The Pain and the Promise

One year it was Kate Rusby, another Luke Concannon and another Ed Sheeran. This year it was Joshua Hyslop and his album In Deepest Blue. Every year it has been music that has reconnected me to myself during our summer holiday.

Each time I remember things that I commit to never forgetting again. And yet each year I realize again that I forgot. Things really about the heart. About simple presence, vulnerability, feeling.

On holiday I realize how much I need to decompress. Decompress from the doingness, the digital and the drive. Things I am not aware of being compressed by when I’m in them, like the fish in water.

Things normally crack around day three. This year my insights were in particular around how much it asks of us to be in a bridging role in this Great Transition. Somehow I imagine it must be easier to either unconsciously be in the old system or to be opting fully for a radical alternative outside the current system.

I was realizing and feeling how much pain I hold in that bridging role, around all the compromises we consciously make as we attempt to straddle two worlds, finding a way to channel the energy and attention of a world that is dying into a world that is just being born. Walking round the supermarket I got depressed at humanity’s stupidity as we eat ourselves to an early and often painful death, destroying the ecologies of other species in the process. Sometimes I really wonder if all our efforts aren’t just vain attempts to make ourselves feel good.

I was reminded of the great compassion we need with each other as our shadows are triggered on the paths of our passion. We know we need to heal ourselves to create the healing in the world we so crave. I feel the pain of the world and yet park it in order to focus on building the future. Yet it’s important to take the space to connect regularly to that pain and let it flow through. Otherwise it builds up and becomes increasingly hard to access.

It’s so important to be kind to ourselves and our bodies, as well as to each other. Those of us who are in clear space need to help others who are temporarily out of balance to ground and reconnect. We all go through the cycles and need to learn to support each other as we can – and know that we all have ups and downs.

Fulfilling the promise and potential of our higher selves requires us to move through the pain we hold. The path is indeed the way. We never arrive. We just spiral on through plateaus of relative flow and uncomfortable rapids of transformation. If we can remember that of ourselves and others, we’ll have a greater chance of more gracefully birthing the world we’re working for.

Notes

1. A few years ago I wrote a book called The Pain and the Promise which went into this process in detail. I never had the bandwidth to get it published but I do have a recent draft with comments from the potential publisher (Russ Volckmann actually who just passed away, which is a great loss), and would be happy to send it to anyone interested.
2. I’m also really enjoying a great book by Penny Kelly called Getting Well Again, Naturally, which is a strong reminder of the the discipline we need to have in making the lifestyle choices we make – with some surprising but very resonant advice.

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