As one year ends and a new one is ushered in, the dying beast of 2021 exhales its final breath in exhaustion. I imagine cocktails are collectively brewed in a jovial expression of gratitude and good riddance in releasing the misunderstood monster of a year from its capture.
Ignited by this hefty ambrosia of otherness, hopeful questions are sure to stir in the minds of many. Could 2022 be the one to shift us from the murky waters of whatever it is that is going on?
With fireworks blazing the night sky here in Ericeira Portugal, communities huddle together on surrounding beaches united by a sort of bawdy glee in a resilient quest displaying cohesion. While explosive displays made in China light hopeful futures, dogs scatter frantically in the distance, fearing that the sky will fall.
On New Years Day, a tumbleweed of spine-tipped thoughts blow across the landscape of my mind by some mysterious wind and lodges its prickly self in an available nook. Adding its fetor to the stench of decaying thought patterns, it creates a nauseating wave of mental miffness.
I stagger into this year in a foul funk with my self-esteem lost in some deep abyss that no amount of positive affirmations can retrieve.
There is nothing quite like the release of all that you have heavily defined yourself by, homeland, community, offerings and services, house, material goods and comforts to start anew in a foreign country, to hilight the disabilitating potency of limiting belief systems and the continual work required to remove them.
This ruffling of the feathers demanded more from me than a few intentions written on a piece of paper, smudged with sage and set to flame in ceremonial hope of its release. This demanded my unbounded awareness.
And it took days and days and days of scuffling with inner grumblings that fed the hungry beast of my mind to hurl thoughts, project emotions, weave stories and mourn intentions in disharmony. It may not have appeared this way to others but I am pretty certain that my aura became so spiky, you might have impaled yourself on it if you dared to venture too close.
What was demanded of me, was to just look at it. Not fix, change or try to define it. To just look the wench in the eye and say,
“I see you.”
Slowly, I attuned to that which is emerged in consciousness when thoughts fall away and could feel the likeness of Creator again. It would arrive in glimpses during meditation but leave soon after as I continued to allow self deprecating thoughts to tumble its way through my days. But these little glimpses were enough to build a lighthouse in a storm fuelled by belief systems and programmes. One brick at a time.
Slowly, slowly as I looked upon this, I remembered my Creator.
Slowly, slowly as I looked upon this, I remembered my Creator as Love.
Slowly, slowly as I looked upon this, I remembered that Love created me like itself.
Slowly, slowly as I looked upon this, I remembered that I am Love.
And slowly, slowly, I made the choice that I will not use an implemented programme to attack Love, to attack my Self.
The gold in the constant clearing of the channels for debris to move through lies in the response.
Choose wisely.
The Dream…
On New s Eve, I felt quite content to stay at home and read my way into the new year as I could feel the natterings of a non supportive narrative creeping in, aka “the mental miffness”
Nestling into bed early, the dream arrived timeously.
A group of people sit huddled under trees tortured by the wind listening to an elderly man spew instructions. His inky eyebrows rest on a wrinkled forehead like moldy caterpillars who missed the metamorphosis boat.
“You will NOT under ANY circumstances detour from these instructions. I COMMAND the lot of you!” he blurts out angrily.
With lips puckered like the asshole he is, he glares unblinking at his audience, a group of shell-shocked people from all ages and nationalities.
A llittle girl steps forward, red cheeked and wide-eyed. With curls escaping her ribboned bonnet, she offers him a package wrapped in pretty plastic.
“For you …
.. Sir ” she adds with quiet intensity.
The mass of people look at her flabbergasted, how is it that she can move?! They all sit bound to their seats by a massive, impregnable energetic force completely controlled by the mind of this man that cements their feet in fear and secures them to their seats with guilt!
The old man looks at her and her package with great suspicion.
Who is this child?
He suspects that she carries a capricious trick up her little puffed sleeve but her smile radiates such warmth that even a soured soul such as his feels thawed by it.
He looks to the group for traces to feed his suspicion but they all stare with mouths agape, still baffled by the fact that she can move out of her own free will.
Who is this child??
“It’s for you…
.. sir ” she stares with infinite innocence into his eyes.
“Please..
.. accept my gift..
.. it’s made in China” she adds.
The old man reaches out a hand withered by time, accepts the package in pretty plastic and…
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I wake to the sound of fireworks exploding across the night sky, hearing voices celebrate in the distance.
Marveling at its synchronicity and presence of what feels to be a parallel universe, I note the details of the dream briefly and fall asleep again.
By morning, there is no memory of any further dreams but out of all the literature that has made its way into my life, it is a passage from high school’s “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding that churns its way to the brim of my waking moment ..
“Kill the Beast. Cut his throat. Spill his blood. Do him in.”
Feels to have landed weirdly out of the blue…
Or has it?
