Riding the waves

Poetry sticker from my Compass Project phase II, last summer in NYC

To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It’s a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping?
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.

We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
– RUMI, from ‘Buoyancy,’ trans. by Coleman Barks

These days have been about riding the waves. Learning again how to be kind to myself, to work with my mind, and to fight for myself, the people I love, and what I am here to do.

Sometimes all we have to do is reach out to realize again and again that we are not alone. Such a simple fact – yet how often we forget. We are sitting crouched in the corner of a room with our legs drawn up, head on our knees – not realizing there are others in the room, doing the very same. We are all fighting the same battles, having the same fears – regardless of what it looks like on the outside. We have to keep walking, keep fighting, keep knowing that – things can change. And all we can do is roll with them. Ride the waves. On and on..

“Cry out in your weakness,” Rumi writes. “Crying out loud and weeping are great resources. […] Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent/ with your pain. Lament! And let the milk/ of loving flow into you.”

It’s the only way to begin to help yourself, to help the universe help you, and also to help the people around you.

This sense of separation, of bewilderment, of disconnectedness – it derails us completely. We’re staring at the door but we can’t get ourselves to move. We lose our sense of purpose, we don’t want to get out of bed, we resist every situation instead of embracing it. We feel detached from the source energy of the universe, from our infinite potential, from the love and goodness that surrounds us always.. We become so completely entrenched in this feeling of isolation and emptiness that we cannot possibly fathom the illusion it actually is.

That current, that potential, that love energy is always there – just a breath or a moment or a perspective shift away.

“The grief you cry out from/ draws you toward union,” Rumi writes. Be honest with your longing, your sorrow, your restlessness – be KIND to yourself in feeling such things. Everything happens for a reason.. Even those things that seem completely pointless. “Your pure sadness/ that wants help/ is the secret cup./ Listen to the moan of a dog for its master./ That whining is the connection.”

We are all on this journey together. And even feeling nothing – is feeling something.. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other. It’s not where we’re going, but what we learn along the way.

Trust yourself, trust the journey. Ride the waves.

Because this – this sadness, this emptiness, this strangeness. It isn’t forever.

It just isn’t.

Thank you to everyone who has shared their moments of darkness and their ways back out into the light with me over the past few days. Thank you to everyone who has been patient, stoic, honest – lanterns in the shadow.

Peace and joy to you, my dear friends – especially when you need it most.