some reflection.

It's amazing how a few days in your life can become so very weighty in so short a span of time. Oh, everything is fine, but I've been privy to some things that are difficult to wrap my head around. I do accept them, but I'm feeling overwhelmed by their enormity and so I've needed to take a step back into myself. Sit, literally, in my bedroom chair for several hours straight. Cook.

I haven't slept for two nights straight, at all, which is not like me at all. I've never had a problem with sleep a day in my life. Catching some dozing hours in the early morning and getting nothing at all productive all the day long. My stress levels are high, some from sad things entrusted to my care, many others from good things not allowing my brain to rest for nigh a minute. I try to give my cares up to the universe and see what flows from all of it.

I am an introvert by nature though many who know me find this hard to believe, but I draw my best strength from being alone. It allows me the time to process the overload of sensory information.

I don't know why I am posting this here. This is my sort of happy-go-lucky space. But when we receive reminders of reality staring us in the face, are we to just pretend they don't exist? Of course not. I think of the yoga sutras: allow it in, acknowledge its presence, accept it...let it go. Or that saying, god grant me the serenity to accept the things that i cannot change, to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Horrible things have happened to several people i know, whether they are close to me, merely acquainted, or whether we don't know each other at all. I know this is a byproduct of all our lives at some point. I feel that I bear their burden especially weightily these last few days, and I have a couple of my own.

My life is in another transitional phase, and while it's largely so good, it's still a bit painful to move in a direction that's so different from the one I've gotten fairly used to. The unacknowledged fear, no doubt, is contributing to the strange way I feel. Fear of what's to come. I know what I need to do, I need to let it flow through me, and release it, and come into the calm aftermath of its presence.

There is someone new in my life who means a lot to me. Older friends are also taking on new importance. So many shifts, so many winds blowing this tree to and fro. it's just all a bit dizzying. my roots are strong, but it's hard to hold onto all my beautiful leaves and blossoms. it's hard to go where they go, to follow the changes to the new place where they'll land.

this is what happens when you go 24 hours without sleep, i guess. i will try to breathe. i will do more asana (tomorrow afternoon, in fact). i will sit in quiet meditation and observe all that comes up and breathe, accept, accept, let go. i know that love is what will remain. the divine is me, and i am divine, and to be divine is to be love. love is powerful and it lifts us up out of the uncertainty, it soothes fear like a mama's hand to her baby's head.

if you've read this far, thank you. it's an introspective day, a much-needed day to slow it all down, retreat from loved ones temporarily, and just listen to myself. i hope that by tomorrow morning i will have slept long and well and things will start to feel a little more real and a little less surreal.

peace.