Let The Ocean Take You

“When you embark on a spiritual journey, there comes a time when something is going to have to matter to you more than your safety.”
—Ram Das

This picture was taken on the day I had my first T-shot, five years ago today. I got straight on the bus right after, to teach workshops in Boston. I was terrified. A lifetime of doubt and guilt (for making a decision I needed to make) running through me. Bringing me into a kind of freeze mode. Now I had done it. Gone and changed EVERYTHING.

Exactly a week before, the doctor, at my first and very hard to get consult that took four months, had said, “if you want to go on it, you have to decide today because we only really treat active clients. There is an opening for you to come get your shot next week.”

And it truly felt like THE opening.

I didn’t sleep all week. The portal was right there in front of me, like I could reach out and touch it, and suddenly after all these years of being shut, it was porous. An opening that may not have occurred again, if nothing else than due to loosing my nerve, like one of those ultra rare happenings in the sky that comes about every one thousand three hundred and seventy six years.

What would happen if I stepped through, to the place of no return. Everything would change in ways I would never be able to predict or prepare for. This was real jedi training. Could I handle it? was I ready? Like really? Would I be ok? Would this cut my life short in any number of ways and into a million different pieces? And would it matter in the end? Would there be regret? Would I want to go back?

Like an explorer, my mind, filled with doubt, while knowing in the end the answer to be sure: I would step on that ship. I would let the ocean take me. And I would assume the risk because something greater, my dharma, was calling, I simply had to see myself through. To the other shore. I knew I may not make it. Or maybe not all of me would. I knew I would not be intact. But I knew the journey would be mine, honest, rich and full. And sometimes it hurts to grow.

So it is that here we are. Happy 5 years to me! Zero regrets later and never having wanted to go back. May we all be courageous enough to take on the challenges of our lives and the times we live in! Aho!