A couple of things happen prior to “awakening.” These occur in my life and probably in yours, whenever you’re ready to go to a new level. The first thing is everything falls apart.
Everything Falls Apart.
You can deal with this the way I usually do, by digging in and holding on and trying to keep everything together, long after it’s started to rot.
Or you can do things the easy way:
Let it. Allow it. Because it’s already breaking down and to deny that is to wrestle with reality. Surrender to the notion that change is constant, loss is inevitable, death is certain. Emotions will arise from this, and they might be doozies, but in my experience there’s much more suffering to be had from trying to hold it all together.
Here’s me talkin’ ’bout the good medicine of things falling apart.
https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.shryock/videos/10156076282080240/
When you let everything fall apart, you drop your socialization, your beliefs about “shoulds” and “have to’s” and manners, and get closer to just being yourself.
When I posted the video and sent a note to my closest friends about letting things fall apart, I heard over and over that that’s exactly what’s going on in your lives. I’m so pleased! That might sound like schadenfreude, like I take delight in your life falling apart. Of course not! But in a way I am happy, because everything falling apart so often leads to things falling into place.
“Great!” you say, with an involuntary eye roll.
“How can one get from falling apart to falling into place?”
I’m so glad you asked. Once you allow everything to fall apart, you’ll feel a tug, a sort of impulse or guidance. In her book, Diana, Herself: An Allegory of Awakening, author (and one of my teachers) Martha Beck calls it “going to the forest.”
Your “forest” could be a desert, a pillow in your closet, or anywhere you can go to be yourself. Here’s one of my own many examples of falling apart and going to the forest.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been attuned to others. I could sense other people’s feelings, needs, expectations. No, I couldn’t read their minds, but rather seemed to anticipate what they wanted me to say and do. It was as if I could listen with my whole heart.
Sometimes it felt like a super power.
I could soothe someone’s pain, surprise her with a kindness, intuit his secret hopes or fears. My favorite was seeing the best in people and helping them see it, too. This sensitivity helped me to be kind to others, to learn rapidly, to excel at work, and to keep myself safe in more situations than I can count.
But it had a downside.
If I attuned to the wrong people or too much, I wasn’t safe at all. At the worst, by the end of an 8-year relationship with a violent boyfriend, I felt like one big nerve, like a satellite dish set to receive, receive, receive. And not just from my partner. All the information I picked up left me feeling frayed, exposed, and at the mercy of other people’s moods.
Most of all, the satellite dish picked up disapproval if I didn’t assuage someone’s discomfort or fulfill their wishes, or if I didn’t act “normal.”
Normalcy came at a high price.
During that painful time, I felt I was only aware of other people – I couldn’t seem to pick up on my own needs, opinions, wants. Speaking up or taking action seemed almost impossible, weighed down with the expectations of others. I disappeared amidst all the humanity.
It took years to allow everything to fall apart, but when I finally did, when I finally left the relationship, sold the ill-fitting business, lost the house to the recession, a little tug called me home.
I went to the “forest.”
I limped back to Montana to hide out under the big sky. And then, thinking things couldn’t get much worse, I got sick.
Feeling like a sickly, exhausted, washed up failure, I could no longer keep up the facade of having it all together. I dropped my capability, cleverness, my knack for making things work out. I couldn’t seem to behave in the acceptable fashion, to follow the rules, to be normal.
I’d left my tame social self behind.
Without enough energy to tune in to or take care of others, the satellite dish’s receivers turned inward.
Alone and bewildered, or, as Martha pronounces it, be-wilder-ed, I began to sense a feral inner self. Without my social self trying to strong-arm everything, this wild self gradually guided me to be centered and strong and to trust myself. She taught me how to use my secret super powers for good, without jeopardizing but rather enhancing my own well-being even as I forged new relationships. This deep, wild aspect of my own consciousness began to call me to mysterious adventures, magical healing, and my deepest purpose.
That’s where the magic happens.
In the forest, you see, after you’ve allowed everything to fall apart, you can drop your civilized self and access your wild inner wisdom.
What does your forest look like? And what’s your forest hold for you?
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