Break on Through

As many do, I arrived back home wondering just how I could possibly maintain the slightest degree of happy-go-lucky curiosity that accompanied me across the world. How could I integrate freedom and openness into my very definitive, everyday world? There was but one answer. Keep living like a traveler in a foreign land. Stop thinking. Resolve not to define anything. Let the heart lead the way.

Easier said than done.

Just about everyone I run into wants to know about my trip. "How was it?" they ask. "Is it over?" I wonder? How can I possibly answer these questions without thinking, without defining and without ending my journey? Is that possible? The truth is, it's not. My journey isn't over. I have only just arrived and in a moment I will soon be departing again. To answer these questions means getting off at this station and watching my train pull away so that I can see what it was and where it went and where it is going. I'm not willing to that. So instead, I find myself answering these inquiries with somewhat hollow exclamations like "Amazing!" "Life Changing!" "Transformative!" "Eye Opening" "Clarifying" which might all be true but hardly capture the experience of being fully absorbed in the moment.

Pressures from outside influences are not the only challenges I face in carrying on. I am also greeted with a multitude of personal concerns upon arrival back in Seattle... mainly those of life purpose, love, career, money, self-worth and something else I can't quite put my finger on right now. It would be REALLY easy for me slip into a state of worried anxiety and try to think and plan my way out of the fright, the fear and the massive uncertainty that just so happens to be the carriage of the moment. But for now, I choose not to.

Somehow or another I choose attending to my spirit over attending to my ego. I choose to care for my needs before I care for the needs of others, I choose not knowing over knowing, I choose trust over fear and each time my head begins to spin thought uncontrollably I choose to feel the restless immediacy in my chest instead. It is raw, it is vivid and it is undeniably true. Something tender is breaking through.

It starts out with me unexpectedly announcing my desire to end a work relationship which significantly lowers my already low level of income, it opens the door of change on my romantic life which is directly tied into my living situation and turns into a long overdue letter of apology asking for forgiveness for something I don't expect to be forgiven for. But the most interesting thing is that I don't think about doing any of these things at all, they just happen. In fact, if I had thought about any of them, I probably wouldn't have followed through on a single one of them.

All of these reckless shifts spilling out of me, all of these old patterns breaking up, which I always imagined would be so terrifying to experience and would leave me in pieces, these shifts aren't my whole world falling apart, these shifts are my whole world coming together.