Night School

I’ve gone through a two week season of little or no sleep. Night school for the soul. A half cycle of the moon has drifted with the snow through my cabin window. I have tossed in the darkness and shimmering. I thought that this is what it must be like to be born. This is what it must be like to die. There is the pain in the journey. There is the loss of what we must leave in order to evolve. For the dying it is the loss of the bounding heart of a once rich life. For the new babes it is a falling from the heaven they floated within. Then, like today, there is the joy in arriving again.

I’ve had two weeks of no sleep with a strange paralysis in a free association of visions. At four in the morning I was awake with eyes squeezed tight as if to thwart reality. I was tossing and agitated on the journey to a new life.

When I lay there it seemed as if nothing was present but the solar system of my spinning brain. This morning the burring sun of my thoughts fell through my heart into my stomach, lighting me with a staggering peace. Insomnia is often a sign that I’ve broken a promise or neglected the life I was called to. My surrender to my soul work and art opened the door to peace.

I’ve been turning on the wheel, struggling to be born. Last night I slept for the first eight hours of my new life. I slept after the contractions of the spirit, the great push and my reluctance to leave the old ways of thinking and being behind.

I had a dream where I could fly, propelled by the light of the rising moon. But I would fly only if I knew I was made for the flying. It’s not just a belief in flying, or my abilities. It is the empty handed leap off the edge of the canyon wall, knowing that a holy spirit will buoy and move me. I hear the voice of the Beloved in my dreams whispering. “Just leap. Just begin. Just put the pen to the paper and scrawl.” The action of movement itself creates magic and wisdom.

So I ask myself this morning: “What does the sun in my gut say?” Then I leap into the first words that come, unfiltered and unedited. I follow them over the edge. Soon enough I am riding a beam of the rising moon. I am aglow. I see how the sun and silvered shield of night inhabit the same heaven. I awaken in my cabin to the snow swirling a brilliant azure of a cold sky, breathing deep. I have happy moments for the first time in a season.

Whatever circumstance or inspirations come, remember the circle of life. Pause in the hard won wisdom of being in this world and then just begin. The path has only one destination: to be born again and again. Let go and then be who you were meant to be.

Rick