Day 6: Emerging

Day 6

Thunder and rain at night.

Growth comes with a shock.

Expression and duration

Appear in the first moment.

-Deng Ming-Dao

I've never known true personal growth to be subtle. The rug must be taken out from under your feet and you fall on your ass. Alternatively, you get pushed off a cliff (only cliff divers usually make the decision to jump) by extraordinary conditions and you fall to the ocean, on your way hitting several rocks. When you get out of the water and dry off you realize that you're cut and bruised, but still alive enough to carry on from that moment. Believe me, after my father's suicide (I was twenty-six years old) you learn that healing and self-evolution can take several years. I got pushed off a cliff and lived to tell the tale.

Most recently, when I came back from Nepal & Tibet aspects of my life collapsed. I knew it was going to be a life changing trip, I just didn't know how fast it would occur. One element of change and shock was to find that after 17 years I could no longer be a massage therapist due to neck and body pain that just made doing a session unbearable. I was in pain before I left on the 4 week journey. During the time that I was away -  pain free. Within one massage session I knew it was over. I put my resignation in a week later and placed my massage table on the curb for the trash truck. Deep inside I knew there was a reason and I just had to wait to see why this door had closed and if another was opening. That was seven months ago and there are doors opening into rooms I'd never considered entering and find myself peeking inside to see what's there. I am considering my options. This blog is a room, a very small room, but a room just the same. I wasn't planning on going through this particular door and into this room. Then I found Deng Ming-Dao's book at the second-hand bookstore and I knew in that moment a door opened.

It takes time. It takes time that under normal circumstances we think we don't have to spare. Time is relative and a device. Well, it doesn't matter what any of us think, life happens when it happens. Surviving the process takes a great deal of self-reflection and a tolerance to pain your way through re-discovery. It would be easy if the answer just appeared, but it doesn't. It emerges a tiny bit every day until you start to sense a seed of your truth is inside of you; but if you don't take the time to nourish it, then it won't grow through the soil and push past the darkness into the sunlight.

We don't change overnight (adolescence, for instance) during any growth period even though it seems like one day we're exactly where were suppose to be - tada. It takes an awareness of the decisions you are making vs. the allowing of life to move you in the direction you're meant to be. I've found that a goal gets in the way of everything. You're thinking only one way, when you're suppose be going in an entirely different direction. You go to the ticket counter and request a bus ticket for anywhere, whatever ticket comes up first. You accept the ticket and get on the bus to see where it takes you. If you're suppose to be in California but you've assured yourself your suppose to be in Florida, well you've got a problem. See, the ticket guy was going to give you a ticket to California, but you asked for Florida. It's just not right and you'll know it once you get off the bus in Florida and nothing works out the way you thought it would/should.

Well, it seems off subject, but today I went to the get my hair dyed back to it's dark brown color, not the lighter color w/ highlights that I've been displaying the past few months because "they" say that when you're older you're suppose to go lighter. I thought my hair was beginning to look like Hannah Montana's wig. Plus, in a picture there was a stranger looking back at me. I know, it's so superfiscial, but it is very much a "thing" for women. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many shelves of hair coloring products - western culture & societal pressure to stay looking young. Even for those with awareness of the plot are vulnarable to wishing to still look attractive.

So, here I am back to the original dark brown and it is a bit of a shock. But, it from here that I can grow into the true woman I am - approximately 40% gray and going more gray by the day, month and year. It's going to take time, 1-2 years for it to emerge from the transitional wreckage that is sure to occur. But, I'm willing to live with it because I know it's absolutely necessary. If I don't look 44 years old in the mirror then I'm going to stay under the delusion that my time is not short, that I'm forever 35 years old - one of my best years in this life (Vision Quest in Colorado, Wild Dolphin Swimming in Bimini, Wandering in New Mexico & Arizona desert) and one of the worst (end of my first marriage & uprooting of my life). It was also the best physical fitness level I've ever been other than the day of got married to my second huband in Antigua (2003) -14% body fat. Well, that self-deception has come to an end.

Dao writes, "We may think that it came up suddenly, but in actuality, it emerged as the product of unseen and subtle cycles".

I've tried going gray before only to find my ego fighting me to the point where I gave up. Plus, I was working at a fitness center and everything is about trying to look a certain way (excuse after excuse). So, I'd convince myself that maybe I am to young to go gray since my body was still in good shape. But deep inside I knew it was a self-deception because, for all my muscle and tone, the skin of a woman in her 40's is not the same as that of a woman in her 20's & 30's. Elasticity is diminished and you have to work twice as hard to get the same results as the younger sector. You look great for your age, but when the 20-something counter boy at Rite Aid calls you "mame", you realize the only person your fooling is yourself. Plus, I hate the term "cougar". The fact that any woman in her 40's tolerates being called such a direspectful name is a silly woman, indeed. It just goes to show that if they can't call us "crones" then they must call us something and neither is flattering. But, I'd rather be a crone than a cougar! Crone is woman wisdom and puts a man in fear that she'll cut off his penis if she has a mind to do so. This male-dominated/youth-based culture and society hates to see women age! It's just crazy! It is important to remember that at the beginning of the 20th Century, a woman was usually a grandmother by the time she was forty years old and could very well be getting to the end of her lifespan.


Now, back to emerging...
Well, I believe "everybody" is on board for personal growth this year. The ego and the truth merging together, giving me the the strength to embody physical and chronological destiny. I know that this process will also allow for an emerging of spiritual and deep subconscious truths to show themselves, too - embrace of self-discovery and finally personal transformation.

Juniper Tree. 

Twisted trunk.

Desert frame.

Root exposed.

Elements sculpt. 

Beauty emerges.

-Demori