Living In The Flow (Part 1)

I have always been a believer that when living in the dharma, the flow of life naturally pulses through you, and the ability to achieve, be well and happy happens easily. And when illness and unhappiness come about, the flow is blocked.

 
This approach can seem to have little compassion and affluent based, depending on your situation, but in terms of a larger picture and seeing without judgement and self recrimination, much can be learned. This perspective has worked so well that I made it into a healing practice and have been very successful helping others.
 
Yet the whole time, I was living that approach from a back seat, hiding in the house behind relationships, having great internal drama that gradually escalated into deaths, illnesses, and very challenging relational dynamics. I was living a pattern of holding back, holding back the larger energy and vitality that pulses through me, so strong at times I felt like I was holding the reins of the universe inside of me, like bucking raging steeds, collapsing with exhaustion every several months. I knew this was happening and did my best to allow the flow of energy, of life, and of experience to move through me but the shores of my island had eroded to the point of imbalance.
 
For years I felt a larger calling, something pushing at me to get out the door. And yet…the pull of my family was equally strong. I am traditional and conservative in many ways yet not. The need to balance the larger expression of those raging steeds with the deep care for those I love most was a source of conflict and challenge to my belief systems: to be tender without complacency… to honor and be tender to the part that needs time away to process and bring things in to integrate, when little in life and in society honors or appreciates this, to lead and be a woman and a mother…the conflict was not going away, and the more I tried to control it, the less manageable life was and more difficult relationships became.
 

I was not in the flow of my dharma. And so I did what I told everyone else to do.

 
I listened to that small voice inside, despite everyone else’s voices saying, “how”, “you can’t”, “are you nuts”, “who do you think you are”, “you are too old”, “it’s not practical”, “you don’t have any money”…in reality those voices are only a reflection of me, those voices are my voices and so I changed them. To do so, required letting go.
 
Continued in (Part 2)…