Mighty in the Darkness

I was walking home from yoga last night when a friend sent a text message telling me she had just completed an amazing yoga class (in a city far from mine), and the theme for the practice was "mighty"--"as in" [her words] "the stronger we get, the more able we are to be vulnerable with ourselves."  I was feeling pretty "mighty," in the moment, and grateful for the timing of the word to describe the feeling.  After a week of "trying to right myself," of "trying to get through" what I had acknowledged to be a temporary rough spot, there emerged that lightness of being that is the strength we have to simply settle back into ourselves--in all of our beauty, all of our crazy, and all of our brilliance...and to be gentle with all of it.

Whenever I am feeling a bit detached, unmoored, unfettered, scared, etc., what I've noticed is that I'm becoming increasingly able to say, "Hey, I'm feeling detached, unmoored, unfettered, scared, etc., and I am pretty sure I am going to emerge shortly, but for now, this is what I'm feeling."  I have, for some time, acknowledged that these are the moments when I'm in the "wilderness" [metaphorically...and, I have to note that I most often find myself in the "wilderness" in my life when I'm furthest from it].  And I'm getting [a little] better at not judging myself for not always feeling like I'm riding high (because that would be ridiculous and an artificial expectation, yes?).

"When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed."--Joseph Campbell

The cycle of light and dark seems to be just this:  There is darkness, new realizations emerge, and we learn again and again to trust what's around us all of the time.  It's sometimes obscured, this support we can bask in, at least momentarily.  And, as much as I'd love to be someone who never loses my awareness of the support and interconnectedness that tethers me to the rest of the world, I do.  And I begin again, with a little less "woe is me" and a little more "woohoo," because that's where I know the truth is.

"The less there is of you, the more you experience the sublime. " --Joseph Campbell

The truth is in the woohoo.  It is.  And it's in the love I feel for you, and you, and you....