Stepping into Enquiry

My grandfather always taught me to ask ‘Why?’, never to accept what I was being told, only to believe half of what I saw and a quarter of what I heard – that there was always missing information. He lived through Ireland becoming independent, so I don’t think it was something he said just to wind up my parents! My grandmother, his wife, was orphaned in the Spanish ‘flu pandemic – I am thinking about them a lot.

These days I think that it’s even less than that. I follow my gut, feel into something to see if it resonates. Sometimes I get an instant ‘hit’, more often I need time to bring awareness to the differing levels and types of feeling. At times I need sit with conflicting feelings waiting for something deeper and, hopefully, overarching to emerge that resolves the discomfort.

Currently there are many differing opinions both mainstream and alternative, much contradiction, pressure to do our best for the good of all - that it is overwhelming, becoming divisive, creating conflict, fear and antagonism amongst people all over the world.

Whether people are perceived to be breaking or trying to enforce the rules many are acting from fear. When we recognise this and show compassion we build community.

We have stopped physically but our mental chatter is still going on exponentially and we are in an information storm that feels as it may never …

STOP.

Let’s just truly stop for a while.

How are you feeling when you do? What does your gut say to you? When I feel into it I don’t find any answers, I feel a discomfort with not knowing. Maybe I don’t know enough of the right science …

And I am learning to be at ease with this. Learning to step into an enquiry that has no answers that resonate and trying to find peace in the centre of it all. To enter into fluidity while remaining self-contained, surrendering to being submerged and not resigning the essence of self to the process. Waiting and yet not waiting. Holding it all, the truth, the falsity, the fear of change, the desire for answers …

Trust. I trust that information will emerge to fill in the gaps. That through the weight of all this news and endless cyclical conversations, that we will find a way back to ourselves.

I’ve started to put things in order, to tie up loose ends – not only using the time to do the things I didn’t have time for before or new projects – but completing, clearing the path so that I am ready for whatever is coming next. To end the life that I have been living so that I can step wholeheartedly into a new one, it will be a rebirth.

I’m allowing grief to touch the centre of my being, meeting the shadow. Recognising the extent that existing societal structures have infiltrated my life and encouraged us to avoid this important internal work.

I may have questions about what is happening in the world right now …

… but surely the world is reflected within me too? I’m no longer finding that the separation between me and the rest of the world is so black and white.

When I see someone breaking the rules – I find the rule-breaker in me, or the stockpiler, or the one who is so scared for their family, lack of income, having enough food …

Courage. Have heart. For when we meet the shadows of the world, we meet our own. While we cannot deny what we are witnessing, let us try and shine the light of understanding. For if something exists within the world it exists within us too, we are all connected, interconnected and that is so clear now.

There is a little frost outside this morning that reminds me of the fragility of new life. There is such joy that stopping and listening can bring. The first signs of spring, trees in bud, birds singing, spring flowers sprouting. Lambing has started …

Those of us who have been intimately connected with birthing new life whether as a mother or parent, midwife or crofter know how intimately birth and death are connected and how to hold the joy and sorrow together without diminshng either.

These are the skills that are needed now to help us find a breath through the pain, a helping hand at the right time and place, something to help ease things when they get stuck. Staying present, being with what is, doing what we can to ease the passage of what is a painful, hopefully rewarding, journey -without knowing the outcome.

This I feel is our task for ourselves and each other now. I feel that we are being called to Midwife the birth of something new. Let us recognise the fragility of these times and be gentle with ourselves and each other.

with much Love
from my Heart to yours

Tania Aurora White Crow