Dancing the Waves, A Day of Blue Skies

At Friday morning coffee time I announce to Pat that I am feeling grounded and expanded this morning, let us say feeling skillful in the various roles I have been playing of late, inside Sevenoaks Pathwork Center and elsewhere. There’s still lots up in the air, key decisions to be made, but I’m feeling engaged with the challenges and people involved in a healthy way.

Pat: I’m curious that you used the terms “roles” and “skills.” This is how you have defined yourself all through your life — by the roles you were playing, be they in business, organizations, church, school, or family — and skills — your sense of competence, or not, within those roles. The felt sense you are describing this morning sounds deeper than that.  Roles and skills seem somewhat mechanical and clinical. Maybe what you are experiencing is an increased capacity to relate. Relating to all of those around you in ways that you have not experienced before.

Gary: Maybe I am more comfortable in my own skin.  More self-aware and comfortable with who I am, not having to force or defend, more flexible, more able to roll with the flow of life, more able to engage spontaneously.

Pat: This seems like spiritual alignment. What you describe as skill could be effective action. Your sense of expansion could be non-separation from Source. Perhaps you are in right relationship with the unknown, with Mystery. You have clarity.

I’m glad to hear how this is feeling in you. In the beginning of your more intense work with Sevenoaks administration several years ago it seemed to be such a struggle for you. Now you seem to have grown to a place where you have the capacity to hold a lot that is unknown.

Gary: Thanks for the mirroring.  And I’m aware that in me this is all a felt sense, not a theory or mental description.

Pat: Yes, not an analysis of your brain!

Gary: From this new place I notice I do not have to rant. I can take things in. I can be wrong. I can be right.

Pat: It seems that in organizational matters you are always dancing to the edge of the abyss, dancing with the Mystery. Nice to have moments of clarity, fleeting as they often are.

Gary: Like surfboarding — being secure in insecurity — a kind of thrill, an experience of living on the edge. Not foolishy seeking the thrill, but being ready to ride the wave when it comes. Riding ever bigger waves, perhaps, and feeling the Life in them. Engaging the Life in them. And it is OK to crash without shame. I am not competing but living.

Feeling gratitude for a day of blue skies.