Life smacks us around. People fail us. Sharp rocks lurk around every corner. And we're all alone.
The future sounds pretty scary when this is what we tell ourselves about it, eh?
But what if we rewrote the script?
We come to expect pain, betrayal, and abandonment as our due, as what's normal, as the way the universe works. But what if someone showed us that there are many sweeter things in the universe? What if instead of wandering alone and helpless toward a future that threatened to smack us in the foot like a hard floor-board, the future rose toward us to meet us in an embrace? What if what's waiting for us is not pain, but softness and mutual trust? Not thorns, but petals?
Lately I've been working on feeling rooted in my standing leg, feeling myself in the step I'm leaving while the free leg falls freely in the direction it's going. Very recently I noticed that if I allow myself a moment to let my weight and energy sink through the floor into the ground, presently the ground sproings that energy back up and in the direction I'm going. That was feeling great. And it made sense. Relax and enjoy being where you are, and then the energy voluntarily transmutes and sends you into the next thing.
But it felt so great, it drew my attention to something that wasn't feeling so great. I was having so much fun relaxing into the standing moment, I was afraid to leave it and wasn't enjoying moving. Although the floor was sending me great energy in the direction I was going, my actual feet fell short of the mark every time, sluggish and disinclined to help me get there. I listened to my free legs as they fell toward their steps and they were not thrilled about the journey. “We're too free,” they said. “We hate this freedom. We're all alone and helpless. You're making us do this thing all on our own, and we know what's waiting for us up ahead. We've felt that floor. We're scared.”
“I thought I was relaxing you,” I said to my free legs. “Do we feel relaxed?” they said. I listened...and what I had assumed was engaged relaxation was actually a disgruntled combination of limpness and tension. And fear.
“What are you so scared of?”
“We hate the way you hurtle us through space and then let the floor hit us! The floor is so harsh! So hard! So flat! And so far away!”
I listened to my free legs whimpering. God, I've traumatized my legs, I thought. No wonder they're not keen on getting me where I'm going. How can I make them want to get there?
And then I thought, what if the floor didn't lie in wait for them like an executioner, but rose up to meet them? And what if instead of being objectionably flat and hard and static, it embraced my feet? A soft, sweet flower of an embrace? Not just once or twice, but every time?
I tried it out. My feet were confused. ….An embrace-flower? Hm. Well maybe. “Yes, yes,” I told them eagerly. “And just feel: it's not even at ground level! It can come all the way up to...your knees!”
“Oh. ….That is nice,” they said. We went around the floor a few times and they said I could continue with this idea.
I got excited. “What if the floor could come up as far as you needed it to? As far as you wanted it to? What if it wanted to meet you wherever you needed in order to feel comfortable?”
“Oh yeah?” said my legs. “....Then...can it come all the way up to your head?” They sounded greedy and shy.
“Sure! Why not!” I went around and around, feeling the floor reaching for my feet and legs, coming toward them as much as they needed, as high up as they wanted, and wrapping itself around them like hugs and kisses and rose petals. I did not let myself take a single step without making myself feel that first.
And then something happened.
My step changed! Suddenly my legs wanted to go to the next step. They were looking forward to arriving. They wanted to be there. “Oh boy!” they said. “We get to feel the next step! What a special treat! We love steps! ¡Yay!” —And once they started to associate the floor with happiness and pleasure, they started to trust the floor. And all by themselves, they started assertively reaching toward and into the next step, actively claiming those nice feelings as their own. I was still feeling myself in my standing leg and seeing my free leg as free and relaxed, but I had to change my definition of relaxation. Because now it was definitely doing something. But it was different from my last phase of feeling myself on both legs at once. You could say that now my free leg was empty of everything except desire, of which it was completely full.
“And while we're at it, let's change our definition of freedom,” the free legs said. Freedom had previously been a lonely and undirected state of being. Now, they were still free to act on their own and have their own feelings and voices, but they weren't alone, and they knew where they were going. The ground was coming to meet them on their journey, and the ground loved them! The ground would not abandon or hurt them. The ground wanted them to be free, and it wanted to embrace them.
And just like that, instead of a hastily sluggish sweep through the air followed by a thunking clunk on the ground somewhat short of the mark, my step became one uniform active thing with a fluid sense of eagerness and delight in it, and a little orgasm at the end. “It was good for the ground, too,” said my free leg, prettily flushed pink with satisfaction.
All in a day's work.
But after a couple of days of that, today it occurred to me: ok, relaxing into the ground to start feels great. And having sex with the ground at the end feels great, so the leg is looking forward to arriving. But there's still this disconnect in the middle where the leg is All Alone, getting from one spot to the next. It's enjoying the journey now, and that's great. But could it enjoy the journey even more?
I asked the ground if it could come all the way with the leg on its journey instead of meeting it. “I'm sorry, no, I cannot,” said the ground. “That's patently impossible. I am a floor.”
My free leg started to shrivel up and pout. “I love the nice feelings at the end! Why can't I feel them all the time? Why do I have to be all alone? Why do you ask so much of me? Is it truly necessary?”
I went around and around the floor and did not have an answer. And then I thought, “well, why are we only talking to you, Legs, anyway? There's a whole body here, and what about all that time I've spent learning to feel my core and forget about my peripherals?”
“Oh?” said the legs. And, “oh?” said the rest of my body parts, suddenly thrilled that I was inviting them to join the festivities. That sounded good to them. “We wondered when you were going to remember us,” they said.
I went around a few times with my whole body looking forward to cuddling with the floor at the end of each step. And then my torso said, “I could have answered your question for you a long time ago, if you had bothered to ask me. There is indeed something that exists that is ready, willing, and able to embrace you all the way through your step.”
“Ah?” I said. What a miracle! What heavenly deliciousness! I would make believe that all of me was being embraced by...something...all the way through the step!
I tried one step like that. It overloaded my circuits. I blushed. I had to stop. I collected myself and put myself back on my axis. But then I couldn't resist...could I do it again? I would once again make believe my whole self was being embraced by...something. I couldn't envision anything that would be capable of embracing my whole self, but since this was a thought exercise, anything was possible. So I let myself feel embraced, and took one more step, feeling the embrace all the way through. I felt the released step flowing out of my collected state like...well, this is not the actual metaphor running through my head, but here let's say, like blood flowing out of a heart.
I fried my wiring.
Thank God I'm alone and no one can see the color of my face, I thought. Now, how I usually learn to consistently reproduce positive sensations is to connect them with something that's so easy to remember, I don't have to remember it. But in this case, this will be much more difficult, because I have this phantom sourceless embrace. Where could it possibly be coming from? I have no idea!
I asked myself yet again. Where in the world would this whole-step embrace come from that would embrace me, my body, my spirit, my whole self, all the way through?
Blankness. I absentmindedly put my hands on my chest and my heart chakra jumped up and poked me and said, “about time you asked me!” And then it said....