Monday, September 23, 2013

BEST IF USED BY

It just occurred to me that I do not have a best if used by date.

This has been a year filled with doctors, tests, medical procedures, and surgeries. And it isn’t over yet. The “big one” has yet to occur. Many people around me have interpreted these physical happenings as a bi-product of my advancing age.

Really?

Alright, there may be some truth to that. The pervasive tribal belief is that the older we get the more ailments we endure. But it is for sure a relative truth. If there has ever been a person that has aged with a minimum of physical maladies then the potential is there for us all. Yes, I know about genetics and all of that. And I repeat that the potential is there for all of us. And despite current appearances that potential is here for me.

I do not view this year of repetitive challenge as a necessary effect of age or as some kind of metaphysical punishment. I am grateful to dwell for the most part in a peaceful internal relationship to what has been going on. It has awakened me to a more vital awareness of what I still feel compelled to accomplish during this particular sojourn in time and space reality. I have gotten a clearer glimpse of an impending expiration date, and that has proven to be a blessing and not a curse. Procrastination takes on a different tenor when viewed against a life threatening diagnosis. I actually feel more vitality and aliveness as a result of cancer, not less. If I viewed something such as a bucket list with incredulity before I find it far more appealing and relatable now. In my youth I couldn’t conceive of time as a limitation. I never entertained the possibility that my body wouldn’t keep up with what my inner-adventurer wanted to pursue. And now a different side of my humanity is presenting itself, and I am forced by circumstance to review and reframe my former and less inclusive paradigm.

I guess I am indeed aging. I have no need to deny that. I cannot physically do everything I was once able to do. Gravity has rearranged things, and things that once did one thing, now do something quite differently, if they are doing anything at all. Hmm.

And, I do not have a best if used by date.

I sometimes find my mind drifting to what I haven’t achieved or accomplished, and I ponder listlessly if many of my dreams have passed me by. It is a rich and revealing inquiry when I have the courage to face it and not shut it down in self preservation and defense. It is fairly certain at this point that I will never dance on Broadway or win an Academy Award. I will not naturally father a child, and will most likely not parent at all. My twenty-eight inch waist is probably history, and I have made friends with the spectacles that now sit upon my nose. Gray is the new brown, and craggy is the new smooth. I no longer grab opportunities to check myself in reflective surfaces, and am far less concerned with physical appearance and the current fashion trends.

But for everything lost there are multiples to be gained. I am more patient, compassionate, expansive, and tender than at any time during my lean and more flexible years. Though my eyesight is waning, my insight is sharpening and my vision is ever more spacious and clear. I have moments when true wisdom seems to be replacing my once urgent ingenuity, and when maturity is trumping my past eagerness and ambition.

And yet I know I am far from over. I realize that I have much more to offer life than I ever have before. My hunger to be of authentic service is stronger and more passionate than when I was in a more self-fulfilling career. While I thought I would be at a certain stature by this point in my incarnation, I am certain that I am in the flow of a far greater Intelligence that is moving me forward and setting me free to truly be what I came to this earth to be.

It’s not too late. It really is never too late. I am not out to pasture, and I have no best if used by date. My current medical challenges are proving to be great spiritual opportunities. They have temporarily slowed me down, and I am allowing that loss of velocity to center and to ground me. To clarify what is most essential and authentic to me. I am opening and flowering, even at this ripe old age. There are still dreams to be dreamed and to be fulfilled, and they are now more germane to who I am and to what I came here to express. They are different dreams for sure. They are less self-centered and much more Soulful in their origin. And they are mostly dreams that are fulfilled within my now awakened moments. They are not time or physically dependent. They are states of being that synch with my purpose and vibrate with my passion.

I have no best if used by date. In fact, I am best used when I detach from time and mind and expectation and evaluation all together. I really am at my best now. Slower, wiser, scarred, be-speckled, gray haired and all.

www.taylorestevens.com

Thursday, September 12, 2013

MY I MUST

As I begin to type these words I feel a pressure in my chest that I can easily identify. It is the impulse, the desire, the need, the pressure of the pent up passion of fully giving expression to what is most precious, vital, and sacred within me. I have had a deep and quenchless thirst for the Beloved my entire life. Though I have been sidetracked and hoodwinked countless times, life has for me always come back to this same wanting. It is indeed a tireless longing for the direct experience of my Source.

My late spiritual director once told me I expect too much from my spirituality. I will always love and respect her and yet that it is a point we never did agree on. While I thought I was here on this planet to do and to accomplish many things, my top priority has always come back to the mystical merging I know I am meant for. I spent too many years expecting not too much but far too little. Stories of long dead avatars are informative and fine, but I want my own inter-relationship. Way-showers are great for pointing the way, but no other person or intellectual map can replace the intimate encounter I know is my birthright. Rilke invited his students to find their “I must” in life, and then to pursue it relentlessly. I know what “my must” is. I have always known what my I must is. It is a life rooted in my Source, and a subsequent expression that shines forth into all my encounters and activities. My I must is not a thing I do, but neither is it devoid of it. Awakened activity is a powerful force. It is a calling When I do from my True sense of Being I am unstoppable.

