Life goes in cycles - you'd think I would have twigged to this by now

Image courtesy of SXU: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1025373


Life goes in cycles: this is a basic part of my belief systems. So perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that rather than being able to say "The wracking cough I've had since January is getting better", I'm instead saying, "Today I had a good day."

There's the unspoken understanding about the statement that having a good day today means pretty much jack with respect to whether or not I'm likely to have a good day tomorrow. It doesn't mean I'm getting better. It just means that right now, right here, I'm having a good day. I can appreciate that, ignore it, or get frustrated that it doesn't mean I'm getting better and doesn't mean tomorrow will be good too. But the truth is that when it comes down to it, how I react doesn't change what it is. It only changes the quality of my experience of what it is.

And suddenly, I'm sounding remarkably buddhist. Huh.

There's another cycle I became aware of this week as well. A much longer lived one. See, in my late teens and early twenties, I spent a lot of time believing I wasn't really worth a lot. It was partly a reaction to some stuff that had happened earlier in my life, and partly my inner melodrama queen coming out to play. But the net result was that I didn't like myself and couldn't for the life of me understand why anyone else would either.

I spent a large part of my mid-to-late twenties *doing* something about that. I did a lot of inner work - both psychological, spiritual, and stuff that blended the two. And gradually, I learned to like who I was. I got fit, and my outer appearance started to match the image I was starting to carry of myself. Well, mostly, anyway. And I thought, "Hey, wow, I'm there, I like me, I've journeyed a long, long way down the path, and I'm never going back to what I was."

What I didn't realise was that the path is a circle (or at least a spiral...) In my early thirties I made a couple of truly godawful choices whose consequences I still haven't really stopped beating myself up for yet... and gradually I found it harder and harder to like or respect who I was being, and harder and harder to understand how anyone could possibly do so either. And yeah, the weight came back on with it (funny that, hmmm)? And it suddenly felt like I was right back where I started before all that inner work: like everything I'd ever achieved in terms of self-image, self-respect and self-worth had just disappeared - dissolving into thin air, or flushed down the drain, but either way, lost and gone beyond hope of recovery... And there I was, back in the same pit I'd fought so hard to get myself out of the first time around.

What I realised viscerally over the past couple of days was that maybe a part of that whole slide back down into what I used to be has come because I stopped doing all that inner work: after all, that's what helped me climb out of the pit the first time around... but the likely reality is that it's not just a one-time thing. You don't shower once and then expect it to keep you clean for the rest of your life. And yeah, it's no different on a psychological or spiritual level. I think I've touched on this realisation a number of times over the past couple of years. There's a f'locked post a wee while back where I talk about the the Native American myth of the old man who has two wolves - a dark wolf and a light one - fighting for dominion in his heart; and the one that will win being the one he chooses to feed.

I need to start consciously feeding the light wolf inside me and bringing myself back into a state of something resembling inner balance. I need to get back on with that inner work that helped me the first time around - I've done it once, so theoretically, it should be easier this time around. If nothing else, the BCoD has gradually, systematically stripped away all the facades and defensive layers that I'd put up to hide from myself. That's one good thing about it: lying to myself takes energy and resources, and if I'm too exhausted to hold my shields and my barriers intact, I'm too exhausted to keep pretending.

So what that's going to mean to my blogging presence I don't know. Possibly long intervals between posts. Possibly the opposite, with lots of navel-gazing. Possibly a load of surface-level stuff like I've been posting lately. Gods, I just don't know right now. I know I need to start with meditation and mindful reconnection.

As for anything else? It'll be as it'll be.

It's just what is.