Whenever you create something new, you alter the topography of your inner being as well as the shape of your life and the world around you. Creativity destabilizes the existing order — or disorder — in ways you cannot predict or control.
That liminal time before a new pattern emerges can feel like climbing a steep, scree-scrabble slope up the side of a cloud-wreathed mountain. Excitement, fear, adventure, danger. The thrill of snugging your foot into an impossible toe-hold, inching just a bit closer to your destination, which remains mostly invisible. The scraped shin, the flayed hand, the sunburnt, sun-kissed blister on your left thumb.
The same holds true when your life changes because someone or something else sets those changes in motion. The changes wrought by time or by the vagaries of circumstance upend the existing pattern of your life, propel you into unknown terrain and underscore your feelings of vulnerability and exposure.
There’s an energy alchemy practice for those days when overwhelm has become your teeth-rattling companion.
Rather than numbing out with food or exercise or the latest series on Netflix or driving yourself crazy trying to control the momentum of change, take a moment or three to check in with your inner selves. Invite them into a circle in your heart. Let them know how much you love and appreciate their willingness to accompany you on this sometimes-exhausting journey to a mostly unknown destination. Let them know that you are giving yourself — and them — a brief respite to catch your breath.
Then, give yourself the gift of a time out, a respite from the intensity of the situation.
Ground and center. Move your awareness a foot or so above the top of your head. From there, take your awareness to an upper back corner of the room in which you’re sitting. Or, if you are outdoors, pick a spot that’s above and behind you — a treetop, a rocky ledge, perhaps — someplace not too far away. Someplace where you, your inner selves and your body all know exactly where you are, so no-one feels abandoned. Someplace that offers a necessary distance from the upheavals roiling inside you.
Begin by waving to your inner selves. Let them know you’re right there, just a short distance away.
Now, imagine there’s a cosmic wastebasket in the lower right corner of your room, diagonally across from where you’re sitting. From the upper back corner, move everything that’s not you, or that no longer serves you, out of your body and into the cosmic wastebasket.
Also, for now, move your thoughts and feelings, desires and reactions, into the basket. You aren’t ignoring them — just taking a respite from them. The cosmic wastebasket will dissolve the pattern and form of whatever is placed in it and return the essence to Source.
Notice how you feel, once you’ve done this.
Next, strengthen your grounding — connect your body to the body of the earth, still working from an upper back corner. Pour a shower of light through your body, all the way down your grounding and into the earth.
Breathe. Pay attention to how you feel.
Invite your soul to bring the pattern it holds for the perfect unfolding of your life, at this stage of your life, into your body to fill the spaces you’ve just cleared out. Stay present and attentive to the movements of energy in your body as you’re doing this.
Stay with this for as long as you feel energized and present. When you find yourself drifting off, or tensing up, stop.
Once you’ve had enough, bring yourself back through the top of your head into the center of your head, and let your soul’s presence radiate throughout your body. Strengthen your grounding, to help anchor more of your soul’s power and presence in your physical body.
How do you feel, after your mini-vacation?
