The letting go into the flow

It’s funny the things that tip you over an edge that you didn’t even realise was there.

A few days before the Sark retreat, which was a week before we started social distancing, which was a few days before lock-down (funny how dates have lost all significance, I just think of life in chunks now, this chunk before this happened and that chunk before that happened…) the boiler overheated and boiling hot water burst through the system and caused some hot water pipes to split. 

There we were, the boys and I eating  breakfast, aware of Ewan moving upstairs when all of a sudden there was a tremendous noise and steam coming down the stairs and through the ceiling in the hallway, closely followed by a whole heap of water pouring out too. This set the smoke alarms off and all this, the noise, the steam and the water before 7.30am on a Wednesday morning. 

A few hours later, the plumber trying to fix the problem, the water switched off, the last of the water now trickling  down one of the kitchen’s walls, and stuff everywhere, I escaped into our small wing to make a cup of tea and try and get some peace. Here I opened the door to one of the cupboards to get a cup only to find myself staring at a mouse. I don’t think I have moved so quickly in my life!

I leapt onto the sofa and screamed for Ewan. A mouse! Our lodger who stays in the wing from time to time had told us only days earlier that she thought she’d heard mice. We had tentatively placed some humane traps in the wing, hopeful that she was confusing the noise of mice, for the noise of seagulls on the roof. But alas not. We really did have mice. This on top of the ants which move in each equinox, twice a year, for a few weeks of distraction, before they totter off again.

 There was a lesson in all this though, one of preparing us for what lay ahead, with the ability to live within chaos (and me with my OCD for cleaning!) and go with the flow. Also, to reflect on killing, which makes me so uncomfortable with the whole non-harming, ahimsa thing, and having to face this, and embrace the aspect of self that is OK with killing, when it comes to not having mice and ants living in the cottage, and yet knowing that ideally I’d live to find a way to live harmoniously. 

This followed a few days later by the Sark retreat, which was wonderful in its usual way, Sark holds us so gently and energises us and makes us feel whole again. Yet this retreat challenged a little by all the last minute cancellations, as people quite understandably explored what felt right for them with the Coronavirus looming over us, and the fear so great. If ever there is a time to respect other’s decisions then it is now, only we can ever know what feels right for us, our families and our interaction with society – it’s a shame that our opinion is challenged though. 

The fear felt very real that first night, it was hanging in the yoga room, and yet this eased enormously as the weekend continued and we connected increasingly so with the heart and the self, deep inside, and the sense that ultimately, on some level we might never truly understand, all is well. That was, until the Sunday morning and the preparations to return to Guernsey and the fear returned as word came that we might have school closures and lock down ahead. We, as a family, decided to stay on, to make the most of the freedom of Sark and I’m delighted we did. 

Back home, life was a different normal, both boys had runny noses so no school, and just as I was about to teach the Friday morning class, word came that the schools were closing so with that the decision was made. It was time to adjust. I couldn’t face the thought of not teaching at all, I wondered how that might affect my sanity, being that teaching yoga is one of my favourite things in the whole wide world, beyond my family and swimming and lying in a bath. So I adjusted and went online and hoped that this may help others as much as it might help me, to just keep going.

All was well. The home schooling. The steep learning curve of how to run online classes and make people aware that they are happening. The embracing of the fear of IT and doing it anyway. The adjusting to life lived mainly at home and more time with the children without parental help, which is lovely on the one hand and slightly maddening on the other. The getting used to never having quite what you need in the house and no longer being able to just nip to the shops. Longing for a swim at the Grande Mare but knowing that summer is not far away and more sea swimming ahead, and yet it’s not quite the same.

It was all going OK. I was doing OK. A few wobbles. Shopping has become uncomfortable, not for me the risk of contracting Covid-19 but the manner in which people are so edgy and some friendly and others just really unpleasant. Then the time away from home and the exercising being OK, the children needing to run off some steam, but should we be on the beach, but knowing we might all go mad otherwise without the sea energy cleansing us. Not being able to see my parents and explaining to the children the reason they can’t see Ganny and Baba either (“will we have the bug for long” my 3-year old asked, which almost broke my heart. “It’s not you sweetie”, I tried to explain, “there’s nothing wrong with you…”).

The sleep deprivation and wilful moments continue anon with the 3-year old, while the 6-year old is enjoying the break from school and trying to get him to do any school work is tough, but it’s like this normally, we’re used to it. This all carries on. The washing, the cleaning, the shopping, the endless requests for snacks, the endless tidying of the house (why do we bother?). It’s all just going on. But there’s something going on out there too. In the bigger sphere, beyond our cottage that had me a little edgy on Saturday.

I awoke that morning with an underlying feeling of anxiety, which comes only occasionally, when something is shifting and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Even a swim in the sea wouldn’t clear it, so I concluded that it must be in the collective, that others would likely be feeling the same. So I decided I would teach an impromptu short class because if there’s one thing I need when I feel like this, it’s yoga!

Before then I had a class by zoom with my teacher, which was stressful initially because the WIFI kept dropping out, but we found a way, using my phone, which worked. And it was reassuring and beautiful and eased some of the agitation, as we dropped into the breath and into the idea of contentment, that is neither happiness or sadness but something really rather different. This was a spin though, the practice itself affected me, made me think about things differently. The idea that we should find contentment in everything, is this part of the lesson, the awakening, the shift occurring?

