Find your Self (Re-Connect)

The day I was shown compassion (see 'A revelation’ post) I found that my life had expanded as a new dimension had been added to it.  This dimension was profound and it had laced the rest of my existence and perception with new depth and meaning.  Love was in the air, love and compassion and with it a deep understanding that we are all inherently vulnerable people, coming from the same place and struggling with the same things.  We were all bound and connected by our shared humanity and if we could lay down our defences for a while, reach out and touch each other’s pain, we might begin to heal.
 
More than three years later, I was still unforgiving.  It felt as though god himself came down and showed me the way, I saw the path so clearly and I understood it.  I was touched by it deeply.  But I could not follow it -my heart was closed and my anger in control.  Something inside of me was locked.
 
August 23, 2013
​A few months ago, I had decided to try Yoga.  I had gone through a time of stress and bad health and needed to heal.  The lesson included both physical work and almost half an hour of meditation.  This experience was profound and completely unexpected, as I described it then: ‘A moment of true enlightenment, of pure, complete, deep calm’. (March 2013)   I had come out of the meditation feeling extremely heavy and relaxed.  Everything around me felt thick like soup, and I moved very slowly.  It was as if I was sitting at the bottom of the ocean floor, surrounded by a dark, blue, heavy sea.  This was not the place of colourful corals and dancing fish, this was a place that was quiet and still.  It was an experience of deep, intense centeredness.  This deep calm was my deep calm, it was me.  I was all in my body, my mind was there watching, but was not active, it had taken the back seat.  I did not want to explain to anyone at that time what I was feeling, as that would have swept my consciousness back into my mind and I wanted to keep inhabiting my body so completely for as long as I possibly could.  The calm was complete, and by that, I mean total.
 
Other things followed that day.  I had picked up my children from school expecting the usual aggravations that are part and parcel of motherhood, and of course, it didn’t take long before my little angels tested my patience.  But this time it was different.  I possessed a certain composure and control which I had rarely experienced until then.  Yes, I got frustrated and even angry, but I was not flustered and I was not overwhelmed.  I could handle the situation without too much difficulty, I knew who I was, I knew what to say and do.
 
Of course, when one experiences such an experience, the second yoga session is filled with dread ‘what if it was a one-time experience, what if it doesn’t happen again?’  And so of course, in the second time it didn’t.  I was extremely disappointed and plummeted from experiencing one of the best weeks I had had in a long time to one of the worst.  But as that second disappointing week went by I found myself experiencing yet again snippets of centeredness, calm, and natural control.  These moments gave me heart as I started feeling a longer lasting effect on the very core of my existence, an effect I did not have to search for and grasp, but one that presented itself to me in unexpected moments, bringing me back to an inward unity and natural calm.
 
The third Yoga session was even more intense then the first and things went on from there.  A couple of months later I had written: ‘The deep inner calm continues, my body gets stronger, my attitude towards people is subtly changing.  The affect they have on me is less; I am not so sensitive or vulnerable to them’.  (May 11, 2013)   I remember feeling that something inside me had been awakened, something I did not know existed and was now here to stay, transforming me from within.
 
I also remember talking to a friend and telling her how Gwen didn’t bother me so much anymore.  True, I now saw her very rarely, but her aside; I felt that the path I had known about for years now, this path I could not follow was suddenly available to me.  Something in my heart was released, it had been unlocked.