Move in day, at last. What a month it has been.
March 1st, I ventured down to Nevada City to spend two nights here and put out some feelers for a place to land, just opening into the sense that I might need to leave home for a time. A week later, March 8th, I moved out of my house to embark on this ‘relationship sabbatical’ and dial in the plans for the place I would move to. I spent the better part of the next two weeks staying with a new friend. On March 22nd I arrived in the new house, camping out in someone else’s room while she was out of town, and other folx moved out, and on April 1st, I was at it for hours - cleaning, smudging, praying, and finally, physical moving into and beginning to occupy my new room. My own space. With its own door.
But not for long.
The night before, we received notice from the landlords - they want everybody out in 90 days. The house is for sale. I was warned that this could be coming, but it sounded farther off. As in, maybe the end of the year, maybe even next spring. Definitely they would give us four months’ notice. Definitely, it wasn’t happening right now. Well, turns out, that wasn’t true. I don’t think I ever moved into a place, other than a school dorm, already knowing the exact day that I had to get out.
I’m still certain that I was supposed to come here. And it’s strangely now for the exact 90 days that I was originally looking for a place to stay. But the tension just got amplified, big time.
Honestly, I’m a little bit nauseous. The groundlessness of this moment feels overwhelming. I’m here, but I’m not here. I’m safe, but I’m not staying. There is not even the illusion of a guarantee.
But I’m also grateful for this development. I’m kind of calm. There is no room for fantasy. Delusion has been pulled up by the roots. There is no illusion that this is, or will ever become, my “home.” No scenario in which I imagine putting down roots. There is, therefore, clearly no room for being distracted from the work of working on myself and on my offerings to the world, in this time. No room for chasing after any lesser forms of being in service, playing small or playing it safe. No point in finding small repairs to make around the property, getting the outdoor shower working, or deep cleaning the porch ceiling or the outside fridge, or even tending the beautiful and incredibly overgrown garden much. Full as it is, already, with seedlings that we have been watering, and now will not be here to harvest. There’s no point now, in indulging any of that. There is no contribution to the house or its occupants that I can responsibly make, beyond my presence through this temporary window of transition that we are now all in together. The work is clear - I am here to strengthen my ability to hold creative tension. I am here for my graduate level fieldwork in creating - living entirely by intuition and right action. There is no room to hedge my bets.
And this makes sense! For how could I coach other people into their own power and sovereignty as creators if I’m not also embodying and applying these practices completely myself? But it’s daunting. It’s dizzying. It’s provoking. It’s one thing to have a mentor tell me that one of her own most successful mentors built her coaching business while living out of her car. Reminding me that I really can start from right where I am, even in the turbulence of it all. It’s another thing to recognize that I might be 90 days away from that same position, too. Well, I’d rather get my feet under me here than wait any longer, you better believe it. Come on, intuition, come on, Divine timing - let’s sync up our calendars and get things rolling, baby! But the truth is, it’s always God’s timing, not mine. I may be in a rush, but God is not.
So the other truth is, I just entered a wandering retreat. This is my temporary dwelling. This is my meditation cave. This is the rocket launchpad for my heart’s work in the world. It has to be. What else would I be here for, than to let the land and the house hold me, while I learn to hold myself…
I used to have such beautiful dharma items. Powerful statues, filled with relics and blessed by masters, gorgeous thankgas, illustrations of the deities and Buddhas most central to my practice, ornate silver-plated offering bowls - all the makings of an elaborate shrine. Now, I carry my shrine inside myself. The altar that I set up in this room this morning is simple, and it will stay simple. A candle. A water offering. A photo of myself as a child, to remind me that the core relationship that I am here to build is between me and the Divine, and my inner kiddo. My little Play. I sometimes wish I had kept just one statue or two, and not given absolutely every last precious relic back to my ex-wife in our divorce. But that was a practice of radical non-attachment, and it seems, there is more work for me to do where that came from.
