WHEN YOUR WORLD IS BUFFETING

There are times when a bolt of lightning strikes and your world seems to fall apart, when the shock waves of an unexpected circumstance render you helpless (at least temporarily), when the foundation of your reality shakes and threatens to take you down. Like when you’re suddenly faced with the loss of a job, or the loss of a loved one, or the loss of your legs, or the loss of a home. And something ancient is activated inside you — the ghost of long-gone childhood abandonments, the karmic survival patterns in your genetic coding, the unwelcome sense of being in the desert without water or being at sea and buffeted by the waves crashing all around you.

And so you have to dig deep to taste the slipstream of goodness, you have to dig deep to rest in the foundation of being-ness, you have to hold your nerve in the midst of the storm. When your world is buffeted, you are invited to suspend all panic and all victim-hood, you are invited to not give any allegiance to grievances or judgments or conclusions about how bad life is or how bad you are. And instead to stand as openness, to remain in your center, to pause in an inner stillness — even when everything is swirling within and around you.

What a task this is! What a seemingly unreachable demand on yourself! So much easier (but more painful) to collapse and deflate and resign yourself to perceived punishment. And yet — something deep within calls you, an inner fire that will not be extinguished, the relentless will to be alive and to thrive, just like the fragile and yet oh-so tenacious flower growing in the crack in the cement.

My friend, stand still within yourself and wait for the waves to pass. Take action if that is what is called for, step into that which stretches you and discover a greater power than what the mind can conceive.

Perhaps if you stop flapping about, the waves will carry you to a new shore.

(image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay)