My weekly ritual for looking at the week that was.

Last week I wrote:

“I’ve been feeling Quiet Joy all week… and also, I’m aware of some Deeply Hidden Stuff underneath my Quiet Joy. Yesterday it bubbled up to the surface; I sobbed and sobbed and couldn’t stop”

This week I could write the exact same thing. The same feeling of “Quiet Joy” for a whole week and then the weekend comes and BOOM, I find myself in the depth of despair and nothing can get me out.
I have zero idea what this means. I am “functional”, sure, but there’s something missing in my spirit, as if the second there’s a pause in the rush of “everyday life”, I have nothing to fall back on, no reason to be alive.

And yet, here I am, so let’s log.

• Body aches. I have eight different hurts in my hands, which breaks my heart in a million pieces. My neck still hurts, as it’s been doing for weeks. Plus strange things happening under my skin (not a metaphor). Body is not happy, mind is not happy, heart is not happy. I feel like a mess that needs to be put back together… except I have no idea how to put myself back together. A breath for hope.

• Writing, and my relationship with it, is colder than it was last week, which is to say, very. I don’t think I wrote a single line all week. I am in all kinds of pain and suffering about this. “Maybe I’m not meant to be a writer. Maybe I’m not meant to do anything meaningful in this lifetime. Maybe I’m just here to work at a coffee shop and be content with that”. Trying to trust that this is “right” on some level I cannot see, trying to think, as Havi says, “everything that is against me is an illusion”. I am trying, which is not to say I am succeeding.

• Work. Lots of work. And then… staring into space. My life consists of working then getting back and staring into space. I “write” things in my head, and I sit next to the laptop, unable to write anything, or even move. A breath for what is.

• I got given two sets of keys on the same day. I am not sure what that means, but it felt worthy of notice.

• Tiny flow of abundance. It’s kind of disorientating, though I am grateful. I just wish I understood the process better.

• Dinner with friends at Tiny Friend’s new house. She’s so happy, and I am happy for her. And I also wish I could experience a similar kind of happiness myself.

• Looking after Tiny Friend’s cat Oscar. Playing the piano. You know, life.

• Doing something… unremarkable. The last time I did it, I poured my heart and soul into bringing as many “spiritual qualities” as I could. And nothing happened. This time I just did it, without much thought. It feels… odd. I wish I could learn some kind of “middle ground”, some way of bringing in spiritual qualities to what I do, and being content with that, without defaulting in “well, that didn’t work at all”. In other words, I wish I understood magic better.

• I’m active. I am doing things… just not the kind of things I wish I was doing. I would like to remember this, in my moments of darkness. Now is not Then.

Moments of Insight

I didn’t have a “Big” Moment of Insight this week, but I had lots of small ones. Such as:

“Now is not Then”. This is a HUGE Havi concept. It’s so important and so essential to her philosophy that she mentions it in practically every post she writes. I have read practically ever post she’s written…
And I forgot it.

I forgot that “NOW” is not “THEN”. I have been caught in the fear of “what if this thing happens and it’s horrible like last time, and I suffer AGAIN!!!”. Then I heard Havi say it, for the millionth time: Now is not Then. And I think I got it.

I’ve been on “autopilot”, assuming blindly that “Now would be just like Then because that’s how things are”, as if that was the only option. But it isn’t. If there is one thing I’ve learned through doing all this internal work, is that change is possible. Wild, inexplicable and unexpected change is possible. And that there’s never a “this is how things are”.

Another Moment of Insight is this: for the zillionth time today I realised “my job is to Love people”. That’s my job. That’s what I do at the cafe.
Now this doesn’t mean that I should stand up in the middle of the high street with a sign that reads “free love and smooches!”. And it doesn’t mean that I should take other people’s pain and try to “fix it” for them.
It just means that my job is to see people, truly See them, and then say “it’s OK, this is not important because it’s not the whole of who you are, you are far bigger than this”.

Also, I had insights on the good old topic of “not taking other people’s pain”.

It showed up quite unexpectedly as “I am tired of believing things for people. I am happy to believe things for them, in a mindful way, within my boundaries. I am happy to believe in their “intrinsic human goodness”, and I am happy to believe that they are worthy of love when they cannot believe it for themselves. But I am tired of this scenario: they don’t want to believe in a more beautiful world, they want to stay stuck and small and believe that humans are corrupt and that there’s no beauty anywhere, and I go and unconsciously believe things *for* them, in a way that doesn’t recognise that, actually, they have to do the believing for themselves.

Things of Considerable Worth (Un-missables!)

• “I have never turned heads”: What it’s like when you’re not the object of desire. This piece is important because this is also part of the human experience. We are not all going to be beautiful, and it’s essential to remember that love can happen even in those places. Life doesn’t have to look the same for everyone (double meaning!)

• “Break free from codependent patterns”

I could not believe this quote by Jennifer Kass when I first read it. Here it is:

“If a man wants you and is ready for you he will come find you. Don’t do the work for them. They are not children. And you are not the mother. The divine masculine is assertive and decisive, is an active giver of love, and takes responsibility for their life. The divine feminine is an active receiver of love and lives in the sweet spot of surrender. You are a powerful, magnetic woman who knows her worth, who knows what she wants and will enter a relationship only when it’s with someone who’s [sic] whole heart is in it.”

My brain did a double take, and triple take. And then I took this to my meditation. It was like “sweet mother of God, really? I can let him find me??? I don’t have to do the work myself, work I have no idea how to do? Really??? I just have to let him find me??? My goodness, but this idea feels good, thank you!“.

Like that. I don’t know if it’s “true” or not, all I know is that this thought feels good, and sometimes that’s the only thing I have to go by.

I am actually OK right now, which is an improvement on how I was yesterday, and the day before.

I am happy I logged this log.
I would like to make a wish for my relationship with my writing to reach a point of flow and clarity. May it be so.