’t seem to focus or to collect myself.
Spent most of yesterday reading Rosamunde Pilcher, “Voices in Summer.” One I hadn’t read before. I was able to really disappear into it. Before I talked to Erica I started reading my journal from the beginning of 2016. That was intense. So much was going on. I felt a little overwhelmed with my own life — that’s a little how I’m feeling now. That my life is bigger than I can contain. I want to be focused and flowing in some definite channel and instead I’m all over the place. Perhaps I seriously need to be meditating.
At the beginning of last year I was beginning to get it that the person Erica sees may be closer to who I am, than the person I experience. I was also reciting “peace, love, etc.” I see that I start a practice and then lose it, and then start it again… I don’t know what to do with that. I need some kind of consistent, daily practice. Actually I thought this writing was my practice, but it hadn’t really been working the last few days. I sit and think odd disjointed partial thoughts and don’t write.
I remember once, when I had gone back and read part of my journal [this was years ago] and I saw how it made a shape, how writing each day its own truth, still resulted in a whole, not a jumble.
I’m feeling like my life has got away from me, and I’m very uncomfortable with this, but some part of me is wondering if I can’t just be with this and not try to figure it out or close it down. I see that I’m not trusting the process. I also wonder if, instead of trying to pin it down, I were to look at it as a question of finding out who I am now.
What do I know about this person? She cares, she cares about the Earth in all its wholeness, she cares about people who are marginalized, treated without compassion, all those who are suffering — I was reading in my journal for January 2016 what Father Greg says about those people. I feel so much pain for them. It’s so unjust what is happening. I care about truth, peace, compassion. I want to have deep, rich, honest relationships with people. I want to do good in the world. That is what’s important.
From January 24, 2016: I will manage, or I will die. I will live with integrity and kindness, doing my best to be in the present with compassion.
I think what’s making me feel uncomfortably diffuse is that I’ve stopped trying to keep track of every detail. Stopped trying to be in control. No wonder it feels disconcerting. but I think it’s a very good thing.
David Whyte on anger: “… the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.” I think that describes very well how I’ve been feeling — “incoherent,” “to hold what we love helplessly.”