I’m pretty sure it is, because as if to test it, I was forced only a few hours later to see if I could find contentment when things didn’t go the way I intended. During the impromptu class that I desperately wanted to teach, to connect with others and come together energetically, the WIFI kept dropping out making me realise that I had no control over anything, not the WIFI certainly and therefore not the ability to teach either.

This saddened me and tipped me to an edge. If there’s one thing that triggers me it is IT and it is feeling out of control with it. My response is always to get angry at myself for not understanding the world of IT better, and yet I know too that this is such an old pattern that it is laughable, as it achieves nothing. But triggered I was anyway. I desperately searched my mind for another way, how could I overcome this obstacle of the WIFI dropping out all the time. There was some grasping that’s for sure, I just couldn’t let it go, there had to be a way. 

But this was just the test of the awakening that we are all being forced to go through. The patterns are popping up left, right and centre. We are being encouraged to let go, and let go all over again. Let go of the life we were living, let go of the idea of the life we want to be living, let go of dreams, let go of plans, let go of knowing what lies ahead, let go of any sense of being in control of our destiny and our day to day reality.

It wasn’t until later though, that I saw the bigger picture and recognised what I had been doing. That in my effort to maintain some semblance of normality and in my quest to do what I felt I could to help people, and to help myself in the process, I was holding on very tightly to the idea of teaching, having found a way to continue doing this. The trouble was I was holding on too tightly, as if my very happiness depended on it, and in the process, when things didn’t go my way, like with the WIFI, I was suffering.

There is only one way and that is to go with the flow of things. I learned this with both of my boys’ births. There is no other way, because to try and push against the flow is just futile and exhausting. And yet letting go into the flow of things is always so tricky, because it involved a surrendering of everything that’s been and a trust that the flow will take us where we need to go instead. I’ve no idea why we doubt this though, because where else can it take us?

Yet it wasn’t this that caused me to lose it, not really. It was the bit that led me to the edge so that later I might see my patterns more clearly, of the pattern I create around not feeling in control and not getting my own way. The manner in which this allows me to buy into feelings of hopelessness and helplessness and gives rise to a momentary depression.

It also wasn’t my youngest’s manic behaviour that found him uncontrollable and E and I resigned to it, triggered in our own ways, it wasn’t even realising that I had given the humous I had intended to eat for dinner away to my Mum in error and that I couldn’t just nip to the shop to buy a new one, it wasn’t even the weather and the fact I was so cold because this really does feel like the never ending winter. If truth be told it was the bath. Yes, the bath.

The bath tipped me over an edge that everything else had helped prod me towards the moment where I just gave up and just felt desperately sorry for myself! I wanted a bath! More than anything else. I’m sorry that this makes me sound really selfish when people are dying and others are making huge sacrifices to look after those in hospital, and there are those putting themselves on the front line to serve us in shops and make sure that we don’t go hungry (I do get a lump in my throat every time I thank them when I have finished my shopping). 

But the truth is, sometimes it’s the little things. I love a bath. I love lying in the bath reading a book, lying in the bath to warm up after a swim,  lying in the bath with the children at the end of the day, just lying in a bath to process things. It was like the final straw and I can’t even really blame it on Coronavirus, other than the fact the plumber needs some parts to re-install it post flood, and the virus has complicated that. It’s just the simple fact that having a bath makes me feel better and I really miss it.

It was this that caused me to finally succumb to all the holding of, of not letting go of what had been and of trying to control things. It was the little old bath that helped me to release all that I had been unable to release and to see more clearly patterns that no longer served me. Phew. 

But I know this is not just about me and it is for this reason that I am sharing. I am aware that we are all going through this. We are all being triggered and asked to dig deeper and see more clearly that which we no longer need. We are all feeling the loss of the life we lived, all missing something, however small and seemingly insignificant. We are right in it. In the shift. Where it is desperately uncomfortable as the old has to drop away and yet we don’t know where we are headed or what the new life might offer us in terms of security and protection.

It’s like the leap of faith, we are all being asked to make. Without any future certainty. It’s scary, and yet those of us who have leapt previously, know that it is always lighter on the other side. But the process, the surrendering is always messy and there will always come a tipping point that will cause us to – finally – surrender into it. 

I don’t know where it is all going, or when I will next get a bath, or whether I will be able to continue teaching yoga online with the WIFI as it currently is, but today I’m OK with that. Today I feel as I have weathered a storm and come through the other side, less attached to trying to control the outcome or control which direction life may unfold. Because none of us are in control and more fool us for thinking – ever thinking – that we are.

This is a time to stay strong in our faith that everything happens for a reason, that we need to just keep on keeping on with the being, come what may. That it is OK to feel whatever we are feeling, to embrace all the range of emotions as they move through us because this too is part of the collective awakening. There is a bigger picture. We are not in this alone. We each have a role to play, and we will find a way. It is in our hearts. We already know this.

My beautiful friend sent me this poem today that is absolutely appropriate:

Always we hope

Someone else has the answer…

At the center of your being

You have the answer,

You know who you are

And you know what you want.

There is no need

To run outside

For better seeing.

Nor to peer from a window.

Rather abide at the center of your being;

For the more you leave it, the less you learn.

Search your heart

And see

The way to do

Is to be.

-       Lao Tzu