Softening our Edges to Embrace Fear and Birth Change

Hmmm.  Where to start?  So much moved through me this past weekend.  So much was available to feel.  Almost too much and yet what is too much?  There is only what we can handle – touch – hold.

I notice when I judge things as too much, it simply means I am overwhelmed by the challenge, in this case to be present to the feelings of being trapped, suffocated and unable to move.  Constricted so tight I couldn’t breathe fully.

A week before, after sitting in circle, a pain arrived in my neck.  I enquired deeply with this pain.   It felt like an injury from being strangled or maybe hung.  One or the other.

I also started to menstruate heavily. I haven’t bled for 8 months.

At the same time a wretchedness attached itself to my heart that would not let go.  It would not let go.  The addict part of me began crying out for relief.  For mercy.  For something to take the pain away.  I don’t use alcohol anymore.  Facebook has replaced some of that behavior.  I admit.  Damn it.

Eventually I chose to chain smoke three ciggies at a dear friend’s house, (FYI I gave up Jan 2020, having been a social smoker and justifying my habit far too long).  As I sat with my dear friend sharing some of what I was experiencing and feeling I started to feel a shift.  Where would I be without my friends who get me and can hear me?

The next morning a subtle strength and blissful state re-entered my body.  One that I felt in every cell of my being.  It reassured me.  It gave me a clear message.  One I want to share here.

The message had been percolating since that circle I mentioned, where I witnessed and was part of something magical. However it does not easily translate into the language I have available, so undoubtedly the energy of it could be partly lost in translation, and yet words are all I have available so I will use them to the best of my ability, in the hope it lands in you as it did in me.

In this circle I experienced what I would describe as a collective, patriarchal, internalized programming energy with a strangle-hold on everyone.  I watched how tightly it was clinging on, in it’s final days of reckoning, not letting go.  Wanting to choke us all. So scared it is of what lies ahead.   So scared of the unknown.  (Maybe it is not unknown and simply forgotten?)

Side note: as I type these words, the place where the pain in my neck was, is internally tickling and itching!

Let me give some context.  All my life I have been programmed to do, to build, to know, to understand (look at that word – under-stand), to keep on keeping on.

To know more and more, to do more and more, to grow more and more.  To be bigger, better and shinier than before.  And you know what?  It is killing me, and it is killing our planet.

Building up and up, till we meet the sky, till we can fly in the sky, then fly beyond the sky and then put things in and beyond the sky too!  All in the name of progress.  And yes.  Wow, what wonders have been unveiled in these explorations.  And yet.  Woah, what damage has occurred too, and continues.

Our lofty, high ideas and ideals have been traded for positions of status.  The unending drive to move up the career ladder and reach higher positions of power and status. The need to get on the housing ladder to provide security for our families.  The building of empires – real and spiritual.  All things that climb up, and to where exactly?   And how many people get a step up?  Who and what is at the top?  And most importantly where and when does it stop?  When do we realise we need to come down?

When we stand at the summit looking at the incredible view and realise it is only momentarily satisfying?  Like an orgasm.  It washes over us.  Intense. Gratifying. Then passes and ebbs away until the desire to conquer another summit arises, to reach another peak.

Let’s pause here and take a deep breath.  Breathe in the energy behind these words.  Listen bodily. Feel the energy of forever seeking and climbing.  It’s powerful and intoxicating.  And yet it is not home.

It moves us away from home.  It takes us out of ourselves, up to realms outside our body and if we stay here, we get lost.  We bypass all that is grounded and soft and waiting to receive us. Waiting to wrap us in love.  Waiting to comfort and nurture us.

This energy needs to come home. It has been lost for so long.  Encouraged by everyone to keep going.  We cheer it on.  In awe of it’s power.  Not stopping to breathe, reflect and notice where it is taking us.  Swept up in the maelstrom of progress.

Is it time to pause?  Can we agree to meet this energy in it’s full power with unwaivering love and call it home?  Home is the place we have been encouraged to leave so we can find ourselves and yet in our adventure we forget that we need to come back to replenish.  To reflect on our journey. To fill up at our source.

In this circle I mentioned earlier, I observed the fear of coming home. The fear or being met in our fear.  How ironic that this energy of fear feeds itself.  A cannibalistic energy.  Getting fatter and bigger by the day.

There is no space to breathe fully when we move from fear.  It takes us out of our hearts.  It alerts us only to stay aware so we can survive.  Yet we cannot just survive.  We need to thrive. This planet needs to thrive.  The people need to thrive and we thrive together.  Survival creates separation.  Fighting only for ourselves.  Thriving is about interdependence and togetherness.

To thrive we need to converse with this fear.  We need to acknowledge it, listen to it and blow it away.

Then allow it to dissolve into dust.  It is not the moist fertile ground in which to plant new seeds of intention. It is not.

To create a new earth we need new earth!  We need to come down from the sky and ground and soften our edges.  Be rounded and s-m-oothed by love.  Breathe.  Slow down.  Understanding the time for planning through fear is over.  We have done that.  It’s time to birth the new through love. From a place of home.

We are in a time of great surrender.  A time to trust in life changing us and not us trying to change it.  A time to reclaim all that is sacred and forgotten, that was left on the ground as we built up.  As we flew away.  We need to collect the fallen feathers and make a soft bed for our dreams.

We need to release the hold on our fear.  To stop using it as justification for acts of violence and terror.  Fighting back is not the only answer.  We all know this.  All of us.  Yet here we are, in the middle of a psychological war.  A deeply psychological, patriarchal, mind-bending war.  Its weapon of choice – fear.

Until we are willing to soften our edges, round down and embrace fear, remove our armour by doing the inner work, we will not be open to what is needing to be birthed.

There really is no preparation for birth.  It is a full surrender of the body.  To the movement of life coming through and out.  It is profound and it needs protecting in all ways.  We can either fight it and continue our legacy of pain and suffering, or embrace it and surrender to the ecstasy of the universe moving through us.

Birth is our sacred passage into humanity and death is simply another birth back to source.  Both initiations are reverent and sacred and a mystery we will never fully understand, or know.  We owe it toourselves and each other to remember this.  To create spaces where we can all birth and die, birth and die together.  Unafraid of what will be. Unafraid of the great mystery.

We need to thrive together to ensure this home is still here for our children and future generations.

We need to let go of what no longer serves us.

Soften our edges.

Round down.

Embrace fear.

Birth change.

Thanks to https://unsplash.com/@nico_frey for the image