The best place to see the light is in the dark

'Just when I could bear it no longer came something amazing- clarity, hope and a vision of something bright and wonderful, something that makes my heart flutter.'

I was offended a few weeks ago when a certain practitioner referred to my 'inner turmoil' during a session, which he suggested affects my energy flow and essentially my well-being. I didn't blame him for saying it, I was just confronted by the words. He said it so matter of fact, like it was plain to see. No one has ever said such a thing to me, well not so directly. It took about three weeks for me to come to terms with it; I didn't dwell on it, but it sat uncomfortably. The way in which I eventually came to terms with his comment involved my inner turmoil peaking to the point that I could hardly bear it any longer. I wished I had some drugs to make it go away, but Nurofen plus and anti-thyroid drugs hardly cut it and I don't do drugs anyway- apart from alcohol. Hours later I chose to 'do' alcohol. I needed some relief, space from the intensity of the emotions running rampant, hormones egging them on. I knew I was reaching a critical point, I was sick and tired of how things had been and frustrated, confused and scared. I felt overwhelmed with no real answers.

Before you ask, no I haven't been meditating lately...and yes I think I probably need to return to that practice. I'm not really trying to read your mind, you're probably not wondering about my meditative practice at all, it's just my conscience speaking loud and clear and perhaps it's mixed with some advice from my 'wise one' on my inner.

Anyway, I blew off some steam with organic rose and some loud music, oh and a few verbal blows in the direction of the boyfriend. Lucky for both of us he could withstand the force of the storm just long enough until it passed. Most women would understand that when the gales of our emotions whip up and combine with a hormonal surge that only a woman knows, that we're a real force to be reckoned with. The best that we can hope for in such times is that when the storm passes there's been minimal damage. Luckily I awoke yesterday morning feeling alot better and all of a sudden ok with the concept of 'inner turmoil'.

Perhaps that's not the whole truth, the rose and loud music did not make me feel all of a sudden ok, but I'd found a new story about inner turmoil and it had settled things for me. My new story goes something like this: Inner turmoil keeps things moving, it can wake you up when you're not seeing something for what it is, inner turmoil drives some of the best artists and creative talent we've ever seen. When we're stirred up inside we get restless and it moves us and those around us in different ways. Sure I'd probably prefer to be moved by something more fluffy, more pink and love like- oh how perfect it would be. But that perfectionism is not necessarily helpful, it's one of the things that I'll probably work with for the rest of this lifetime, when I say work with I mean 'do battle with' and try to keep in check. It's very sneaky and pushes and pulls to get it's own way, consequently it creates inner turmoil effortlessly.

The more I resisted the imperfectness of the turmoil and the prickly abrasive feelings on the inside the stronger they seemed to get. They say that what we resist persists; it sure does! So I made peace with inner turmoil, rather than berating myself I simply found a new perspective, a more compassionate and realistic one, my new story about inner turmoil tells me that some of the very best creative work ignites from this place. The main thing is not to keep it inside for long so as to avoid an explosion or implosion of some kind. It's essential to find a way to make it ok, tell yourself a little story about it that makes you feel better, normalise it and find strength in knowing just how human you are! This applies to anything you're judging right now, you get to choose the story, throw out the old book and write a new one. The new story and acceptance meant I became open to a shift, divine intervention.

Through a sudden infusion of charism, your inability to make sense of life's challenges, coupled with the emotional weight of feeling as if you are living without purpose or direction is transformed into the knowledge that each movement in your life is divinely ordered. Myss 2001.

