Today’s Prompt:
there is no shelter from the fierce blasts of change unless you break the force of being alive right order in any new beginning takes digging through the mud of habit and wounded desire for the large roots of old belief to find the undertone of your own voice speaking greater truth —Maria Popova
Early this year, I participated in a 3-part lecture series with poet David Whyte. It was called Start Close In, after one of his poems, which begins:
Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take. _
It’s wild how many self-help books, podcasts, and certification programs I have consumed (and almost entirely lost) looking for a fresh start.
Without turning around and teaching someone else what I learn, I find information doesn’t even reach my trunk, let alone my roots. It may stir me for a moment, but that motivation is extrinsic.
I am pulled by it.
In my experience, if I am seeking real momentum and trying to shift my circumstance, extrinsic motivation doesn’t work. Like giving birth, pulling isn’t the way.
What does work is, as David Whyte says, starting close in. Re-inhabiting my original skin. Getting quiet and very honest with myself. Considering what I really love in this sweet little life and locating, with humility, who is really standing in my way (hi, it’s always me).
When I make the time to switch off any method of hearing the people I pedestalize, lay on the floor for two hours, stare at a tree, or have deep exploratory chats with people I love, this is when I find myself within reach of the shift. When I can feel what compels me. When I recognize for what I’m really hungry.
And then I feel the push. Intrinsic motivation. This is how creation happens. This is how I birth a new version of myself.
The idea for this challenge, for example, was fueled by a spark I felt looking at one of Popova’s cards. That same spark that ignites in my chest when I catch any existential thread and, using words, follow it to its end. When I make sense out of something previously incoherent.
Do you ever feel that holy spark? I wonder what you’re doing when you feel it.
Sometimes I cry when I wrap up a good essay. When the idea lands firmly like a seed in soil, ready to devote its life to creating more life.
I want to touch that place more. Because it feels like I’m stepping into a river of my core identity. A channel to unraveling the big questions my life is trying to answer. Making strides on my existential homework.
We can’t hide from the fierce blasts of change. But I find that when I show up for the generative whispers of my soul, I feel moored to something indestructible. To an impenetrable undertone.
A kind of undercurrent that sustains me the way social approval never could.
When I live in service to my inner wilds, I find I can meet the changing tides like an old friend.
If a shift is what you seek, may you find the courage to get quiet and start close in.
This is day 7 of a 100 day challenge I’m co-facilitating with Natalie Joanne of The Sacred Path. You’ll find all of my 100-day posts here.
Jump into this challenge any time! Share your own response to the card pull in the comments on this post and join our chat for more eyes on your work.
Loving this commitment every day. This week went by fast! Continually grateful to share the journey. I still need to read your posts from the past couple of days but looking forward to responding!!!
Day 7 Post on Instagram
jasonmasek1_
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSAkWUlEVh5/?igsh=MXIzYTY1YjF2Njc2eQ==
Another beautiful piece, Leigh. I love the distinction between feeling pulled toward something vs. feeling the push of something, and the image of a birth. It's really something I'm now sitting with, because (like we chatted about the other day!) I constantly feel pulled by all sorts of things that I love. Also, this line really got me: “Considering what I really want to feel in this sweet little life and locating, with humility, who is really standing in my way (it’s always me).” Oof. Yep. I feel that.
Here’s where I went with my day 7:
I've spent the past five years rooting through the earth, searching for the undertone of my voice. I do think I've gotten closer; licking through mud, I’ve tasted its timbre. I've hit rock, had to dig sideways before shoveling back down again. At times I sat on the rock I’d hit, thinking maybe that was it, that was the undertone—until an earthquake of loss and devastation shattered the rock, free-fell me down down down until rock was rubble and roots were larger. I can’t see in this dark. Can only press my skin into surfaces: hands wrapping roots, fingers digging into dirt, palms scraping against rubble. Don’t know what I’ve found or which direction to go next. One change, now that I’m way down here, is that I’m struggling a little less. Or trying to. Trying to let the roots guide me, trying not to panic. Trying to be still and trust. Trying to listen deeper and wider. Mostly, all I hear is my longing, my confusion. So I keep sitting quietly in the dark of this earth, waiting until I can touch or hear or taste or smell which way to dig next.