Musings from a Sanctuary

Journal entry from my divine weekend away...

I am here on a dock, not a foot from Lake Gilmour. At the home of some of my parents' friends. The sun is hot, it's almost noon, and I can feel the heat beneath my black bathing suit. Against my skin.

The lake is like liquid glass. Perfectly crafted. Reflecting the bold splashed of color - autumn touching the treetops and bushes with its kiss of red and orange.

Time to change my pen color, like how everything changes. And how I am learning to want change. To accept change. And to let myself go - see where the changes take me. It's always there - change - like the gentle lapping of the lake against the dock I sit on. Always moving. And I find that it's in a place of fear, of not wanting to something to change, that many people find themselves stuck.

I can feel some big changes underfoot for me, over the horizon, but I am determined NOT to play them out in my head. Not to imagine what it will be like, because I think that if I do, I'll be creating a vision of something that is not real. Perhaps attaching myself to that vision. And perhaps, more importantly, missing the doors that will open or opportunities that will come about, because I am not paying attention.

And that is what I want to do. Pay attention. To right now. To the heat on my body, the water splashing beside me, the wasp that landed on my leg, the cawing in the sky above me, the whirring of wings as the dragonflies skim by me, the sound of voices rising and falling, a distant purr of a motor. I think this is where all my answers are.

I like this passage. I like it's message - about deadening a relationship with dishonesty. It's probably the closest description of how I felt after being with Mike for so long - when I didn't make the choices to be myself. It conversely also captures how I feel today. And what I think I've been able to experience in my friendship with Jack. The success of being myself with him.

"Any time we begin to withhold our truth, on any level, no matter how small or subtle, we begin to block the life force coming through us and we begin to deaden ourselves and our relationships. The sexual energy, among everything else, diminishes. That is what often happens in long-term relationships.

It is very difficult to stay truly honest with ourselves and with each other in every moment. It's the nature of human beings to try and please the other person, which means that we don't want to show them the parts of ourselves that are undesirable. We also want security, so we are afraid to risk revealing something that could threaten the relationship. There's a subtle level at which we withhold truth.

To whatever degree we withhold truths, there is a corresponding level of energy dying in the relationship."

To which I add - the relationship with MYSELF as much as with anyone else.