It could be the March air, that time of year that is neither completely this (Winter) or that (Spring).
It could be that with another year passing I’ve suddenly found myself at the threshold of middle age, or so society terms it.
It could be that as my meditation practice deepens and widens, I am more sensitive to yoga’s portrayal and attraction as something physically alluring.
It could be a knowing that as the digital age continues to gather apace and is tipping the balance of life towards a virtual existence, I can neither keep up nor want to.
And so I find myself in a place of change and constancy, excited by new terrain yet rooted in a timeless one.
The effect is not inertia or procrastination, that what usually happens to us when caught between two directions.
Nor do I feel a fear of outcome of choice or non-choice, and I’ve long since not based my life on what others expect or lay out for me.
Here though is a strong non-fleeting phase, and I’ll be honest, it’s not easy to navigate. It’s replete with choice and possibility. Dwelling in a space that isn’t static or a holding period, being right in the midst of life happening all around you. Like when you were young and at a disco, and everyone and everything was ‘in flow’ apart from you, as you watched it happening around you (or was that just me…).
It’s having lived enough to look back and letting experience inform the next step, and yet that same experience revealing the seeds of the essence of who you feel you are and what will always be there.
Letting yourself be part of the change that is inevitable in all life and all lives and eras (not just this crazy 21stcentury tech age). And yet knowing you need grounding along the way.
I know that being a woman in this time, in this now, is part of the frisson and friction I not only sense in the world but in my very being. It cuts right through my bones and is seeped into my consciousness. It affects every moment. No other time has a woman ever, ever, had such choices and yet is still bound by everlasting conventions and expectations of what a woman should be. She has the freedom to flaunt, to share, to choose. But it’s the one who prettifies and conforms that has the easiest path. If she decides to abandon conventions altogether, she’s a wild woolf.
Then there is my personal day to day existence which encompasses the teaching of ancient practices that I feel and believe in, yet I know have gone through the washer so many times one has to question (and get real) – as to what are these practices really and who are we kidding (answer; ourselves) in claiming the aim and benefits of practices that are now done and shared in a completely and utterly different way, and often with a mixed agenda (and often with an agenda that goes against the very roots of the practice).
And yet, with all these polarities, I do not feel a confusion nor a disillusion.
What I feel is the immensity of being alive, having the choice to look back and ahead, having a new found (and ongoing development of) trust in my innate awareness to act or not act based on a greater good or set of principles that aren’t tied to society, or my ego’s immediate satisfaction.
Having memories that root me as well as having shaken and along the way uprooted what I thought was me.
I do find the future bewildering, and the rapidity and volume of information and the non-stop sharing of ideas is overwhelming. I still feel the fear from time to time.
But I am the driver of this bus. No longer the passenger. I decide when to go forward, to pause, or to simply watch the landscape. I cannot control the winds of change, but I can decide how to root myself and when to let go. The privilege of mid-life.
-in dedication to my meditation tutor and mentor, M.C.
