ebb and flow, flub and owe

Top of the world! I've hit my stride, I'm in my joy, living my purpose, fully aligned, showing up for my best creative self, then BAM!

Zip.

Zero.

The long, dull lull.

When a creative cycle passes, all I can do is deflate and wait. But that goes against all conditioning to get busy! do! make! express and impress! So I beat my head against it all: against this lull in particular, against lulling about town in general, against whatever it is in my nature is that shunts me back into the dull lull every single time.

And then I indulge in ridiculous! I started a blog? I thought I could write a novel in verse?! Someone–anyone–wants to read a poem?

My cruelty is stunning, laughable, an old friend. This pattern plays out not once in a long while, not once in a regular while, but ACROSS ALL TIME. (Yes, yikes.) I am never not moving through one phase of it or another. Superpose to self-doubt, self-doubt to superpose. No wonder my psoas gives out sometimes.

* * *

If you’re familiar with human design you might think, with a chuckle, Ah. Classic sacrally conditioned Manifestor. (If you’re not familiar with human design, I encourage you to get to know yours. There are scores of good resources out there for learning about your energy type, your strategy, and your authority in decision making. BIG life-help.)

Manifestor or no, we’re all subject to ebb and flow–it’s basic, nothing more than CHANGE. It's the moon, stupendulous and compelling, insofar as it’s about to be not-the-way-it-is-right-now. It’s the moon’s plaything, the tides. It’s the steam that magically leapfrogs out of the roiling pasta pot then vanishes and reappears slant and sleight on a wintry kitchen window. Nice trick.

It’s a natural progression, the wax and wane. Useful, even. Yet, charge it with an inner-critic rant, some conditioning, a little shadow baggage, and we’ve got ourselves Some Suffering, in response to simple nature. Is it any wonder we’re so tired?

* * *

In the middle of a critical-rant-creative-lull, I’m tempted to take my own inner discord as evidence that I really should be doing something different with my life. Petulant, I whinge a little. I cry foul that I can’t just write full-time, I still have to clock in, make haste, make do, prop up my driver’s side mirror with dowel rods and hockey tape. Whinge, whine, waah. Yet I know: move into inner harmony with WHAT IS, and the miraculous will follow (that the hockey tape holds is a small one).

The current current--whether it’s full-on, delicious, manic, creative flow or the just-okayness/crapness/meh of the in-between--is only a phase. No sooner does one kick off than it takes up spooning after its lover-opposite. The back and forth is the constant. Maybe we are not destined ever to be done with slipping back and moving forward again, until death do us release.

Maybe meanwhile I can release myself from the expectation that the back and forth should ever cease. Get good with what IS and run with that, love that for the pure aliveness that it is.

* * *

CONTRAST is what IS. It’s what we’re here to experience. And change is contrast over time. Really, where would we be, creatively or otherwise, without our meh? (Or our blech, for that matter. Think of the pure elation you feel waking up on the other side of a stomach flu, the hallelujah! of no longer needing to notice what your GI is getting up to.)

Maybe I can drop the judgment. Maybe instead of deciding I’m a flake I can let it sink in with full-on, toe-curling pleasure: I get to rest. I get to be in the quiet, in the mystery of pure wave-particle potential. shh. ahhh.

Maybe I owe myself a little gentleness, some deconditioning, a walk on the beach, my shadow and me. Some Trucing.

I agree to adore my whole self is probably all that needs to go into the peace treaty.

Because that includes my critic, desperate to keep running the show. It includes my relentlessly icky, doubting, cruel bits, all the shadow shit that doesn’t make public record. It includes whingy waah me. It includes pouncing me, ready to punish at the first blush of perceived fail-flubbery. Not to mention it includes fuckingfantastic me.

* * *

I think it’s worth mentioning here too that against the backdrop of a culture of content creation and consumption that is nothing short of rabid, it’s easy to succumb to inner whispers of why bother? How weird is it to do a word count and think, oof, four minutes, who’s gonna stick around for that? When at the same time, I’m wondering, if I post only once a month will everyone write me off as totally irrelevant?

What’s too much? What’s too little?

Hasn’t someone said/danced/swung/brushed/baked/sung it better?

We could go blue asking questions that don’t matter. Maybe best become bedfellows with a few that do.

When do I feel most at peace, most joyful, contented, free?

Can I allow myself some spaciousness, honor my need for rest?

If I agreed with myself to full-stop sometimes (with joy), what would that look like?

In a lull, can I be present (and compassionate) with all the resistance/ick/shadow crap that rears up?

Can I be my own witness, alongside fundamental peace and freedom and joy, and sit bedside with whatever needs to come up and out?

Can all of me just BE?

* * *

Genius is no machine. It's spare sometimes and it's a frenzy. What say we learn to trust that our own limitless genius is both sun and moon, gnocchi and spoon, of all its phases?

There’s a poem by Rumi called “The Phrasing Must Change.” Maybe another day we could sit with some of its gorgeous lines. Today its title alone seems a good way to honor the inner discord of creative ebb and flow, flub and owe. I think we owe it to our own gorgeous, fractal, self-similar, tidal natures to change our own phrasing, to accept the cadence of our creative expression (our pure life force!), its need for punctuation, pause and rest. And to change how we talk about it. How we live and love it.

And by it I mean us.

Our lovely selves.

Me and you.

Us-two.

xo Lisa

P.S. Ok, one little snippet of the Rumi poem, since now I see that I’ve thought to use a pasta pot and looky here, a pot, too, in the poem!

…empty of self and filled

with love. As the saying goes, The pot drips what’s in it.