The in-between: living isn’t always happy
It’s not going to always be smack dab in the middle, sometimes a foot will be dangling below the murkiness and sometimes all you get is a finger up on top of that wall. But as an average, if you stay within the in-between, life is felt and lived. It’s a beautiful-disaster, just like every Kristen Stewart film, ever made.
Living in the middle, I get to play in the light and the dark of my life.
It’s strange when you first become aware of the in-between and a willing participant in what you are. I cease to force myself any which way but still, as I now can watch the world moving around me. Simultaneously, I’ve become the seen and the seer. Letting go of what I believe defines me, I’m feeling what “it” is, “I” am made of. That sounded a little like Wayne Dyer or the beginning of a slam poem for Burning Man. (Anybody going?)
I like having access to both sides of the sky. I fly there pretty naturally, though I’ve spent many years feeling like it wasn’t good enough. Not wanting the struggle to keep climbing, I would cower in the lowlands. Not wanting to hide in the dark, I would get stuck in the struggle to climb the vertical, flat wall.
Treating humanness as a burden is odd.
I have yet to meet any person that has not once experienced some sort of feeling other than happy. It has been a 40 year process to figure this out folks. Life is all of it. Emotions and feelings happen to us. We are happy one moment and angry the next. We wake up feeling punk on Mondays and by Fridays we’re on fire, ready to climb mountains. It’s all in there, an eclectic recipe for the unique measurement of ingredients that made you.
It’s as if I was always trying to fix something and feeling guilty because I wasn’t happy all the time. Always concerning myself about weight, episodes of depression, pain and insecurity about my job status was spending ridiculous amounts of my energy by chasing happiness.
When this stuff arises in life, it may seem like a good idea to act like it’s not a part of us, all concentration is on getting rid of, exacerbating or ignoring emotion. Like happiness is all that life is about.
How can that be true? Happiness is a feeling that we go in and out of, it’s not a state of being.
Acceptance of this fluctuation of expression is the most potent wisdom I have ever experienced. It’s not about achieving happiness, but peace and ease in whatever is happening. Being where you’re at and experiencing the happenings. Living in the middle is where we are the witness to this phenomenon of the human body and psyche, the rock in the middle of the river.
It may not seem glamorous or may even sound like a life without goals or aspirations, but it’s definitely a life where these things can exist and not become who you are. Life is more simple and flexible in the in-between. When we can put our nature first, we become AVAILABLE.
The center is connection to my unbreakable self. It’s a union and it’s freedom.
I’ve tried the high road. It was a bright and magical time. I stayed away from all that was heavy and kept myself on that far left lane of the highway to heaven. I was holding on to spirit’s ankle weighing her down as I relied on her wings to pull me higher. One day my hands got tired and I had to let go. I plummeted to the depths of the Earth without any cushion to break my fall. Covered in mud and blaming the angels wings for not being strong enough. The mud dried up and caked all over my body, weighing me down. This heaviness kept me far from the sky, and I forgot to look up. One day a boot of mud cracked in half and released from one of my legs. I felt a sense of longing to go high on my toes. I raised my hands to the sky, juxtaposed are the cool, hard clay and warming ray’s of a soft sun. The space in the middle consolidates what we are as an energetic force of nature inside of a body made of flesh and blood. It’s where source lies inside of you. It’s where we decide to exist and acknowledge the gift of what we are. The middle is where we can experience the entire rainbow and not just what’s at the end. I live in the in-between to balance my need for something more with the insecurities of the mind. I live in the middle to witness life as it is happening; too high, we forget everyone else, too low and we forget ourselves.
Love, Heather.
