On changing tracks
Momentum, habits & will to change
Once I had a postcard on my board saying ‘If you don’t like where you are, change. You’re not a tree.’ Truth be told, I hope I am a tree, at least to the extent that my being is with each day rooted more and more in this living body on this Earth.
Not so long ago I spent a day in ceremony with David Mooney, a Movement Medicine teacher in a workshop called Presence of Heart. Funny thing this heart of ours is, always present for us, even when we/when I/ forget about it.
As they always are, ceremonies ask all that we are willing to give into them. So did this one. Even though my role was holding the space and assisting, the dance that I have danced there was deep, heartbreaking and heartwarming.
I was blessed to witness dreams coming into the being. I was blessed to see sparkles of magic of higher realms getting rooted in the beautiful human beings dancing their heart’s desires and allowing the heart to break wide open to be ready to receive the dream inside to manifest. And I was blessed to feel my own heart struggle to break free of old patterns that no longer serve me.
As I was dancing my soul out over and over again I started tuning into the vertical axis of my entire being; body-heart-mind-spirit. I could feel in my cells momentum caring me through the space. I could melt into the spaciousness in my bones that smelled like freshness of early winter morning after a long night of snowflakes falling on the ground. I could allow my muscles to sink into the nourishment of the ground called my body, to reach for the nourishment within and to relax into my whole being. And yet, I could feel the pain of my heart pushing and pulling in every possible direction to make more space in the landscape of this person called Tamara.
In the months before this ceremony I could feel the story that emerged on the dance floor only in its parts. As if my consciousness was not ready to grasp the whole – at least I wasn’t ready, hopefully my full consciousness is not limited with this day-to-day expansions and contractions. Nonetheless, I started dancing every aspect of my life to find out where does this discomfort in my heart come from. I remember there was a moment, just a couple of seconds where I felt like I would faint, like my consciousness wants to separate from this body and go into oblivion. And that’s when I was sure I’ve ‘hit the nerve’.
With years I became aware of those moments of my own presence moving away from my person, from this body. It became a beautiful signal of being overwhelmed and needing to change something. I realized that moment was a metaphor for the moment in life I was in. The problem the question what should I change? When I look at the painting of my life, it is rich and full, magical, poetic, light & dark. And yet, I could feel on that dance floor that the part of the canvas needed restoration. I was confused. And that’s when I realized:
Who’s to say that the path we were on even yesterday is the right one today? It may seem right, it may look right from outside, it may even smell right, but if we listen very carefully, there might be something that makes us stretch, that makes us squeeze in, that asks to little or too much, less or more than we are ready to give – right now. It may be the right path for yesterday, tomorrow, or even in 5 minutes time, but at this very moment the truth is different, whether we like it or not.
And then I started thinking, even though change is inevitable, it is not easy to change the tracks. The way we live, even for a short while grows with us, within us, and as time moves so quickly it takes just one glance back before ‘something I do sometimes’ becomes my habit. It wires within us, within our bodies, cells, energy field, it creates a known patterns in our mind and filtrates the reality of our worlds within it. Habit makes our heart relax in what is, no matter how useful or not it may be. It constructs a familiar ground which creates safety – and every one of us want to feel safe. To break through the pattern, to break free takes more than the will to change. If it gets rooted so deeply in us, and often it settles on a fertile ground from the earliest age, it is not enough just to wish to change strongly.
We cannot truly change anything if we force it, if we push, pull, give in or give up, the sole power of our will is not enough. The paradox lies in acceptance.
The only way I know real change happens is through accepting what is. Sounds easy, right? But if it is so easy to accept we wouldn’t want to change it in the first place. Probably.
Anyone who has faced this place within them will know that there is a thin line between acceptance and resignation.
Acceptance usually happens when we get tired, when we try every excuse we have not to change, when we struggle and push ourselves to the limits. And when we give up, forget it and move on.
Acceptance for me is a place of nourishment, a place where I let go of what I should, what I will, what I’ll try and decide to give myself what I need, no matter how difficult it seems just a moment before. And that’s when the magic of change happens.
Just like in the ceremony, when my person thinks about the time, when I let my body move without thinking how, my spirit sets free and my soul lands just a bit more in me. And how does this happen? I move out of the way with the only honest way I know how to – following whatever my truth is at that moment– what ever my need is over and over again. No matter how far away from my core intention it seems like, I follow what is real right now. If I’m lucky, I will feel mercy of the Great Spirit in moments of total surrender. If I’m even luckier, I won’t feel it and will have to find mercy within me. And this one stays with me not only as a living memory of one dance ceremony I once did. This one stays in every breath of my being. With this one I remember that I am and that the rest is ‘a dance between ten thousand choices and the will of Great Spirit’[1].
Do I have to repeat it many times until all of the levels of my being settle according to that space of mercy, that knowledge and wisdom within me and until my energy grows accordingly to manifest it around me? Probably. After all, I’m starting to understand that life is not a sprint race, it’s a marathon.
[1] Ya’Acov Darling Khan