Eye of the Storm

Just because of the mood I'm in
I know there's more to the weather than the western wind
And I feel like I'm gonna feel
Like a willow tree that's got some branches to bend

-        Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nothing of the Kind

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.  - Ram Dass

For as long as you opened your hearts to the frequencies of fear, you used your power to give credibility to fear’s illusions.  -  Ken Carey

I have been experiencing for the last four or five days a pretty deep melancholy which, at least for now, reached its zenith today.   The gradual loss of energy eventually resulted in a physical illness yesterday which extended into today.  The result of that is a particularly potent test to allow and release.  At some points it was particularly challenging but I still maintained, over the whole wave, a fair degree of surrender to it without letting the mind’s stories dominant and lead me.   The illness was a definite punctuation, an added level of difficulty. 

One thing I noticed though was I have been particularly unmotivated.  It was hard to focus on anything and I had to push myself to move into things which needed to be done – although sometimes I couldn’t even do that.   But the worst is when the mind starts making stories about all of that and creates the seeds for doubt.   Doubts about the path, the value of the things I have committed to, guiding principles, a bit of everything whenever I fell too deeply into it.

It is a bit like being in the eye of a hurricane.  The eye contains the lowest barometric pressure in the storm system but the edges of the eye are where the most powerful winds of the hurricane are.  Staying awake and aware helps to keep me in that center.  If I weaken I get drawn towards that eyewall and in danger of getting sucked into those stormy conditions.  Fortunately the winds themselves serve to shake me and awake me to turn back towards the center.

Understanding the mechanics of melancholy was very helpful.  That melancholy is an electro-magnetic-chemical phenomenon and it acts in a pulse – it is here and it is not.   It is a condition that has no content.  The knowledge helped to catch the emotions and stories and reactions towards their beginnings before they were able to get rooted.  But the ability, such as it is, to allow the melancholy to just be, to let it come in deeply, to keep an open heart and let it flow through, doesn’t come from the knowledge.  It is the practice of awareness that provided the conditions to be able to surrender to the process.   I obviously have a lot of work to do but looking back at previous winters and adverse conditions and punctuated melancholies and how I related to them shows me that I am on the spiral even though sometimes the doubts try to tell me I am going in circles or down dead-ends.  So I am grateful for all of the synchronicities that have led me to the place in space and time that allowed and supported this work.

Sitting here late at night, the work of the mind shows little signs of letting up on the pressure.  But just as I felt the glimmering of the melancholy in my tea meditations before it came on strong, I also feel the gentle wind hinting that it is now passing through.  As the experience reaches completion now perhaps I can see what it was all about and what shifted in my relationship with myself and rest of creation.