Falling apart, holding it all together. Then falling apart again . . . and then . . . coming back together. Cycles of clarity and then confusion; hope and then hopelessness; happiness and then heartbreak; Knowing who you are and why you are here in one moment; deflated in the next moment as the way you thought it all worked comes crashing down, and your sense of knowing dissolves.
Ironically, it is inside . . . in between the opposites . . . where there is life and creativity . . . BUT . . . there is no solid ground to stand on in the liminal/between. No stable reference point to look back on in the past and no stable reference point to anchor on in the future. Only the tender now moment. Open. Pregnant. Potential. Shaky. What will emerge from the ashes of the past that has not yet been given form?
The tendency in these moments is to rush to the fix, the manifestation, the completion, the birth, the orgasm . . . in an urgent attempt to reassemble something known. You believe safety and aliveness can be re-established if you wrangle the present moment into some new-improved version of the past. You can, and must honor the adaptive function this belief has provided, but there is also an opportunity here to inquire deeply . . . will this strategy meet the intense longing wired within the cells of your heart.
If you remain too identified with the somatic-emotional state that is “falling apart,” you lose contact with that dimension of self which was has always been whole, doesn't need transformation, and was never “together” to begin with . . . because it wasn't "untogether!" Your innate radiance, the holiness of your breath, and the miracle of your open sensitive nervous system has always been the truth of you. You disconnect from the magic of embodied presence, from the wisdom of the mud and the earth, from the unshakable confidence in our true nature . . . and of course it feels like "falling apart!"
Alternatively, if you remain too identified with “holding it all together,” you split off from your organic spontaneity, imaginative vulnerability, and the truth that love will take whatever form it must to reveal its qualities within you. Raw, achy, illuminating heartbreak, the falling apart or loosening of the grip is the broken aliveness through which the poetry of our lives will flow.
Right in the middle of “falling apart” and “holding it together” is the secret place. Go there, to the pause, to the quiet, to the still point, to the silence . . . It is there where light and dark are at play. For just a moment, peer into the inbetween . . . and be astonished.
