Folding In #47: Embracing Pain, Joy and the Play of Existence.
Reflections on Fear, Risk, and the Silent Struggle Within.
The most challenging part of returning home from a retreat, is reckoning with resurfacing voices. The echoes of your habitual mind, awakened by the familiarity of home. After I settle into my routine, the space is filled with the usual riff-raff again. Afraid, old, repetitive, recalled, oppressive. A room that once seemed spacious is now filled to the brim.
To see what you've become accustomed to is jarring. Those things you often think about. The distrust that cycles through you like a washing machine and how impossible it seems to find the stop button. We are milled in a sea of thoughts. I whimper inside the churn and wish the dogs would stop barking at the gate.
"Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the "treasure hard to attain." He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of his self and thereby has gained himself. This experience gives him faith and trust." -Carl Jung
While our outward selves are composed, our inward selves are constantly meeting our 'dark ground'. Coming home, I recognize that I am undergoing an internal process that may never be complete. I leave home following some instinctual call or urge. I pass the dragon's lair over the charred bones. As I breathe in, I anchor myself. The more I open up to the mystery, the more I receive. Faith and trust are fed to me. When I return home, I find the joys and challenges I left behind are still there. I realize there is no end to this cycle. Two opposing forces are at work in me. The dragon slept for only a short time. The dance must be danced over and over again. Another horizon appears.
We are rarely prepared for life's demands. Pace and timing are not chosen, but are imposed upon us by circumstances. One layer is removed to feel the fingers of life, peel back another. There's a quiet yearning, not easily noticed. There is yet another calling, another reason to look beyond. There's no escaping it. I've learned it's the errand of the soul. I am summoned forward by life, followed by my heart, and the dragon emerges from the darkness. I understand now that my job is not to buck against this rhythm, but to enjoy it. It is important for us to look beyond ourselves. Being driven by something unseen. The whirl of creation demands that we lose ourselves in it.