Be watchful when the moon is full

Full Moon - looked for and found by me on 19th March 2011

Search the Darkness

Rumi 

Translated by  Kabir Helminski

Sit with your friends; don't go back to sleep.
Don't sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.

Surge like an ocean,
don't scatter yourself like a storm.

Life's waters flow from darkness.
Search the darkness, don't run from it.

Night travelers are full of light,
and you are, too; don't leave this companionship.

Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,
don't slip into the dirt like quicksilver.

The moon appears for night travelers,
be watchful when the moon is full.

 ---------------

I've been feeling very sorry for myself indeed just lately. When I went out to look at the full moon last weekend I wanted a flash of inspiration - something that would enable me to move forward. It was almost the eve of spring and I wanted to feel that sense of hope and wonder. Nothing! 

I am being my own worst enemy of late, preventing myself from living fully, just when I had been wakening again to life's wonder. There is still much going on in our lives, there having been a few years of major and minor happenings that I have been just swallowing down, and the effects started to show up in my health big time, just after I came home from China. Perhaps it started when I was there.

Due to my habitual method of dealing with emotional distress and exhaustion, I just carried on as normal, thinking that I could push through it as I always do. The difference was that this time, thanks to a really helpful counsellor, I was at a point where I just wasn't prepared to sacrifice parts of myself any longer. I could carry on in the same way but I was heading for a big fall healthwise and needed to stop.

The stopping has been harder than the carrying on. Hence my emotional and creative shut down. It's like a punishment for not measuring up. I don't stop, that's not what I do. I'm like a fish out of water. The danger is that whilst I am being so hard on myself, there is no room for growth and change to take place. The same patterns will be repeated.

It was only today when I found this conversation between Pema Chodron and Alice Walker that some light began to shine on where and why I am stuck. 

Pema Chödrön: There is a kind of unstuckness that starts to happen. You develop lovingkindness and compassion for this self that is stuck, which is called maitri. And since you have a sense of all the other sentient beings stuck just like you, it also awakens compassion.

Alice Walker: I remember the day I really got it that we’re not connected as human beings because of our perfection, but because of our flaws. That was such a relief.

Pema Chödrön: Rumi wrote a poem called "Night Travelers," It's about how all the darkness of human beings is a shared thing from the beginning of time, and how understanding that opens up your heart and opens up your world. You begin to think bigger. Rather than depressing you, it makes you feel part of the whole.

So I wrote a post and a bit of a poem here today, and with both am being as honest and as compassionate with myself as I can be. Although today I know that I can become unstuck again, I also know that there is a long way to go. As ever, I continue to revisit these lessons.

The moon sits above my house tonight.

  Her silent, solemn gaze,

Reflects the light back to us here on earth. 

I am here below, silent also.

Seeking answers from her.

Is there still hope? 

Are there still dreams worth dreaming?

No sudden answers come.

Just a secret, silent something,

Lodges in the crack in my stagnant heart.

Where a stinking pool of shame, before had gathered,

To shut it down.

 Something so tiny it could go unnoticed,

But if found could be immense.