My heart has been a turbulent thing. I think when I slept at night, it might have been calm. Ish. I never knew how it got so wavy, so currenty, so always moving and pulling and tugging and swirling. Sometimes it was that familiar to and fro, that wave on the beach tide of emotions coming and going. And sometimes it has been a flat out storm with crashing of waves and clapping of thunder and pressure and movement and chaos. And sometimes, just that gentle lapping along the banks or swirling around rocks or branches, but always, always the movement.
Until now. Now I can be right in the middle of that swirl, that tidal pull, that current, that tug, and suddenly, by some dawn of new insight, I can still the water. I can gentle my heart.
The water is peaceful and still now. There is no push from within. There is no pull from without. There is only my heart. Every feeling that was, is. But now, it is still. There is no reaching. There is no holding. There is only stillness. There is only peacefulness. There is only love. There is only patience. And on the horizon, all sides of the horizon, there is more stillness. I can stand in this still water that is as big as the ocean. I have found the elusive thing.
And I know something now. Something kind of funny. It was all the flailing. Flailing tends to create waves and splashing and even tidal crashing, depending on the tantrum. And like a hurricane, once in motion, my emotional flailing would suck up velocity and debris from my circumstances and situations and my thoughts and attitudes and the stories I believed about those circumstances and situations. I could drum up quite the squall. And still, mid-flail, I would be convinced that I was the victim, cast away at sea, forlorn and alone, with my poor battered turbulent heart. Even if I wasn’t flailing, I was always crashing around in my heart, frantically searching at times, or going through some motion trying to make myself happy by changing what I was feeling. I was trying to hold back the tide, or dam the stream, or go against the flow. I was always doing, doing, doing. I was doing everything except the one thing that could calm the water.
I think it has taken about a month. I think it started when I just let myself be stormy. I flailed around, trying to resist the fear and the sadness and the fear of the fear and the sadness. And throughout those stormy days, I would let myself, maybe for a moment, maybe for longer stretches of time… I would let myself feel the worst of it. I just let it. I allowed it. And it hurt really really bad. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I don’t know how long that storm had been building, but now I know how it got that bad.
I think those kind of emotionally stormy times happen when old feelings that were never allowed, that were the result of some attitude or painful story I believed, come crashing into my present moment and collide with some emotion I am flailing against and trying to resist because the story is similar to that old story I had believed for so long. All of these stories have a similar plot. I am not loved, I should not trust, I am unfulfilled. I came face to face with all the residual thunder and lightning and hail from believing those stories for so long while never allowing myself to feel how bad it hurts to believe them. I think it’s much easier to let go of those old stories that do not serve us after we feel the pain they have caused. They may in fact be locked up in the emotion and cannot be released until the feelings have been allowed.
I didn’t know that I was unlocking stillness. I didn’t even know it existed. But now that I know how it feels to have a still heart, I can feel right away when there’s an undertow or a wave coming in. And then, I just tune in to my feelings and let them happen and let them go. They never want to stay, they just want to be acknowledged or allowed or accepted.
I have noticed too, that if I wanted to just send a ripple out, as a message maybe, from my heart to another… it would be much easier for that other sweet heart to feel my message when it is coming across a still and peaceful water.
