[This post is for my Dreamers & Schemers, who expressed an interest in learning about my question journal practice at our last meeting.]
One of the lovely outgrowths of my Akashic Records practice is my question journal. It began simply as a way to keep track of the questions I wanted to bring to my Records. I started it on my cellphone because I don’t make a habit of carrying my Akashic Records journal around with me, and I needed a handy way of jotting down questions as they occurred to me through the day. Earlier this year, however, I noticed that my question journal had taken a life of its own. It had come alive for me in the sense that I would jot down questions, and in a span of days or weeks, I would get an answer in the course of my daily life.
Two recent examples illustrate how this can happen in vastly different ways. A couple of months ago I facilitated a workshop around the topic of self-care and self-reflection during election season. The discussion went deep and yielded a lot of insight, but also raised many questions. When I got home I jotted two items into my question journal: What is behind the energy of self-righteous indignation? and If truth is relative to the individual, then what stops us from going down a very slippery slope?
There’s a way in which those questions stayed with me, but I wouldn’t say they weighed very heavily on either my heart or my mind. A couple of days later I looked at a pile of books I’d been meaning to read, and chose one that I had begun a little while back, but hadn’t been in the presence of mind to finish. It was Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak. A friend had recommended it to me after I confessed that I was burnt out from youth work and had found myself, once more, completely adrift. I think it hit too close to home too soon when I first picked it up, but this time around I found myself gripped by the writing. Reading about the author’s own journey from academia to community organizing to burn out (a life trajectory that so eerily mirrored mine), gave me comfort that I, too, was finding my own way from the doors that had closed in my life.
Then, twenty-six pages into the book, the answer to my first question stared me right in the face:
My fear of failing as a scholar contained the energy I needed to catapult myself out of the academy and free myself for another kind of educational mission. But because I could not acknowledge my fear, I had to disguise that energy as the white horse of judgment and self-righteousness. It is an awkward fact, but it is true—and once I could acknowledge that truth and understand its role in the dynamics of my life, I found myself no longer embarrassed by it. (Palmer 26)
How did I know this was the answer to my question? Because the language of that passage so specifically speaks to what we had been talking about in my workshop, right down to the word “energy,” which I had used in place of “emotion” in my question. We had also talked about being able to release emotional triggers by recognizing and accepting whatever dark reflections of ourselves are mirrored back to us by others.
A couple chapters later, I found another passage that answered my second question just as directly, this time in the form of a quotation by John Middleton Murry:
“For a good man to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and narrow path compared to which his previous rectitude was flowery license.” (quoted in Palmer 51)
This resonated in my core because it is how I have experienced moral truth at its deepest level: When I follow my own internal guidance on an ethical question, it is as if the question disappears and I only feel one path before me that I am compelled to walk, no matter how difficult or politically incorrect or downright wrong it may appear to others.
Sometimes getting the answer really is that easy: You ask a question, and a short while later the answer appears on a billboard, in a text from a friend, or a conversation overheard. To be sure, I was in a very receptive state of mind as I was reading. But my approach to this book was also marked by a certain openness and non-judgment on my part. As a doctoral student I used to force myself to read books cover to cover, thinking I “should” read this, or I “ought” to know that. Now I have a much gentler approach to reading. I’ll take home a book if it speaks to me, but if I start reading it and it doesn’t seem to resonate, I’ll put it down without another thought, trusting that I will know the right time to return to it. I think this is what happened with Let Your Life Speak.
***
Other times, however, I live with questions for much longer periods of time. This was the case with a question I had in my flying trapeze practice, where I found myself working on a trick for a much longer period than I ever had before. I was feeling quite proud of myself for not falling into the energy of frustration and for being able to have fun during this confusing period of learning, but I still wondered what was in it for me to learn (apart from the trick itself, of course).
For some reason I never brought this question to my Records. Related advice actually came out of a different question that I had asked the Records back in June, when they suggested that I quit focusing so much on the technique of flying so I could train my awareness instead on the experience of it. I know I had this question in my journal back then but never bothered to ask it outright in a reading, even though I’d had many chances. I think something in me always already knew that this was a question whose answer I needed to experience for myself.
You see, the layout is a flipping trick, and when I first started learning it, my brain shut down for a good portion of it. I was present for the take off, I knew where to look during my swing out, I would feel myself oriented on my swing back, and finally I’d position myself for the trick. But when it came to actually flipping, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you how or when or where. Even when I allegedly did the trick correctly, I was completely disoriented, which meant that I couldn’t really learn much from trick to trick. My instructors would give me feedback on how to improve the flip, but their words fell uselessly to the ground. How was I supposed to control something I had no awareness of?
I did end up asking my Records one day why I kept blacking out, and they said that I am so scared of messing up that I end up bailing on myself. Well, that sounded familiar! Abandoning myself was an old habit that I thought I had dealt with, but here it was, smuggled into an activity that brings me so much joy. I think that fear is also what caused me to rush through my trick, always trying to be a step ahead of it so it wouldn’t get out from under me.
Little by little, though, I started noticing a growing sense of awareness. If I had been present only 70% in the beginning, one day I felt like I was 80% there because all of a sudden I could remember being upside down. Some weeks later I knew I was at about 90% when I could work on looking at my toes in that handstand position. My trust and patience finally paid off just a day shy of four months working on my layout. One day I finally felt what it meant to be in my body for the entire trick.
What does it feel like? Like I have all the time in the world. And in that luxurious stretch of time, I feel myself hanging from a base of strong arms and shoulders, with energy flowing through my legs all the way through pointed toes. At least for the first part of the trick, I feel beautiful. I feel like I am pure motion, and that I am where I’m supposed to be at each moment. Once I get to the back end it gets a little more complicated, but I am so peaceful that I can tell my body to get into the required positions without freaking out. It doesn’t always work out perfectly, but I am present the whole way through, which is the real triumph. The corrections I need to make going forward feel like minor adjustments by comparison.
For me learning the layout wasn’t about building strength, coordination, or power—though I could improve on all those measures. This trick was about finding presence. The funny thing is that externally my layout doesn’t look very different from how it looked on “good days.” But I feel a world of difference in my mind and body. When I shared a video with my family (who have seen me do that trick several times before), they immediately commented that I looked so comfortable and confident. My coach must have also sensed a sea change in me because he began entrusting me with the responsibility of deciding for myself when to flip instead of having to rely on his calls from below.
On my train back home a busker got on and started singing an old John Lennon tune that I had heard and sung myself countless times before. But today it hit me on a deeper level because I have lived the words as truth: There will be an answer, let it be.
0 Comments