On Pouring Yourself Out (Blog #799)

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Last night I said I was going to finish cleaning my friend’s house before I went to bed if it hair-lipped the king. Well, I lied. Despite my best intentions, it didn’t happen. (I’m not sure if this means the king was hair-lipped or not.) Instead, I ended up spending time with my friend Justin. He came over to help me lift something heavy, and then we chatted until three-thirty in the morning. After he left, I posted the blog (which I’d written earlier in the evening), then promptly passed out.

Today I’ve been in a tither, since I’ve got a lot to do–errands to run, a dance lesson to teach, etc. This morning after eating breakfast, I finished cleaning the kitchen then vacuumed and mopped the floors. Phew. The good news is that I thought it would take three hours to get all this done, but it only took two. This gives me time to blog now (if I keep it quick). The bad news is that as I’m sitting here typing, I’m remembering some of the spots I forgot to clean. The air vent return, for example. Still, since cleaning could go on forever and ever (Amen), at some point you’ve got to be done.

I’m so done.

A phrase on my mind lately has been “nature abhors a vacuum.” (After cleaning for the last three days, so do I.) The idea behind this statement is that where there’s an empty space, Something wants to fill it. In terms of my personal, physical experience, this Something is often me. I’ll move into a new home with a bare room and immediately go shopping. My married friends tell me that when they have an empty space in their schedule, their spouse is usually the one to fill it for them. The car needs washing. The lawn needs mowing.

Yes, something there is that doesn’t love a void.

The other side of this idea–nature abhors a vacuum–is that you can’t put something where something else already is. That is, in order for nature to fill in or fill up a vacuum, there must first BE a vacuum–an empty space. Said another way, you can’t fill a cup that’s already full.

While cleaning, I listened to a lecture that quoted the mystic Meister Eckhart–“To be full of things is to be empty of God; to be empty of things is to be full of God.” The idea here is that before God or The Divine can enter our lives, we must divest ourselves of–well–ourselves. Indeed, we must empty ourselves of even the desire for God. Why? Because, according to Eckhart, even our purest desire keeps our cup full. In other words, our desire for God takes up that very space we’re asking God to fill.

And so we must pour ourselves out.

This letting go of desire, I imagine, is one of the hardest tasks any of us could ever undertake. How do you stop desiring? And if you desire to stop desiring, isn’t that desiring too? I don’t pretend to have the answer. And yet more and more this sounds like wisdom to me. Having imposed my will on my life and body in a number of areas (health, fitness, work), I know that you can only do things Your Way for so long before everything in you cries uncle. Having struggled with a number of health challenges the last few years and having tried everything I could think of to heal (some of which strategies were successful, some of which weren’t), I know that at some point you have to Give It Up. Give up wanting to feel better. Give up wanting that job or recognition. Give up trying to be in control.

Caroline Myss says that surrender is the name of the game. This is the lesson of your fifth chakra, your throat chakra, your center of choice, and is imaged by Christ on the cross. It’s the surrendering of personal will to divine will. To the recognition that whatever’s going on down here on planet earth isn’t about your little life but is rather about Something Bigger, about Life Itself. I imagine one could spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to do this–to surrender, to let go, to give it up, to sacrifice what it is that you want for what it is that you’re being called to. To trust that if you’ll only pour yourself out, Something will fill you back up again with Itself and that your cup will indeed run over.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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More often than not, the truth is a monster. It gets in your face and makes you get honest. Sometimes the truth separates you from people you care about, if for no other reason than to bring you closer to yourself.

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On Symbols and Transformation (Blog #494)

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Today I have done nothing but eat, sleep, and read. I’ve read so much, my brain has turned to slush. I expect any minute now it will run out my ears and onto my shoulders. Even if it did, I’m too tired, too physically depleted to care. I’ve been wiped out all day, despite sleeping in this morning and taking a nap this afternoon.

My body is a mystery.

Currently it’s past midnight, and I’m on information overload. Earlier I finished a book on the meaning of symbols, and since then I’ve read a few chapters in a book about hypnosis and over a hundred pages in a six-hundred page book about alchemy and mysticism. Don’t ask me to intelligently summarize anything I’ve read today. Not that I haven’t learned anything, but it just hasn’t congealed yet. My inner perfectionist wishes I had instant understanding and recall of everything I read, but that’s simply not the way learning works for me. I need exposure and then application before understanding comes.

And sleep, I need sleep.

One thing I have learned–about symbols, specifically–is that they speak to both our conscious and subconscious minds. A simple as letters on a page or as complex as a mandala, symbols can range from the jewelry you put on each day to the dreams have each night, and are essentially forms of communication–a crown that denotes royalty, black clothes that indicate mourning, a red door that means “you’re welcome here.” And whereas some symbols have to be explained, others are automatically comprehended by the subconscious. For example, the four points of the cross stand for the four elements (fire and water, air and earth) or the four cardinal directions (north and south, east and west) of the physical world. So–among other things–the image of Christ on the cross is about going beyond all pairs of opposites. It’s about finding your center point, your immovable spot, your soul. But if you’re organically drawn to this image, no one has to tell you what it means. Part of you gets it.

The way I think about it, symbols CALL US to be something we CAN BE but aren’t currently. They’re like examples, seeds that are planted in our minds that, if properly tended to, can grow into the thing they stand for. Honestly, I’m not sure they work if they’re used logically and rationally and not mysteriously. Like, several years ago I bought a picture of a man dancing, then later bought a chandelier with several children dancing along the edges. I’m a dancer, of course, but it wasn’t about that. The IMAGES simply compelled me. They still do. Looking at them now, I know it’s because, deep down, I associate them with freedom. They communicate to my spirit (or rather, they communicate FROM my spirit) that there’s another way–a lighter, less encumbered way–to move about in this world.

I hope this makes sense. The point is that symbols have the power to awaken within us dormant energies or ways of being if used correctly. By correctly I mean that you have to personally identify with the symbol–it has to to you in some way, and no one else (including me) can tell you what a specific symbol means. If you look at the crucifix and want to vomit because you had a bad experience in Catholic school–well–find yourself another image. Or if dancers don’t give you a sense of peace and freedom but the beach does, go with that.

Put some sand on the back of your toilet. Hang a picture of the seashore on your wall.

The symbols that fascinate us are meant to transform us.

Lately I’ve been chewing on the idea that both symbols and the subconscious are powerful and capable forces. For years I’ve read about people who were “free” and wondered if I ever would be one of them. Internally, that is. But I’m learning to trust that just as I can read information, apply it, and watch it come together, I can also trust that I’m attracted to the symbols I’m attracted to for a reason; my life is coming together too. In other words, the symbols that fascinate us aren’t there to tease us (look what you can’t have); they’re there to transform us. Personally, I’m coming to respect them more and more. Because they work. I used to look at those dancers and think, Wouldn’t that be nice to be free? But now I think, Yes, it IS nice, this feeling of freedom. Sometimes it even comes so naturally, I think, Part of me has been a dancer all along.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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We all need to feel alive.

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