And so we are collectively stepping through an enormous energetic portal at this time in our collective evolution. I feel it. I think we all feel it. An old age has ended, and a new one is being birthed. Some of us will go through this birth consciously, and some will remain yet longer in the trance. I know I was born for this time. I know I was born to be freed from the story of unworthiness, shame, addiction, depression, and self-aversion. I know my transcendence is up to me yet it is not for me alone. Self aversion is very self absorbing. Fearful withholding only seems to be the effect of depression. It is actually the cause. Being a prisoner in my own programming was the real hell, though I was taught hell was a God-ordered punishment after death. Being locked in my own limiting beliefs, unable to give freely the love I was meant to give, WAS hell. It was the real punishment. It had nothing to do with a God sentence. It was completely self-induced. I was not living on purpose and the result was a level of suffering that could not be denied or endured. I have a strong human threshold for pain, but the drive of my Soul is far stronger.

The gig is up. I know I can no longer hide in fear. I can no longer stay in that old sad story of the powerless and pitiful separate me. I can no longer pretend to be less than I incarnated to be. I am here to shine, to serve, to let my life be a story of overcoming and transcendence. And I am here to uplift you as well. As I come to know more fully my own Sourced splendor I come to know yours as well. And when you forget who and what you are I am here to be a loving reminder. I am here to shine my Light into your temporary darkness. I will compassionately listen to your habitual self-stories, but I will not for a moment believe them. You and I have suffered long enough. The world has suffered long enough. And it’s beyond time to stop billing suffering as the will of God. Source could never will us to suffer or it would be suicidal. Source is the end of suffering. The end of suffering is Its I Must.

I am done playing small for fear of being somehow exposed or misunderstood. My Source is greater than any ego story. This is the time for a mass spiritual awakening, and I am devoted to playing my part in this great myth of illumination. I feel myself typing faster and faster and I feel the pressure in my chest becoming words and ideas and creative expression and inspiration. The velocity of “my I must” is moving me forward filling me up. Whatever else I may actively do during this incarnation I devote myself first to enlightened Beingness. I dedicate myself to being a force for peace and compassion. If I begin to slide back into the old habitual story I will stop and I will reconnect to my Soul’s purpose here on earth. I will remember that I am here for something much bigger than myself. I will synch back into my I must, and I know my vision will clear and my mission will sharpen. I must be who and what I came here to be. I must shine the Light of awareness and the frequency of love into all of my moments, into all of my interactions, into all my doingness.

The time has come to fully become my I must. And there is no turning back.

www.taylorestevens.com

Thursday, September 5, 2013

THE BLESSING WITHIN THE MESS

To call me anal retentive is truly like calling the pope Catholic.

I was reared in an extremely orderly and tidy home environment. Cleanliness was not only a virtue, it was a law. It is not uncommon for people that are brought up in such strictures to become the exact opposite when they are finally free to do so. That was not and is not the case with me. I long ago let go of the self judgment relative to my desire for cleanliness and order. Though I am still frequently criticized for it, it has served me in ways that I am truly grateful for. I create a pleasing and inviting home for myself, my husband, and those who visit us. I pay attention to my personal appearance and consciously cultivate my sense of the esthetic. My sometimes rampant creativity is balanced by my need for order and what I perceive as rightness.

It took me a long time and a lot of internal work to realize that my need for external order would not serve me in terms of my emotional landscape. I exhausted myself in trying to apply the same standards to my withinness that I so capably used for my external environment. The admonition “as within so without” became a living reality that first had to be examined and then appropriately reversed. The programming of my upbringing became stunningly clear; if the homestead needed to be orderly and tidy the emotional landscape had to be immaculate and at all times controllable. This led to years of suppression and active addiction. The woundedness kept calling for attention while I continued fighting to keep it all under control. I tried to look good at any cost. It was like cleaning house by throwing everything into a closet and then slamming the door. I stuffed my internal closet so full that when one a day a tiny crack was opened, years of unintegrated feeling come gushing out. It was time to finally face what I so feared to face.

There is nothing tidy about emotional healing.

There is nothing orderly about spiritual awakening.

Trying to look perfect, stable, and oh-so spiritual on the outside does nothing to authenticate the internal experience of being fully human.

We are not meant to be tidy, orderly, and in control. We are meant to be whole. Painting yourself with pretty pink paint does nothing to answer and integrate the stifled cries of your hurting heart. The blessing isn’t in the suppression. It’s in the mess. It’s deep in the closet that you have been consistently slamming the door shut on. It’s in the center of the feelings you have tried so hard not to feel. It’s beneath the persona that only thinly veils what is going on underneath. It is so often only we who are fooled.

Cancer has come screaming out of the closet and there is nothing I can do to control it. No matter how much I scrub the floors and polish the mirrors I still have cancer. No matter how many well meaning people throw pink paint upon me the diagnosis is still there. There is nothing orderly or tidy about cancer. And there is nothing tidy or orderly about the way I am moving through it.

And so messiness is the order of the day. I am vigilant about what is arising and moving within me, and I am releasing the need to categorize or to make sense out of it. I am committed to staying present with every aspect of this adventure. I am rejecting none of it. I am giving myself space from those that just can’t bare the messiness of my present condition. I am holding to the Truth that is larger than my diagnosis, and I am also allowing the Source of that Truth to contain both the relative and the absolute of this situation. It is within the both/and that more of me will be revealed.

I am not going to miss one iota of the blessing that I know is contained within this experience. I know the blessing is not to be found in denial or suppression. It isn’t for me only a matter of making this medically go away. My blessing is deep within the messiness of this experience, and I am wading in and feeling about within it. It is from the depth of the fear, the uncertainty, the emotional chaos, and the internal messiness that I know an enormous blessing is being born. And so for once I am letting the disorder simply be. No denial. No suppression. No pink paint. No dissociative truisms. Just the wholeness of letting myself be fully and freely and sometimes messily me.

www.taylorestevens.com