The Questions Continue...

Interesting how I am able to get into and answer these questions, the likes of which I’ve seen many times before, and these days, almost everywhere in the self-help psychology lane of our information highway. It feels opportune and synchronous to me, so I’ll keep going. I got these questions from www.expressiveartworkshops.com, by Shelley Klammer. Aside from test-driving these questions, I’m also enjoying her personal story.

So, another set of questions to ask myself:

1.) Can you feel into your human struggle? What are you struggling with right now?

2.) Can you see the seeds of your greatness...the opposite qualities of your struggle within you? What are they? How can you incorporate these higher qualities in your life today?

As I’ve already alluded to before, I’m struggling with manifesting my Self—its creative expression, moving from design to production, materializing in the physical plane, bearing fruit from planting a seed. In fact, I’ve always struggled with this, to greater or lesser degree. Even when I managed to bring something to fruition, there was always the sense that I’ve not sunk my teeth into it before I quit it for good. So perhaps that perception is problematic too.

These days, I am aching to be a writer and/or a poet, of a story or stories, or a collection of poems. But I find myself not writing those. It is quite possible that I am simply not being still enough to allow them to come to me and through me. Yes, that’s exactly it, isn’t it? From now on, I’m making like a spider meditating in the hub of her web, in the centre of stillness, all day. This is the image I will take into the first day of my Poetry Retreat tomorrow.

Seeds of my greatness… I’ll let myself be informed of this, as I do not have a ready sense… hmmm, it is that I am not the least afraid to find and know the truth, I am a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing out the truth of someone or something, of the heart of the matter, of what lies beneath, then setting my chompers around it and not ever let go until I’ve slammed it into submission and displayed it in the light of day. It’s interesting to note the degree of fearlessness I feel when I’m employed (by myself or others) thus, even if it meant drawing blood and causing pain (to myself and others), embarrassment, disapproval and sometimes ostracism. I can’t seem to stop anymore than a bloodhound could. Which part of my birth chart did this come from, I wonder?

So, looking backwards at this set of questions and my subsequent answers, I see that if the opposite quality of my struggle is truth-hunting, and what’s unusual to me about it is the fearlessness, that in turn implies that my struggle with manifestation is one of great, paralyzing fear. Underneath the surface busyness in the web, the spider is multi-tasking up a smoke screen because she is afraid to take that step into execution, into manifestation. There is always more than enough to pick up and take on, input and output, that she’ll never run out of excuses.

What is this overwhelming, all-consuming fear that seems to immobilize me so deeply within myself, that I do not even register its presence on the conscious level? Is it the fear of success? Yes. Great, so cliché… nevertheless… What does it mean, fear of success? Why would I fear success, please inform me?

I fear success because it is a bottomless pit that on an instinctive level I know will swallow me up, and my real self will be lost forever, like a sacrifice made to the gods to appease their wrath.

I fear success because it is a burden that once I choose to carry it becomes heavier and heavier with the accumulation of its trappings, then one day I’ll either have to jettison the whole thing or die under its weight.

I fear success because it demands of me all of myself, and such a heavy investment can use up so much of my energy, time, and focus that my freedom will be severely limited.

As I write down these reasons a tiny feeling is poking its newly sprouted head into my awareness: that it is not the success that’s the culprit, but the fear; and that I am reacting to a trauma(s) around success, judging by the extremeness of the beliefs I have expressed.

Since I have explored this issue of my fear of success before, my first ready response to the question of trauma is that of my childhood academic success. Surprisingly, my body tells me it is so, still. (My visits to the healing spiral is turning into a world tour!)

So, there was nothing wrong with the success that I was blessed with, but I was not prepared in the least for its consequences, the expectations that ensued, the institution that it is and the cost of the membership. I was taught to be modest, but I did not learn real humility. Control was the shrine and temple where we worshiped, not surrender. And with my first school uniform I put on my first ensemble of armour, because lesson #1 is that life is a battleground, and you must fight with all of your might, if you want to survive. So I did. So did everyone I’ve ever known.

How to undo all this conditioning, the task seems beyond enormous… Is that even the thing to do? Yes, that is the task at hand. Oh dear… but how? I am seeing an image of a wall with grafitti or writing being hosed with water, and the writing is being obliterated, like the dream I had yesterday of the watercolour paint on the wall (http://lastnightidreamed-whitelightone.blogspot.com/). Water, the power of gentle persuasion and unrelenting patience. Turning the hose on myself comes all of a sudden. A wake-up call?? No, it means “be gentle with yourself”, even if it is what you’re trying to obliterate.

It seems there’s something else I need to do… Make the intention of washing off these layers of fear when I’m in the shower (really, life is suddenly full of new-age clichés! Just kidding, sort of…), letting the power of water manifest on all levels at once. I thank the power of water and the greatness of Life, and Shelley Klammer, for inspiring me.