Saturday, May 30, 2009

Dissolving Knots and Melting Away Nails

After practice yesterday I had a great massage, a Jeff combo special extreme. Laying on my stomach, I went into a deep relaxation, perhaps a trance. I saw my back covered with giant nails (best description is railroad spikes). This was not a painful image or a disturbing one, no blood, just a series of spikes holding my body down, and as Jeff continued to massage me the spikes disintegrated, releasing their hold. It was a sweet, pleasant image yet one that expressed intensity. Imagine actually being nailed down with railroad spikes penetrating your body--pretty awful. But in my image the spikes were painless. When we relax our minds and our bodies, we can release all the nails of tension that keep us nailed down, that keep us held in place and stuck, that keep us face down and free from seeing, free from moving into understanding. For more than a few weeks now I've been struggling to understand a relationship that I don't fully understand. It seems to defy definition, understanding, and at times, healthy boundaries. I needed to let it go, I needed to be free from it for the time being--all this within myself. I felt hurt and angry and these feelings cause my mind to get stuck in creating scenarios that are little more than illusions that seek to release the pain. They are like illusory whirlwinds that take off and gain strength in an instant before I realize I have the capacity to stop them before they take on too much of a life of their own. Again and again when I realize that I'm not feeling loved in the world, that I'm feeling unworthy of love, it helps me understand that the pain I'm feeling comes from old wounds and has been triggered by an outside event that usually has very little to do with what's swirling around within me. However, we do need to pay close attention to those people in our lives who may indeed have a tendency to disregard our boundaries, or whose actions don't jibe with their words (and vice versa). Human nature is so complex and when we try to nail down someone else's behavior we might only end up in knots ourselves. Sometimes, not always, it's best to just let go, stop the whirlwinds of illusion, and let the nails come out, and from this place we are more free in choosing what serves us best.