To be overwhelmed, is to have been half born into the next place that we were not ready for, and to be alarmed at how loud and pressing the demand arrives that we give something of ourselves we are not ready to give, seeking a hurried way back to the way we had been.
It is to have been so uncomfortable where we were so as to have been rushing towards something new, in the hopes of a gentle salvation, only to be woken up to the full weight of that new demand on us, and not yet realising that the thing that struggles to belong to this place is not our selves, but our old way of being in the world, that part that still holds on to the old way of suffering.
To belong fully to a larger life, to inhabit a wider, more expansive way of being, something has to be threshed and surrendered.
We never get told the secret, that to half-arrive, unequipped and unrehearsed, is the very essence of Vulnerability, that essential and very necessary price of admission to the next place, and how it is the only way we can ever make the discovery about the true essence of Life and courage within us.
The only way to die, is to retreat. Not everything we do need look like progress from the outside, sometimes it is necessary maintenance, sometimes necessary preparation. But we all know when we are turning away.
Avoidance is the way we mumble our truth when we are ashamed to speak it, or shamed from speaking, out loud.
