Just like the waves …
I find myself contemplating my own expansion and contraction and noticing how I have judged this at times.
I am reminded by Spirit that we are organic matter and light matter (at an higher level) like all the plants and animals and such on Earth. We are subject to periods of contraction, when life around us gets smaller and we pull inside answering an unspoken call to become inward focused and quiet. In these quiet moments we are like a seed that landed on the ground and knows, “now, I will lie quietly for a while until the conditions are right for me to sprout and grow.” We are like those animals that hibernate, who spend a period of each year in a deep sleep and quiet. Everything that lives lives in cycles. Bigger cycles like birth and death, but also smaller cycles for those that live longer that often mimic the way of the seasons.
If we are growing, we will have times of quiet like Winter; times of rebirth and new growth like Spring; times of basking and celebration like Summer; and then times of quieting and shedding like Fall. I was lucky to grow up in somewhere that had four distinct seasons. I grew up knowing I would see snow at some point every year; that I would see Spring and the heat of Summer; and then that I would see Fall with its colors.
We, too, obey cycles. If we are noticing.
Last year when the pandemic hit and things shut down, I noticed that there was an invitation to pull inward and be still for a while. Then later, many places hit an expansion in the middle of the year and then contraction as we moved to the end of the year.
I’ve emerged from a contraction period myself just recently into a feeling of expansion. I’ve noticed this because the energy inside of me changed dramatically in the last two weeks. Frankly, I’m relieved. I love change and new growth and expansion.
I also had been creating suffering inside of myself while near the end of what had been a long period of introspection that started in the Fall of last year. I was judging myself and railing against the confinement. I would at times think “Lori, just get out and do something! Stop sitting on your ass on this land you are becoming a hermit, for Gods sake!”
But even though I could use guilt and shame to torture myself, I could NOT turn the energy inside me nor outside me. This is an important part. We obey an energy greater than ourselves.
The more loving alternative would have been to just accept the contraction with love and tell myself, “Thank you for this gift of quiet and introspection in preparation for future growth.” Even when things are quiet on a surface level things are still afoot on the Spirit level.
Unconditional acceptance.
Two weeks ago the energy changed for me. Yes, it was relieving, but I also noticed that had I just trusted my own phases of life, I would have had peace even before the energy shifted.
The invitation is to be accepting of all phases as they exist in my life.
Nature teaches us about perpetuity, eternal cycles. Even the sun rotates around us each day teaching us of unconditional support. The sun doesn’t decide whether to rise in the morning. Spring will always follow Winter as the earth invites it. There is no choice among these cycles as whether to be or not to be.
We all have periods of contraction and expansion. We need this. We need these waves, shall I call them. Waves of connection outward and waves of pulling inward. If you push yourself too hard for too long, you will naturally shut down for a while for some reason, either by choice or perhaps because of illness, fatigue, or emotional breakdown. If you stay pulled inward too long you will eventually suffer things like loneliness, alienation, and fear.
Even as a part of me leaps into expansion, my internal pace says “expand and then rest, expand and then rest.”
What season are you in now and is there a tension to began expansion or wanting to withdrawal?
Let me honor this eternal cycle that is happening now for me.
And then let me ask it “What do you have to teach me?”
