It was Spring and my insides were aching for something new and churning for change, but I had few words then, to describe what I was about to experience. Externally I was keeping it together, but on the inside I was living a half-life and few would have guessed at what was really happening. I wasn’t about to share with others what I was going through, though the facade started cracking and increasingly, I couldn’t make sense of the grief and pain that enveloped me.
The “thing” about being in the midst of change is that we have no idea what’s going to come next, especially when who we are is changing, more than the people, places and things around us.
When I started that journey through my seasons, I saw a healer and intuitive who told me something which I still cherish: If there’s something or someone we don’t have, their absence is not always something to fix; When I arrived here in this life I was given everything I needed and if I didn’t have some things, it’s because I already had them in another form. I spent a lot of time thinking about that over the summer, though as it applied to a totally different situation.
How much time did I spend trying to fix the way things were with a focus on what others weren’t rather than on what I had that would get me through it?
I didn’t have to fix a situation, but how I was being about and through it. It’s a hard pill to swallow after being physically violated where others shamed me afterwards, in the court of public opinion. I was determined to hold onto the idea that I was right to feel upset and entitled to reparations to restore my spirit, because I did nothing wrong and didn’t deserve what was happening. The lack of restitution was excruciating but that’s the thing about life: it rarely unfolds as we expect.
It was toward the end of that time when I spent the morning with a friend, hiking around the trails near their house and soaking in all that healing green.
I had an appointment at a Float Spa nearby that afternoon so I was grateful to be outside in such a beautiful space beforehand, to calm my nerves.
I arrived early and the staff let me into the room where I had a chance to center myself and ease into the experience.
I felt my mind drift after settling into the water, as it became impossible for me to tell where the water began and my physical body ended.
I envisioned standing on a cliff, overlooking dense forest where I was a bird flying through the sky feeling pure joy and as soon as I became aware of the wind beneath its wings, I became the wind rustling through the trees below, where my awareness once again changed so that I was the leaf feeling the branches I was attached to sway and the roots of the tree I was part of, dig deep into the Earth. Once my awareness of the roots in the ground shifted, I became the layers of dirt and dense Earth that I as a tree sunk deep into, feeling the moisture I held in different capacities. Then I became the water droplet evaporating up from the ground and moving through the air where I became the clouds over the expanse of forest and nearby ocean. I then became a water droplet as rain, that once again sank down into the Earth. It was around that time where I left that meditative state, my body feeling the moving water against my skin and bringing back my awareness.
I had theoretical knowledge, but experiencing it so powerfully was new. I left that day with greater awareness of how connected everything was and it also gave more meaning to the words of A Course in Miracles, “There’s another way of looking at this. I can see peace instead of this.”
I saw a heart on the pavement after the appointment as if confirming that my experience was an expression of love meant to heal.
Over and over, I repeated those words to myself, understanding that it was where everything needed to begin again: There’s another way of looking at this. I can see peace. I have everything I need.
It felt like a breath of fresh air because I no longer had to fix anything and I had everything I needed. I could focus on cultivating what I had, rather than what I “should” have and fixing why I didn’t have it. It meant that I could begin to forgive.
There are few greater freedoms than in that awareness, alongside the hearts.
❤
Cheryl Costello
The Finding Hearts Project 