Getting Off The Train

I have returned to Canada from the Big Island of Hawaii, both of which I choose to call home.

It felt wonderful to leave the snow a couple of weeks ago and it feels great to have returned to green fields, sun and warm air. I can still wear my sandals outside. My husband states that he is amazed at the physical change in our outside environment. I, on the other hand, am not. I know that change happens in a breath and that it takes only a bit of sun (fire) to cause a meltdown (water) and a bit of wind (air) to dry things up, so that we can open the earth and plant new seeds; so that we can expand known and unknown territories, create new maps and lay down new tracks.

Near the completion of a conversation in Hawaii, centered around Huna and our connections to self, to each other and to the elements, I stated that I knew that some of my connections would change, that some would cease being as they are now AND that I did not know which connections would be impacted or just how these connections would change. I just knew. And I still know. It cannot be otherwise, given the changes that I have experienced, internally, over the last year. In fact, I know and can see that all of my external connections are transforming, from the most minimal, almost unobservable and incremental change to the most significantly defined transformation synonymic to death... and I have feelings about that. I am not always feeling comfortable about the change AND I know that it is right for me.

There is an old saying that 'the proof is in the pudding'. I learned, today, of the death of a good friend of 37 years. We worked together as nurses and our relationship continued long after I embarked upon other careers. Marilyn saw me through the birth of my 2 adult children and supported me through the progress of my various business endeavours. She chose my husband, the car buff,  as her expert counsel whenever she chose to purchase a new vehicle. I do not know that she really ever totally understood my thinking on certain subjects - there was the slogan that our mutual friend and hair stylist created about me - that I was involved in 'voodoo, who do and you do' that has laughingly continued to this day - and she fully supported me, anyway. Her death was a surprise to me; we had not connected in a few months and my husband had last seen her in the fall as they changed seats at the hair stylist's; one was leaving the seat and one was entering the seat. Ohana - family of choice - at its best. So, her death is proof that what I knew in Hawaii and that what I know now is true: my relationships are changing. While I may feel saddened and while I may find the process uncomfortable, I 'get' that these changes are inevitable, not only for my own growth and evolution, but for those of my connections as well.

As a nurse, I supported the process of dying with innumerable patients. I remember them, because, in their pain and in their misgivings and in their courage, they taught me much about myself... and, yet I was unable to recognize or to claim, at that time, their gifts to me for myself. I did not recognize the value that they experienced of me in the same way that I saw value in and experienced value of them. That inability and unwillingness to recognize myself as valuable reinforced the mindless continuation of service that was never enough and that left a trail of indebtedness that worked both ways. My reference to external conditions was huge; I had to look outside of me in order to serve even more. 

There is a current belief that one cannot give what one does not have. I would define this even further... one cannot give what one does not believe/know that one has. That was the platform from which I served, as a nurse, as a daughter, as a sister, as a wife, as a parent, as a friend, as a business owner. As such, I have created a huge amount of indebtedness in my life - much like a train, traveling at full speed down a mountain, unable to brake and desperate not to derail. It is tantamount to struggling to keep the wheels on the rails, so that the riders on board can reach an expected destination - the same one that they have always expected, because that was what I promised when I unconsciously wrote the itinerary for the trip. 

Paradoxically, the trip up the mountain was tough, hard work, difficult and slow going. At the very apex of the mountain, the context for the trip might have shed even more light in its potential for a greater view of what was potently possible, if only I had chosen to stop and take a look; however, I was so busy dealing with the details of the struggle up, even when I was on the trip down, that I lost sight of the number of options that were available to me to get down the mountain  in a way that would have created opportunity, joy and space for me.

I have chosen to terminate that trip. I just cannot do it anymore. It means that I stop the indebtedness here and now. It means that I am re-writing my itinerary. It means that I am changing the train that I conduct, the tracks that I travel, the directions in which I choose to conduct my train, and who I am going to invite on my ride. Leaving the known track is now one of several options, where it never has been before; and, while it may feel like a derailing for a time, I know my truth to be otherwise. I find the feelings involved quite uncomfortable AND, this time, I am choosing to not bury them (please see my blog entitled, 'Breathing Space'); I am choosing to just be with them, to breathe into them, to digest them and to metabolize them. Only then, will I have created space for new and unknown cargo and connections to present as I conduct my new train, on new tracks, in new directions to places both known and unknown. It is the only sure route, and it is one that I do not yet know, to my own evolution. 

Both physically and emotionally, I am feeling quite uncomfortable right now. What helps me greatly is to remember the assumption from 'Evolution By Intention' created my Louise LeBrun of the WEL-Systems® Institute: Whatever you think of me is none of my business.

Stopping what feels in my body as a potential train wreck, in and of itself, does demand a change in my relationships. The paradox to this is that the change, itself, feels like a wreck of sorts. And I know that some will not appreciate the change that I am making for me. For them, it may become about what I am doing and not about the greater context of me authentically showing up as myself, for me, transparent, in MY train, so that they can show up that way in theirs, too - if they so choose - even if our trains are never, again, to pass each other. My authenticity and my transparency - what I see is what I get - demands that I stop the ticketing to indebtedness, right here and right now.

There are other things happening in my life right now - some comfortable and some greatly uncomfortable. Sometimes, I find it down right scary, given what I have been conditioned to believe is right and appropriate. However, I KNOW, that for me to continue on the same rails in the same train, in the same direction, with the same indebted relationships and the same tired cargo, will mean certain and onerous death for me. I have gleaned enough through my own experience of patients moving through that process that death was never meant to be arduous or punishing - and, yet, we make it so because we have been taught otherwise. 

St. Paul said, 'I die daily'; a good thing I think. If death is equal to transformation and evolution, then I certainly am, now, awake enough to choose differently. Then, maybe, I can give homage to my own death in each day as the transformation that I have held  so in reverence for others as they culminated their time in this incarnation. 

What I am curious about is this: how many of those patients that I nursed actually changed trains, tracks, directions, territories, maps, cargo and passengers? How many of them even knew that they could? How many of them were terrified of the unknown (where I am standing right now)? How many of them made changes, anyway, with any number of computations available to them... same track, different train; different track, same train; and so on? How many of them changed all of it? Who actually took  time to notice the qualities of their journeys and the results of their choices? How would their lives and their deaths have been different?

Yes, I am scared. Thank God, it means that I AM alive and that I am moving. New train, new tracks, new directions, new territories, new maps, new cargo and new connections - ones that sustain my reference to myself first so that I truly help others by stopping my own indebtedness and my 'need' for it. My 'need' to create that in myself has undeniably created a vacuum in my relationships with others who also 'needed' to fill that 'need' in order to satisfy the vacuum. There is genius in physics; nature does abhor a vacuum... and so the perpetuation of external referencing is created. As Louise has said so eloquently, what we create is history, habit and habituation. And so it goes.

Now I stop it... for me. Mahalo, Marilyn, for showing me, in your transition from this incarnation to another, that I know what I know. My relationship to self, to others, and to the elements IS transformative. It is OK for me to feel... scared; there is sheer genius in that. All is good and all is as it should be. I surrender.

Aloha,

Sheila.