Recently, I've been mulling over a plan for presenting my culminating project to my cohort at The Graduate Institute. However, it's July. And I am a teacher who doesn't--at least not officially--"work" in the summer. So I've also been paddle boarding and otherwise adventuring, as well as attending workshops and reading and cleaning and organizing...which is to say I've been doing the things that, often, during the school year, I don't have as much time for as I'd like.
I've been procrastinating more than usual about developing my presentation plan. "Prep culm proj pres" has been on my to-do list for almost a month, but I haven't felt bothered by this "unfinished" presence. Nor have I been constantly worrying about it. Rather, I believe, I may finally be learning to float. Let me explain. This idea began to take root within me after one of my ritualistic nighttime readings of Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening. Nepo writes, "When we stop struggling, we float." He explains, "I remember learning to float. Mysteriously, it required letting almost all of me rest below the surface before the deep would hold me up. It seems to me, almost forty years later, that the practice of finding our faith is very much like that--we need to rest enough of ourselves below the surface of things until we find ourselves upheld." Learning to float requires a sense of surrender. When I'm struggling to swim and keep my head above the water--lofty goals, no doubt--I'm not fully giving of myself to whatever it is I'm struggling with. In my life, I have tended to be a struggler. Planning and thoroughly thinking things through certainly have their time and place, and many tasks couldn't be accomplished without them. But over planning and obsessively thinking and worrying about something usually aren't much help. From my understanding, some people can go through life never or rarely struggling in this way. I envy them. For me, learning to float has been challenging on many fronts--with intellectual tasks like completing a project for work or school, emotional tasks like developing a new friendship or nurturing a hurt one , or physical tasks like learning how to paddle board or do a headstand pose in yoga--the latter still being on my bucket list. In each of these cases, I see the truth of Nepo's claims, just like a pattern repeating itself in fractals at every level. As a dear friend of mine likes to say, "It's a physics thing." This is where mindfulness has been a great friend to me. The very same tools that help me look and listen to what's within have helped me learn to surrender. Don't get me wrong...I still slip into patterns of struggling tooth and nail, especially when I'm fearful. But then the words of a reiki practitioner for whom I have a lot of respect come to mind, "May your actions be rooted in love and not fear." Repeating this mantra, I remember who I am deep within and the person I aim to be, and that's an individual whose actions are, more often than not, rooted in love. Mindfulness helps me turn into the "storm" just enough, helps me immerse myself just enough into whatever "is" to then notice the feeling of being upheld. For it is a physics thing. We will always float. But as long as we're thrashing our arms and legs about wildly, trying to keep ourselves "above" the water, we may never know the peace that comes with floating. Nepo notes, "Perhaps faith is nothing more than taking the risk to rest below the surface." Being upheld is an amazing feeling. Have you felt it in your life, physically, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually? I've struggled, at times, on each of these levels, but I've also known the peace that comes with "floating" on each of them. In fact, this theme of delving into something just enough to be upheld and learning to trust that things will get accomplished or turn out just as they're meant to be will be the connecting theme of my project presentation. I will recount the journey of my diving in and being upheld at various points in my work. But I hope to share more than just my research. I hope to share my understanding of the peace that comes with learning to float. And perhaps someone else will be encouraged to let go, just enough, to know the serenity of being upheld. Buoyantly, LAH
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