Just hours after my acceptance of the 'inner turmoil' concept being applicable to moi something shifted. Just when I could bear it no longer came something amazing- clarity, hope and a vision of something bright and wonderful, something that makes my heart flutter. It was something I'd known all along, but had been to afraid to believe in, to know. In order to find it I'd had to get lost, I'd had to face the fear of not knowing in order to know how amazing it is to actually 'know', to understand that I must not give up on what I want and  need. This month I wrote a post suggesting that 'I don't know' is the new black, in recent times I have donned the black attire and gone deep. I've felt the pain and sadness and wished for the old and familiar, for something I could know for sure and wrap myself in to feel safe. I felt like I was living in this dark space of nothingness, yet filled with vast potential and it was out of necessity, not choice. It was thanks to the scary, lonely and confronting darkness that eventually I was able to see the light. When it appeared it shone out as clear as day and I recognised it as truth because tears began to fall. The greatest sign of a beautiful truth, of real love, is that it can move you to tears.

When your life plans are suddenly interrupted, you can choose to view that event as a 'contract intervention' rather than a crisis. What symbolic vision gives you above all is choice- the choice to see events as arbitrary and antaganostic, or as blessings that are part of a plan in which you have some say. Myss 2001.

When I was counselling women that sometimes happened, one or both of us would get a tear in our eye or a shiver down our spine when a significant 'truth' had been realised. Another amazing thing about the presence of truth is that when it comes it can appear in the simplest of forms. For me it started with the title of a book at the library leaping off the shelf at me, which then became books...which evolved miraculously to become a story in itself, a story of the future and the past that showed me something real in the present moment. I'm talking about my future direction here, I hesitate to use the C word, let's call it Vocation for now.

Vocations can be many things: They may be calls to do something (become self-employed, go back to school, leave or start a relationship...) or calls to be something (more creative, less judgmental, more loving, less fearful). They may be calls to or away from something; calls to change something, review our commitment to it, or come back to it in an entirely new way; calls towards whatever we've dared...ourselves to do for as long as we can remember.... Gregg Levoy (Myss 2001).

(I can not believe just how accurate this explanation of Vocation is in the context of my life right now).

I guess that the dark and the inner turmoil has it's purpose. Although I said earlier that it would be nice to be moved by pink fluffy love rather than the tragic 'inner turmoil', it leads me to ponder if they're not one and the same? I suspect that the love and light was wearing a dark black cape, it was disguised and I didn't always know what it was, but that's the whole point of this illusionary world. Right? Once in a blue moon we have this kind of an experience, where we go swimming in the depths of darkness just so as we will be able to recognise the light for what it is, lest confusion gives us a break..

The above quotes are referenced from Caroline Myss's book 'Sacred Contracts'. I have just begun reading this amazing book and each and every page thus far is full of wisdom so relevant to my life and recent experiences. As I read I was excited to find several passages that further explained what I had written about in this blog post yesterday, so I have added them in where I think they fit best.

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A quick update

Today I've been further researching holistic GP's in Melbourne, so I called my top pick, a woman who specialises in thyroid disorders as the very first. Her receptionist informed me that the Initial consultation would be $500, and $350 thereafter- yikes!

So I ruled that one out, the next two I contacted were half price, around the $250 mark. How do I know who to choose? Do I choose based on location, whoever is more convenient, on their areas of interest, a gut feeling or whose photo I like the look of better?

I'm not exactly sure how I'll choose, the other thing is that neither of the my next two preferences can see me until late November. While it's not surprising it's a little disappointing.

I've also been looking into the role of sugar and it's impact on the immune system. It's not pretty! As of yesterday I'm getting serious about minimising....or removing sugar from my diet. I have done it before, it's not easy but after a while you do adapt. Yesterday I had testing on a biofeedback machine, it found that sugar is a big no no for me, I have some kind of intolerance to it, it's not surprising really. My blood sugars can go all over the shop if I don't eat proper meals or if I eat a sweet treat and nothing else I find myself feeling awful 2-3 hours later.

So I  have been busy since last night trying to put together all of the clues I've got so far from the research I have done and information shared with me by practitioners to try and properly understand what's going on with me. I have now decided that it's time to let go and relax, experience some inner peace and leave the busy mind work. Because I know that while it's important, that alone will not make me well, I need to give my body mind and spirit the space and environment it needs to heal.

