hark,
what pain when it is answers for which I yearn
and
what grace when it is truth for which my heart truly burns

that really,

no matter the verities
you
have
seen

even your sweetest,
most potently resounding liturgy

still, still
knows
not all of me.

After a good few years of journeying, reflecting, learning and healing I feel like I’ve recently come out of a fog.  All the insecurities and life stuff that I got sick to avoid have started presenting themselves to me now that I have the resources to deal with them.

One particularly triggering story to come out of the archives is the one about ‘success in my career’.  Yes, I know, mega-bleugh.  But now that I can hold my emotions with experience and empathy, instead of cowering in terror at the prospect of it, I allowed myself to take a deep look into the pieces that make up this humdinger story.

Cause damn, why is it so painful?

Well, from a young age, I (along with, you know, EVERYONE) was spoon fed the belief that an awesome ‘successful’ career is the shiny awesome reward for growing up.

And I am not the success story I envisioned when I was young.  I’m 33, I don’t have a job that pays me money from someone who isn’t my dad. I don’t own a house or a car. I don’t have a boyfriend or a baby or a novel in the works that would supposedly ‘balance out’ my woeful job status. By society’s standards, I have a sorrowfully unsuccessful career (/life).

But what are society’s standards?

Or more accurately, who is society’s standards?

Is ‘society’ not just an internalized system of beliefs and thoughts innocently created by the child-ego mind to keep us safe and approved of?  A patchwork of random ideas picked up from childhood to create our world.  Ideas that are reinforced as our linear, rational left brain searches endlessly to prove that our world is real, that we are safe, that we are real.

Society exists nowhere but in our own (ingenuously childish) minds.  Like for real.

And, if this is the case, then holy shit, for me, a successful career looks like a super weird amalgamation of someone with a briefcase and my dad’s side parting and a 90’s romcom where I run around New York with a coffee enduring a string of hilarious mishaps until my raucous but fair boss finally recognizes my quirky talent and I get to run my story in Fashion magazine.

Or I get a quirky but raucous dog who runs away to the laundromat where I serendipitously run into a man with one of my gloves who ends up being the love of my life.

Or, through a hilarious string of mishaps, the fair but quirky boss of the laundromat becomes a dog who ends up being the love of my life after we travel forward in time in a closet.

All the while there’s faxing and The Big Presentation that I ace (after almost losing the Important Document).

My mind doesn’t even see the movie either, just the trailer.

To this song:

My brother’s (who is now an artist) childhood career success icon is Peter Panning from Hook, the high flying (pun intended) lawyer with the mobile phone (in 1994!) pre-remembering he’s Peter Pan.

One of my friends and her sister grew up believing the pinnacle of career success is being a cream-pantsuit clad single mom a la Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day.

I mean whaaat?! This is what that sweet, young and unfulfilled part of me thinks a successful career looks like. So OF COURSE she’s going to feel depressed at my current state.   And oh wow when I look at it like this I feel such loving compassion for her.

This is a dream I held onto so tightly for so long that it became part of the fabric of who I thought I was.

I don’t need to push it away, I certainly don’t need to use it as misdirected motivation to try harder to be ‘successful’ in a wildly outdated way.  The unfulfilled ache that floods me when I think the word ‘career’ is the sadness of a loss of an innocent dream that is asking to be grieved.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Can I give her the space, hold her gently as she grieves like a child grieves the loss of a toy?  From my place of resourced maturity, I know that it was a toy she outgrew and I do not get swept away by her grief, I can fully honour it with gentle compassion.

And oh man, when I do this…

…a door opens into a new crazy amazing space, unbound by expectation, so loving.

Open open open, fresh to this moment.

A space of softness and presence where the unbearable childhood weight, projections and demands of the term ‘career’ are rendered meaningless.

A boundless new opening where success is defined as nothing but the intention to do something and then doing it.

And I am suddenly shown the infinite ways I am successful.

Fuck me, I am successful.  I made breakfast, I washed my face, I walked to the loo, I typed an email.

I see that these are not small things.  These are the only things.

Success happens in presence, whether I am putting on pants or talking to my (dad) boss- it happens in this moment, only this moment.

And in this moment, everything weighs the same.

Sweet, soft presence is the reality that lives between the archaic movie trailers spinning the expectations I had placed on myself.

In reality I cannot fail, I can only be.

Expansively, beautifully, successfully me.

Predicament of the day: I know that what I’m doing is what I’m meant to be doing and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Urgh.

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved — what then?” Carl Jung

In order to instigate social and political change we have been taught that activism is an outward physical action.  We have been taught that courage is a doing.

We have been taught that unless we are on the physical frontlines we are not agents of positive change. This is bullshit.

Whilst there is absolutely no doubt that doing can be necessary for (r)evolution, a form of activism that is just as valid is the one of sitting, staying with ourselves amidst the discomfort of our own darkest deepest humanity.

