The moment before surrender
It’s been exactly a week since incredible time in Zadar and going deeper with the cold immersion practice once again.
And why once again? It is because I have found a practice that challenges me and has an incredible effect on so many levels. And when I say it challenges me, I don't mean the fear of cold or of the bath itself - I have a deep respect towards it, but no fear. What I do have in mind is that this practice, as many of the ones I do, allows my deep unconscious parts that I cannot access in my everyday life to come to the surface, and with it does it with incredible speed and deep strength.
In other words, when I approach breathwork and cold immersion with a clear intention to explore and develop a specific part of myself, I am then entering a part that resists life, that shows up in that as tension in my body, cramping, resistance, physical discomfort or pain, and my thoughts start speeding just as in the ceremony, looking for an exit so my psyche would not need to change...
Luckily, I have visited this place enough times to be able to recognize it. And luckily I have incredibly strong and incredibly amazing support when I do my own work so I could be reminded that this place within me is not real.
And then, in the third round, when I finally start figuring out the meta-level - witnessing the parts of me that resist and hold back, that do not wish to give in and that would do anything else but enter a new part within me, when I remember I am so much more, and that it is enough to remember my own breath and the life force within me, to make a decision to surrender, in that moment the consciousness starts to expand, patterns start to melt just like that ice under the warmth of the sun, the tension in the body starts to relax, the smile comes back to the face, and I feel the connection to the deepest center, with the source within me that bathes me in its love. And exactly that place, the center, presence, often gratitude, where I feel soaked in love, passion towards the breath, the knowledge that all is well, that is the place from which I wish to live.
And that place, just like anything else in life is something to be met, built, strengthened, and connected to so we could release anything that is not aligned with it.
Hence the practice. Hence 'once again'. Hence once I feel and know that, I also know there are parts of me where I do not yet know it, parts which I try to melt, to surrender, to release, where I try to give up the tension and control so that Life would not need to teach me through pain, rather that it is I who volunteers my broken pieces and brokenness, my fences, and strong walls, the parts which are not who I am anyways.
And as I am writing this, I am feeling the 'why', my intention to share with you the strong love I have to this journey - the journey of self-discovery, of connecting with life, exploration and surrender.
A challenge is a call to grow. And life without a challenge does not exist. I think it becomes so much easier for all of us once we accept that and find beauty in it. It becomes fun too. :)