So that's all for now, I'm trying to strike a balance today and chill out, relax, trust, accept and allow what will be to be. It is easy to think that I haven't done enough yet, that maybe I'm missing something, but that's the kind of thinking that can make one sick in the first place. So I choose to trust that I am on the right track and healing is happening, and so for now I let go.

The beginnings of my journey with meditation

I'm no stranger to meditation, I used to do it every week at Yoga. I loved it, it was guided meditation so I wasn't really left to wander, my teacher's voice and guidance kept me on track. However I would only meditate once a week, very rarely would I practice on my own. In recent months I have been sporadically listening to a guided meditation on my ipod; it goes for about 45 minutes and I found that after the first few times of listening my mind was complaining 'this is so predictable' and my mind would then wander off, bored with listening to the same thing.

In the last month I feel as if I have been bombarded with suggestions to meditate. Yeah yeah I thought, good idea, intellectually I'm all over it. I have read the statistics, understood the psychology of meditation etc. As I've mentioned before, if I had $1000 for every time someone suggested I meditate I could afford a really amazing trip to Europe, greek islands included! The hassling started to wear me down and my wise one inside was asking why I wasn't listening. I did not have a good excuse. I wanted to be able to proudly state that I do meditate whenever someone suggests it, so I started.

My boyfriend's been doing a mindfulness course through work and has noticed that his daily meditation practice has brought about some very positive changes. I must say I have noticed too, he seems more positive and relaxed and I am enjoying the benefits of that. He's not usually someone to go on about things, he can be a man of few words, so when he started banging on about mindfulness I was surprised. I was quietly pleased that he had become so passionate about something as healthy as mindfulness and that I was not the only one in the relationship that would talk alot about a particular topic. At first it was ok, all the talk about meditation, but as he continued to ask if I was practising the meditation and I continued to feel like a school girl who was repeatedly turning up without her homework, I didn't like it. But the wise one inside of me was telling me to listen and would not allow me to tell him to shut up.

So every day for the past 10 days I have meditated, just by sitting still and focussing on my breathing, when thoughts come I return to my breath and let them pass. Sometimes the thoughts keep coming, often actually. On my third day I went into a beautiful peaceful space for part of the meditation and heard a voice inside saying 'ahhh, this is what it's all about'. That experience helped me to feel motivated to continue.

Aside from the peaceful experience whilst meditating I also noticed something else had changed; my mood. On my fifth day of meditation I noticed how happy and content I felt. It was so noticeably different because the usual feelings of anxiety that arise within were nowhere to be seen. It is a common symptom of hyperthyroidism to experience anxiety, in fact, if left untreated people can become psychotic. It happens because everything in the body is working too hard, the heart is beating faster and too much adrenaline is released into the body. Sometimes the feelings of anxiety are really hard to bear, and often the anxiety can lead to increased fatigue.However, something has changed recently and I am now feeling much more relaxed, I haven't noticed anxiety like I used to. I feel at peace with where I am and how I am. Worries about my health and future don't buzz around in my head and body like they were. I can honestly say that I have had times during the past few days where I have felt more relaxed and happy than I can remember in a very long time. I can just be lying on the couch watching television and notice these positive feelings and feel gratitude for how good I feel.

My circumstances haven't changed much in the last 6 weeks; I still have an overactive thyroid, I am still unsure what has caused it and when I will be well, I am still tired alot of the time, I still have low energy and I am still staying with my parents in the country instead of living life in Melbourne with friends and my partner.
However, the way I feel about all of this has changed, I no longer look to the future with fear. I can accept what might be without stressing over it, but I am also having positive thoughts and ideas for what I will be doing in coming months. These ideas make me feel excited and hopeful; while I still hold in my awareness that there's a possibility my plans will be delayed because of my health. It's not about disregarding reality or potential issues, it's about focussing more on the light than the dark and having the faith that I can do it, that I can manage this and I will be ok. I am not giving up and I am doing all that I can to support my healing. I am choosing to accept what is, whilst choosing sunny thoughts that help me to feel good in the now. There's no tomorrow, there's no yesterday, the time is always NOW.