Svadhisthana, My Old, Young, Dear Friend - Earth, Water, Fire and Air, The Elements Within Us

PART TWO: 2nd Chakra: "Finding one's own place"; the Water element

My Garmin reports my stress has been up since stopping work, around October 17. It is an emotionally difficult time, this disability. My expression of service, teaching, direct connection with others, is gone, and I am grieving this. Fair.

I am seeking the next meaningful expression of myself, my life, my need to make a positive impact on the world around me.

“Everything is hard right now.” keeps echoing through my mind. Putting on my socks, shoes, pants, walking to the bathroom, carrying something across the house, walking!! My tea is cold, and I want a fresh cup, but sigh… it’s exhausting, all of it.

Recently, I resonated with the suggestion that exhaustion can come more from carrying the weight of emotional pain than from physical pain. I have come to know these pains are one and the same. What I do not know is how to free myself of it.

But I carry on doing the work. Because I do see that I have been dropping baggage through the years and I am lighter. Lighter and stronger. I am stronger in Light, more solid in my mind. But not completely. Oh no, not completely at all.

Now that my body is refusing to function as before, full of pain and fatigue, what now? I am faced with the realization that I am deeply attached to my body. That my sense of self-reliance and independence is tied to my confidence in my body.

As a child, ballet class was the place I re-established control. I could move through my body to a feeling of strength, control, achievement, ability, coordination, balance, and authentic self-expression. Over my lifetime, I have deeply trusted in my body. I can hold my own in any physical challenge. I can defend myself, I can run, I can make a living, I have strength, balance, stamina… So yes, it makes sense also that I grieve this sense of power.

But I also see it as just one layer of power. What are the deeper layers? I know them too, sense them, recognize inner strength arising to my question. So now, this is what I explore.

“Finding one’s own place”. Svadhisthana, my old, young, dear friend… Flow. Feminine. The water element. My life is like water. So fluid, you can put your hand right through it. Yet, it will bore a hole through solid rock, carve gorges, remove the face of mountains. Soft, giving, non-resistant water. Svadhisthana. “I am finding my own place.” And it is always changing.

Though I know these things, I can’t help but grieve life as it passes through me. Because despite all the pain, suffering, loss, the violence and horror… despite the terrible darkness within the human soul, life is such an inexpressibly beautiful thing. The beauty, love, and joy are everywhere. But so too, the opposites. Keeping my heart open, even in the darkness, that is the portal.

In the deeper layers within me, I know this. I know an abiding power, peace, light. It is beyond the mind, contains the opposites yet does not. Through this all of life passes. In this, there is peace and unlimited power.

Namaste, my beloved friends.

Give each other love.