I wish you could see.
Or maybe you can,
and I wish you would look.
Either way,
our eyes are not converging on the same point
and agreement is an illusion.
You are still trying
I see that.
But you are dependent on me
my belief in you.
my faith
my energy
my spirit.
No one person can be that
which you are to be to yourself.
And so your love seeks to possess
control
orchestrate
manipulate.
There is no flow
no nurture
no care in it.
I do not discount the wound.
I have had them too
inflicted by those who had learned evil
instead of good
stunted in immaturity
instead of propelled into growth,
connected to self and spirit on all levels.
And so,
there is a beauty to you
you cannot embrace,
but you crave.
For a moment you saw yourself through my eyes
but disbelief claimed the vision
and it vanished like mist in morning sun.
frustration at its dissipation made you volatile.
It is illusive
and I think it drives you
to return
to ask for more
to depend on my perspective of you.
But my perspective is insourced.
universally insourced.
and available.
And no one person can be that
which you are to be for yourself.
Arguably, humans are addictive personalities. Habits are so deeply ingrained we are not certain if we made them, or they made us. Some make us feel good, some are so empty we wonder why we adopted them in the first place. And some are an unnatural high followed by an ever revealing low. We long for even predictability. But life happens. And here we are. Happy or unhappy on our roller coaster.
I put it to you that we are not as addictive as we are bent towards our own comfort. We desperately desire to have our ducks in a row. To control our path, to have it be ours. The trouble is our supreme lack of isolation. We are born of, and into people. And those people already have their own addictions. Some contribute to well being, some merely assist the life sustaining coping that temporarily prevents parting from the earth suit in favour of eternity. All of them work much like the flood gates on a dam… The water is still there. The pressure still builds.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to know how to manage my river… I want to know how to best have it move me. I want the energy, the power, the flow to become that which drives me. I want to see myself in the calm pools, be refreshed by the spray from the rapids, invigorated by the rush of flood season. I want the fear to go out of the process of being capitulated over the falls. I want to enjoy the journey. I want to embrace the baptism of the depths and rise free.
I don’t want to have coping mechanisms that make life doable, the predictable highs of addiction, I want life.
I want to trust the Source that drives both me and that river. His choice in the vessel that will carry me… canoe, kayak, riverboat, steamer, raft. I want to learn to steer them all. To be part of the team when I am with others, to pilot my own in a solitary transport.
But using an oar is work. Reading the river requires intentional searching. Learning to swim is a combination of using breath and muscle, and the water itself. Getting to know my limits and freedom is a process. Shedding the limitations placed on me is a trip of intentional healing. I have to want to be free. I have to be brave enough to stop flailing and put my feet down, if I am to find that I am not actually in danger of drowning.
It is true that in the process of finding our feet, most of us have been hit by debris that someone else jarred loose or left exposed, or plain carelessly dumped in the river. Some of the wounds are deep and defining. Difficult to overcome. Some of them are reinforced by generations of travellers in the boat you begin on, and abandoning that boat is terrifying because as chaotic as the hierarchy may be in that place, it is home. You may have to swim to shore and choose a boat, or let yourself be rescued by a person in another vessel. Most of the colossal vessels are incapable of navigating rough waters anyway, and are damaged and forced ashore by a rocky shallow bottom.
The debris is not the river. The vessel we are born into is not the river either. Discover the River. Feel the water. Let it wash the wounds, heal the sores, hydrate the soul. Let the movement of the river soothe your being into rest. Learn to be in it. Trust it. Imagine where it can take you. Let the breeze along it speak life into you, choose to hear the song the water sings. When you find yourself alone in it, remember that it knows you well and let yourself be reminded by your reflection in it that you are part of what is beautiful and good. Sourced, Sustained, Propelled. Equally embraced in deep and shallow. Poised for adventure, and rest, in perfect balance. Free from the anchor of habitual me, I find that I am a person known, not an addictive personality. I am both in Source, and insourced. Sustained, and sustaining. The balance of being.