Inhale. Make smoke- watch it wind and curl. Follow it all the way. Hover-float. Gulp down some more of that stuff. Turn up the music.Kick back. Take the edge off. Chill. Dance ’round the fire. For god’s sake do not walk through it. Can’t take the heat! Can’t smoulder. May burn to a crisp and then what? Run away. Brace myself. Pull down the hat a bit tighter. Buckle up. Throw on some shades. Dance the avoid-dance some more. No see, no feel, no hear and definitely no touching down long enough to press the ON button on the bullshit meter! Definitely not! Anything but that! Anywhere but there! Anything but sit with discomfort. Anything to avoid sitting in discomfort zone. My own discomfort zone!
There’s always an exit, always. Instagram, Instant spam, instant goop, Ipod, Ipad, iphone, Igods. Dancing the avoid-dance may be an epidemic! Nails to paint, Highways to ride, programs to watch! Then one day a sparrow hits the glass. The earth shakes. The flood comes through the living room. Someone has died. Someone has been born and I come to a halt. Sentences once dead all of a sudden start jumping off the pages. Meanings start shifting, Signposts start shimmering. My dots seem to be eclipsing my commas. Verbs overtaking my nouns, full stops insulting my exclamations! AhHas bouncing off the wall and bursting! It’s hitting. Dancing the avoid-dance can be hazardous to one’s health. Pink and fluffy illusions are suddenly starting to disintegrate through the haze, right smack in the middle of my amnesia! Laugh or cry the game is over and it’s late. The arthritis has already set in. The mold has already spread, The lover has already gone and the roof’s already caved in! But then another hit….Caved in but cracked open the sky. The sky, visible and naked and fully available like it had always been. But where had I been? Hey those falling shingles and mortar hurt. They hurt real bad! But I’m alive and I’m awake! The signs had been flashing but the inertia and fear weighed heavily like a ton of bricks! Resistance takes a lot of energy. Resistance is the problem not the actual problem itself …That’s what’s loud and clear! Can I handle that? Can I go on from here and how can life ever be the same again! Resistance can create physical and emotional blocks, illness, fatigue, unhappiness, creative blocks and financial hardship. It can be a serious liability. Ahha moments like these are like bright shinning pearls from the bottom of the deep, buried subconscious! My subconscious! “As long as you resist suffering, it’s a slow process because the resistance creates more ego to burn up. When you can accept suffering there is an acceleration of your process which is brought about by the fact that you suffer consciously. In the midst of the conscious suffering there is already a transmutation. The fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness!” Eckhart Tolle. And so the new dance begins. IT begins knowing that it won’t always be pleasant and easy. It will sometimes be tough. I will fall and I will bruise because that’s life. What IS is what is….dark, light, good, bad, ugly, pretty. That’s life. No point trying in vain and burning a lot of rubber, avoiding the inevitable anymore.Where has dancing the avoid-dance gotten me anyway? What a relief. What freedom; I do resist and I do dance the avoid-dance. I will probably keep doing it but now it’s less attractive, a bit more obvious when it shows up. Blind spots not as blind. Messages not as slow getting here. Progress not perfection. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
taralizdriscoll 