I am there again. Standing on the edge of changing a habitual pattern. It always feels like this. It is like I am on this ledge that I wiling climb upon, now the earth is pushing my back forward, a kind of global push towards the edge. The earth knowing that it is way past time to jump. But I remain on the ledge. Terrified of my choices, which are really only two: jump or be pushed. Climbing down is no longer an option. Not climbing onto the freaking ledge in the first place, way, way too late.
So here I am, on the edge of myself, feeling pressured into a change, again. Normally this feeling undoes me. It makes me feel scared to the point of panic. But not this time. This time I am enjoying the view. It is kind of pretty up here on my ledge. I know that I am going to jump and with this realization comes the calm of a person who knows and feels certain that their next step is correct, right, supported by universal will. I know that I must make the leap as surely as I know that this movement and change will be just fine. I will be fine. The change will come and I will be better for it.
So in the time I remain on the ledge, I wait. I wonder if this might be the last time I visit my ledge. I know that is folly. I know I will return to this place again and again and again. I know it because this is my life. Returning to the place continuously because this is where I grow out old overworn, defeating living strategies. This is where I bring the parts of myself that lock me down and hold me back. I drag them often kicking and screaming to this beautiful ledge, and we sit together, they no longer able to run away as is their way and me freed from having to chase them down any longer. We sit quietly, the panic subsided. Me just ok, them relaxed in knowing that their purpose and usefulness long delinquent is ending.
No matter how many times I come here, it always feels like I am dying...and that I have come to believe is because I am. I bring myself here to die. It is the purpose of the journey. To kill off those parts of myself that are binding me to solutions, strategies and patterns that do not serve me. Maybe they saved me once upon a time, but now they only get in the way and block the sun. Grow I must or die I shall. A little ironic since the change itself feels like death. An ever encroaching hollowness that causes me to be emptied out again, all my plans, schemes, desires, dreams up ended again, emptied out on the ever thinning precipice of change.
So we all are here. All my selves. All the splintered fractures of me. Joined together on the ledge of no escape. Forced momentarily to sit with the many versions of me, and really look at what is there: the frightened child, the lost soul, the brave warrior, the tentative woman, the injured adult. Each one taking its turn to command its respect while owning its deficiencies. I stand with all the present versions of myself, me the watcher, the observer, almost like a peacock examining its feathery pride. I evaluate, I review. I marvel. I thank each version of me I see. I hug them all individually, grateful for their service. Then not unlike a cartoon cat whose nine lives leave their body, I become that cat in reverse. All those versions of myself leaping into my chest until there is only me alone on that edge. Just me, standing there with the spectacular view. Unified. And in that unification, I find an amazing inner peace. I am ok, despite the ledge. No one dragged me here. I am not forced to jump. I can see a new way down should I decide to leave the edge and return to more solid ground. I am not sure this time, do I jump? Do I climb down to safety?
But I know always that I will jump. I will take the leap because it is in the leaping that I am set free from me. All the ways I hold myself back and down, constantly in my own way. I move and push and connive, I plot and plan and become my own jailer repeatedly. So I know that my time on the ledge is time well spent. I know that I am here for my own benefit. I know that leaping into whatever version of myself awaits me are only accessible for the me that is brave enough to step, leap or spring into the abyss.
The earth no longer pushing at my back. I am not forced. I am not in peril. I am just here one more time on the edge of myself. I can remain the same. I can make the same choices, again. I can refuse to change. But I know that is not my life. The moment I see the possibility of change, growth, any refusal to move in that direction, and I am already dead. I may still take in air, food, sunshine, but my soul does not. The soul starves a living death, a rabid ghost walking the earth. Consuming everything in its path until there is nothing left at all, not of me, not of you.
I feel compelled this time to linger. So I sit down, dangling my legs over the edge. Kicking my feet back and forth. There is no hurry. There is no rush. I am going to change, again. It has been decided. I am in fact ready. But in a sudden and new manner of behavior, I do not act. I instead sit unified with myself and enjoy the view.