So I am in a room that is ‘nice.’ Bright, even in the day’s rain. Welcoming. Inviting. It is also detached from the rest of the home, energetically. It’s up on the third floor, and finished with conventional building materials - drywall and hard angles. Not the natural plaster and curves of the first two floors. As a result, and as a result of being just ‘my’ space - nobody else’s artifacts filling it with their auras and stories - it’s a little bit floaty up here. I feel like I’m not quite grounded yet. The walls are bare. The floor is bare. I don’t feel anchored.
And, I probably won’t do almost anything to change that, given the short term lease. I washed the walls and the window sills and the floors, because I knew that if I didn’t do it today, it might not happen at all. But I have more important things to do now, than spend much more time on “moving in” physically. I’m definitely taking everything off the “acquisitions list” I was drafting for this place. I may settle in more, come to like, or at least, get used to being in this room. I may come to feel more comfortable than I presently do. I hope so. But it will probably never feel like “home” because the exit clock is already ticking. (Isn’t that ALWAYS true though, and we just don’t know it?) The true home I am making? It is within. It has to be within.
One mentor of mine is known for saying that an experienced creator, when they get bad news, when they hit a setback, when a project or experiment ‘fails,’ they actually celebrate. Because the tension is higher. And tension always seeks resolution. So, if we can hold it well, more tension means more creative energy - more momentum towards our desired end result. I had this kind of response yesterday to the text message on the house thread. We have to leave?! Great! Equanimity. Enthusiasm, even. The world is handing me my marching orders to level up, creatively, superconsciously, spiritually. There’s no pretending that anything else is happening.
In the past, a curveball like this would have taken me down completely. But I am not seeking for my orientation to come from outside. So the groundlessness is not a threat. Yes, I am uncomfortable. But that is okay.
Oh, also? April 1st, move in day, was the first night of Passover. You couldn’t make this up. Because I just moved, I didn’t have Seder plans. I’m going to MANNA Festival next week, for a pilgrimage, to commune with my tribe on the other side of Passover. But my plans for this night were simple. To reflect on this moment of transition in my own life. My own spiritual and physical and emotional leaving of Egypt. The narrow place. Mitzrayim. Now though, it’s even more fitting than before. Because as idyllic as this house may be, surrounded by its fruit trees and forest and gardens, it is most assuredly NOT the promised land. I am most definitely, rather, beginning my Exodus with a real camp-out in the wilderness. Yes, this is just the first stop, on my wandering retreat.
You see, in creating, our current reality is always shifting. And the end results, they are always evolving too. Getting clearer. So the fact that I created this - “my very own studio and home” - doesn’t mean that that choice is “done.” It means that now THIS place is my new current reality. And from here, I can tune in again and again to the emerging version of that end result, all over again. My new “very own studio and home.” And keep moving forwards, and keep moving towards.
If I were just looking for stability, as in “I just want a stable home,” that would actually be a negative vision right now. It’s not inspired, it’s merely the opposite of what I don’t want. No bueno, creatively speaking. That doesn’t carry you far. What I’m looking for, then, is to be at home in myself ANYWHERE. So that I can be grounded, anywhere. Where, and how far, might I need to go, to arrive at that place? As far as it takes. This is the journey. Taking up space in myself until I can be fully at home here. My whole, authentic self, playing in time and space.
The bridge - the action to take now - is to be in acceptance. Radical acceptance. To keep focused, and to keep connecting with people, and to keep being authentic and honest about where I am. And to keep remembering, this is happening FOR me, not TO me. I’m not going to do this perfectly, but I’m going to do it. To keep choosing the higher, to keep rising up out of the lower. To acknowledge and bow to current reality and then to tune back into the vision and its energy, and take action from there.
I hold a prayer, that we all get free. Free from making enemies of others, or of any parts of ourselves. Free from fear and lack and limitation. Free to encounter the Divine in every encounter. To see everything that occurs as a blessing. Oh, how I am overwhelmed with blessings now. Drowning in blessings. Struggling to catch my breath, amidst these crashing waves of blessings. But I know, I chose this. I picked this journey out. I signed a contract with myself, long long ago, to evolve in these particularly provocative and painful ways. No living parents to call for help. No safety net to fall back into. No “home” anywhere, to go back to. Only onwards.
This is it. Level up. Welcome home, Play. Welcome home.
