← BACK TO BLOG

beginning the descent

it has occurred to me lately that I have begun the descent part of my journey. my goal was to fling myself as far from my life as I could imagine, quiet the din, hear myself.

and then come home. as ursula le guin expressed through her novel ‘the dispossessed’, the only physical book I started this journey with, “true journey is return”.

i have flown so high and far and wide. i have seen so many things, learned and remembered so many true things about myself and my callings, about the world outside my world.

i was trying to think of when along my journey I was the furthest from home.

was it on the ferry in the mediterranean, surrounded by men speaking quiet arabic and smoking all variety of tobacco as I tried to get my first sight of northern Africa at night from the deck?

or that night in costa rica, singing through my fear at the top of my lungs on a dirt road with no idea where I was or how to get to any other place except go forward?

or one of the nights I walked home through the jungle here in hawaii, surrounded by the sound chaos of frogs and pigs and the expectation of otherworldly night marchers – also singing myself through?

or maybe not a physical place, but the spiritual clarity I experienced meditating alone, or the fire in the road man’s eyes when he said I was blessed, or the time travel through my own story I experienced after self-ritual in tulum…

and now there begins to be an imaginable landing back home, changed and filled up with time and rest and new dreams and crossed horizons.

how do I get home from this – what does home mean to me now?

I only know what I have yearned for, and felt pulled by. thinking of my niece and nephew has doubled me over, I want to look in their eyes so much. I yearn for my family, altogether, laughing and healthy. yesterday I found myself weeping wildly at a traffic light, missing my grandfather and thinking I need to go see my grandmother and take her the recordings I have of his voice, which overwhelm me to listen to. and I yearn for detroit, her summertime flair, boating on the river and watching the sun move down her length. I yearn for these places, they are each home for me.

and then there is the political home, how do I bring back this restored self into the work? who will hire me to do the healing work I am called to do at the individual and organizational level?

I want to only work with folks who are serious about ‘transform yourself to transform the world,’ as it feels like the only path I can see and serve. I can’t be part of low-integrity/urgent/unintentional work and survive, even though i am still learning how to do things with integrity, patience and intention.

will folks be interested in learning with me?

there is so much I feel and so little I know…I feel I have ways to support others to achieve absolute liberation through their own self-transformation. I feel I have a particular role to play, small slow and steady, in the biggest picture.

there is a sign on the road that crawls between the mountain and the sea over here, it says, ‘don’t think, pray’. there is a time I would have prayed, saying to god/dess, show me the answers, the way forward. at this moment, I feel like my life is all a prayer and I am seeing answers everywhere.

and I am experiencing full happiness, the kind that only comes from radically accepting what is, and then acting from that place of acceptance, with gratitude. now I feel like my prayer is: little spark of divinity, great existence, let me feel the places where all of me is truly needed, where what I am capable of is precisely what is necessary for…(I almost said survival)…for evolution.

if suffering is the human condition currently – and from what I have seen, it is the majority physical condition on this planet – then I want an evolution in our condition. I want healing to be the human condition. not to be healed. i don’t want to give up the complex experience of life.

and it can’t be someone else fixing you.

the evolution i long for is in our perception of our power in the world, and how that perception shapes the world we have. i want to see healing, and happiness too, these should be the human condition, the primary experience of all humans. i want to see humans (particularly humans who want to change the world), when life is hard, looking for the opportunities and lessons, being vulnerable as a form of leadership through the learning. and when life is easy, holding humility and detachment, falling back into the flock until its time again to bear the brunt of the wind as we all fly into the unknown but viscerally felt future.

so.

coming back deep into the soil, i now have the next month to journey home, to figure out how to articulate my yearning and my calling and these visions in all of my actions. i want my own commitment to happiness and healing to go beyond the ecstatic rantings of someone who hasn’t worked for five months. 🙂 i want this rootedness to become normal.

the dream for my life involves healing, evolution through relationship, singing, and bringing doula energy to everything i do – yes, open, wait, push, wow, you are miraculous, and so are you, repeat.

so with that in mind, I’m just going to doula myself, nurture and encourage and be patient with each step.

there’s only one way. forward. same as always, and utterly new.