Ram Dass talks about 2 types of activists as Doers and Be-ers.

Of course, when we break it down, we are actually always doing (and/or always not doing depending on where you hang in the whole non-duality flex) and ‘doing’ or ‘not doing’ are relative, subjective terms that are defined by each of us personally. And everyone is a mixture of Doer and Be-er to a greater or lesser degree.

That being said, some people love and are energized by interaction with (many!) others, planning, organizing, executing whilst others consider making a sandwich quite enough action for one day thank you very much.

And it is to this latter group that I speak.  A Be-er is more anxious than revved up about an anti-establishment rally, they are not necessarily the first to enthusiastically stand on a podium with a megaphone and whilst their giant hearts are wide open to the amazing people marching in their thousands in the cold and in the rain- they feel (and this can be a great source of misplaced shame for them) little impetus to join the crowds.   It is important to note that this is not because they are lazy, uncaring or uninvolved in the causes that are shaking up the world today.  It is because their innate call is to go inwards to facilitate our evolution instead of outwards and this is an act of incredible bravery that is often overlooked and undervalued.

Whilst Doers are out on the physical frontline, Be-ers are on the psychological/emotional/spiritual frontline.  Whilst Doers, unshakable in their courage, stand together to meet the perceived violence and aggression of humanity’s shadow in others, Be-ers sit unshakable in their courage to meet the perceived violence and aggression of humanity’s shadow in themselves.

Be-ers are what Byron Katie calls ‘scientists of the self’, intrepid explorers of the human condition, shining the healing light of awareness into the apparently terrifying, painful and unacceptable parts of ourselves, getting their psychology degree from the inside out. Often not by choice but because life has served them with circumstances that have forced them to find their peace and happiness outside of the conditioned ways.  Quietly, slowly, gently, the Be-er thrives in a calm environment, one that is as peaceful and comfortable as possible to give them the strength to truly travel where they need to go.  Where priestesses, oracles and mystics were given the environmental tranquillity of temples and caves in which to journey, their modern-day equivalent Be-er may live a slow and deliberate life filled with quiet comforts that support them in their indispensable role.

In a world of producing, making and doing, in a world of material measurements, in a world obsessed with quashing the existential fears that pace the backstreets of our psyche, the Be-er may feel useless, purposeless and meaningless. They might be at constant odds with an undercurrent of shame because they ‘can’t handle the ‘real’ world’, because of their yearning for silence and stillness and because of their apparent lack of productivity in and connection to the current societal model.  They will often try to fit into the Doers world, defined by linear time and deadlines and will feel increasingly disconnected when operating from this place.  This can cause them to spiral into depression, anxiety and/or mysterious physical illness- creating a loop of more shame, more guilt and lower self-esteem.  They think that something is wrong with them when actually, this inability to perform within and conform to the fast pace and sharp edges of schedules is their greatest gift.

Because in a Be-er the process is the product, the being is the doing.  And their natural need and ability to process and gestate and absorb insights from the vastness of the timeless is crucial in this world. It is their wisdom that we call on when we are faced with the inevitable existential questions of our existence. When we’ve been blind-sided by the death of a loved one, the diagnosis of an illness, when we are grappling with emotions that feel too big for us.  They do not fear our pain, they do not fear our darkness because, in their travels, they have meticulously and courageously explored those depths.  They will stand with us in the clarity, presence, integrity, truth and compassion of an examined mind and heart. For as long as it takes.

When a Be-er holds our hand they hold all of us because they have learnt to hold all of themselves.

For only in our intimacy with the darkness we can see that our cruelty and aggression is the desperate cry of a child waiting to be loved.  And only in our quiet clarity can we experience the truth that we are essentially good, that there is no true evil in us, that only love truly heals all wounds.

Be-ers, know your worth.

May you feel entirely supported in your time spent alone in silence, moving at the speed of presence and listening for the whispers within. May you feel honoured in the hours nuzzled into the sofa in your pyjamas.  May you feel infinitely proud of your borderless, unscheduled, vast and indispensable being-ness. May you feel justified to wait and be carried by the arms of the unknowable into everything you do.  May you tend to the unseen parts in yourself and know that this unconditional self-love is all the healing the world needs. May you be the depth where others provide the breadth in this world and may you know that this is always enough.

And I do what it takes to feel it
because
nothing has meaning
until everything does

My love                                                                          My love
My love                                                                          My love

Nothing has meaning until everything does

and it does

Trust and learn that the truth will be relentless as we dance on these sharp edges.

I painted you grey
for fear of being ripped away

From the vibrancy
of a lived in heart.

Brave souls
Now homed
in skin
so thin
holding the barest bones of our time.

We think
you shrink

but your flesh is pulled from your frame
to grow wings
and take flight.

I am your beating heart.
When will you realise that I live in you?

The excitement of firsts
that glossed over uncertainties of youth

was beginning to chip

and in its cracks,

truths appeared

hastily doused in benign distractions.