Tonight I sit to write, and yet I cannot. I wait, I am ready, but the words don’t come. I want to write of what has come before, the moonlit labyrinth I have walked these past few months, but everything is labored. I look for inspiration from drafts started and unfinished waiting in my blog’s queue—so many of them! So many good ideas, half ideas, begun and then abandoned. Why do I leave them unattended? Why do I cut myself off?
I have an issue in my fifth chakra: my thyroid isn’t working. Perhaps this is caused by some part of myself—an autoimmune disease, a cellular civil war. Why am I doing this to myself? So I research and learn, and here is what I find: the fifth chakra has to do with communication, self-expression, and creativity. I have a problem in this area. I need to express myself more fully.
It’s true, I realize. I think of my backlog of drafts: I write things and later deem them too wild to let out into the world. The tone’s not right, too impassioned, too naive. So I reveal myself, but only in bits and pieces, hints and suggestions, concealed by layers of costume.
Why do I hesitate? I have an image of myself, seeing myself as I think others do. In circles that have a culture similar to that of my hometown, conservative and concrete, I seem eccentric, an odd-ball, a hippie. But the world’s a lot bigger now, my world’s a lot bigger now, and I am mainstream in comparison. So why can’t I widen my view?
I know I’m not alone. The more I talk to people about this, the more I learn other people grew up feeling strange and different, too. Others seem to have drawn the same conclusion that I am now drawing, that those feelings of isolation are actually felt by so many others, that this is a common experience.
This reminds me of a Buddhist concept I’ve been reading about recently, that much of our suffering is caused by the illusion of our separateness. We feel alone, unique, and isolated, which saddens us, when in fact we are all connected, children from the same source. I imagine a vast field of sunflowers—this flower slightly taller, that one slightly bent—but all sunflowers just the same, all growing from the same dark earth, all reaching toward the same bright sky.
Sometimes my intuition speaks to my thinking mind with visual images that sprout up among my thoughts—colors and light illuminated against an endless string of words. When I see these images in my mind’s eye, they seem so strong to me, so filled with authoritative wisdom, commanding my attention and agreement. This is the way it is. When I fell in overwhelming love with my husband, I saw such an image over and over again: I could see us standing side by side—simultaneously, confidently, joyously joining hands. The word that came attached to the image was partnership, and it conveyed feelings of equality and commitment. My rational mind recognized this as deep truth and acted accordingly.
Now I see a new visual image, which has to do with just me. I am spinning, spinning, my arms partially outstretched, my palms facing down, my head looking downward. I am focused internally, with my eyes closed. I shut out the outside world, closing myself off from the judgements of others. I must exert force to spin while keeping the outer world separate. I am able to express myself, but only at the expense of my energy. Soon though, my head begins to lift, until finally my face is gazing upward, my eyes now fully open. My arms are fully extended now, palms pointing upward toward the sky. There is a joy I feel that is stronger than the pull toward personal expression; I am still expressing myself, but now it is effortless and flows from an endless source. I feel a sense of union, a sense of release, a sense of peace.
A word comes attached to this image: trust. I recognize this as truth, and will do my best to act accordingly.
© Amy Daniewicz
Amy Daniewicz 