I love models, maps, and metaphors! I enjoy visualizing life's journey in different ways. As a PATH - thru the woods, by the river, into the cave - on the way 'home'. Or as a STAIRCASE taking one step at a time - or leaping up 3 steps and perhaps falling down :(
Or as a SPIRAL with opportunities to learn and re-learn at different curves on it, but generally moving (plus slipping/sliding) onward and upward.
I forgot about 'the spiral' the other day when I had that brief illumination about taking the next step into Eccentric Cronedom.
I speculated that I could/should find inner peace by stepping away from the fray of worldly chaos - away from the predictable agonies of being human. Fat chance! It is quite clear that I STILL have to choose which people and problems I will give energy to...which will feed my soul and fulfill my destiny. And some of those choices will be stressful and difficult...not peaceful. So much for my retiring into serene nunhood.
And I know better than to imagine that life is an orderly (if invisible) progression of steps into authentic adulthood or wise Cronedom! It seems, rather, to be a series of opposites: knowing and not-knowing, thinking and not-thinking...living the outer life, living the inner life, embracing the ambiguity of living both.
Maybe being an eccentric crone is a crazy multi-leveled state...that one could experience with considerable amusement.
I still rather like the spiral model. You slide up into some new stage of consciousness...feel enlightened and wiser but before you know it you 'go back to sleep'...and months or years later you have to learn the same old thing again. Each time you may 'get it' more clearly...until that knowledge is in your bones.
But none of those models fits me today. Right now I see myself as just BEING in the center of a CIRCLE..aware of all the somewhat cyclical milestones of my journey, and revisiting them or reflecting on them as necessary...but staying quiet in the center...not consciously traveling anywhere...being there...where part of me always was!
I'm not a Buddhist, but I love what Buddhist nun Pema Chodron said about retreating from outward distractions: "You quickly learn that distractions are not just phone calls and emails and outer phenomena. Our own mind, and our longings, and our cravings, and our fantasies and everything are also major distractions. And, as time goes on, and you're feeding it less ... You begin to sink deeper into the undistracted state. And then you begin to realize that life is always pulling you away from being fully present."
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