Two questions I've asked myself this past week (aside from "What the F?!" and "Are you F-ing kidding me?!"), and which I am now extending to you, dear reader, are:
1. What kind of vessel are you?
2. Where is your vantage point?
It could be said that we are all vessels, carrying experiences and learnings from one end of life to the other, alternating endlessly between emptying and filling ourselves up along the way.
Are you a bowl, receptive and open?
A jar, containing and protecting, preserving and guarding?
A saucer, balancing and supporting, catching the overflow, in need of grounding?
A beaker, alchemizing and transforming?
Are you a jug, nourishing and and sharing?
A chalice, seeking union with the divine?
An urn, carrying with you the past?
Recently I've felt like the decorative bowl I bought at Home Goods a while ago, a large vessel presumably meant for the outdoors, a deep gray hinting at a subtle set of pursed lips sculpted onto the face, as if it were sipping in breath and reaching for a lower heart rate. The bowl wasn't intended to hold a used-up can of bug spray and other repellant-related items, but that is its lot, for now. There's no drain at the bottom, so the rain water that's been collected from the last few rains is dirtied, stagnant, at times, attracting gnats.
I give the Home Goods gray pursed lips bowl a fleeting glance and think, I'll empty it out soon enough. I then immediately think, Woof, it might turn out to be a bigger task than it seems. I turn around and forget about it until I remember again.
I'd like to--and I know I really should--pour every last thing out, rinse myself off, and breathe in vast and almighty gulps of fresh air and energy.
If not by choice, force will soon, surely, have its slovenly way.
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Something I like to offer my clients is the option to zoom out. Way, way, way out. So far that whatever the thing is, becomes smaller, a speck, and then--whoosh--vanishes.
This is the ultimate vantage point.
But if that's not available, there are closer ones. A vantage point is the farthest place from which you can clearly see the pros and cons, your friends and your enemies. Distances vary, depending on all sorts of things. You know, objects in mirror are closer than they appear and all that.
Did I mention it's been a bit rainy? After months of dehydration, it doesn't take much for grass to grow. It asks for so little. If I stay focused solely on where I sometimes happen to be, on one of these little spots of soil that the gophers have impressively rendered otherwise uninhabitable, life appears to remain dreary. But if I step outside or rise above just a little bit, to the vantage point where everything shifts into clearer focus, I can remember that each vessel contributes to the collective human experience, to consciousness, that every sprout of green and speck of dirt need each other, a shared reservoir of richness, with more life and promise just underneath the surface.
- as always, with love and thanks,
brookie