Revelations burn crimson in the ashes of losses I do not grieve.
Announcement of the news delivers an inescapable relief.
Quarantine commands and executes the social distancing that I’ve postponed doing. The overdue detox uncages and frees flying butterflies of truth from restless and wild instinct.
In the topside world my teaching and social engagements abruptly halt.
I only cry once – straight forward and sorrowful tears, and the instant sadness loudly communicates a missing that pinpoints to my passion.
Besides this one reaction, all other cancellations are met with secret jubilation.
And in caffeinated solitude, I reckon with the honesty of unfiltered feeling.
Revelations burn crimson. And the flickering intensity of color traces the energetic location to where the epiphanies exist.
Blood-red like the color drumming the pulse of the sacral chakra, the root chakra governs our primal feelings of safety, security, sacred belonging.
A fortified sacral chakra stands secured in tumultuous times.
Nurtured roots relay the embodied reassurance that I am safe to be me, safe to speak my truth, safe to state my needs and safe to expressively live and flow freely.
My roots require a sustenance of radical acceptance, a self-focus freed from toxic critique and caringly watered wth enriched empathy.
I ground into my roots and there’s an instant release of truth-telling.
I’ve settled. I’ve silenced my needs, even from myself. Engrained thought-patterns have stilted the blooms of my presence. I’ve stayed a little too long in situations where my body feels dulled .
Self-forgiveness reroutes vital life-force into the gritty and muscular work of implementing incremental and sustainable change.
Here’s the real work, the only real work we’ll ever do, tending and ensuring the quality of the internal soil that harbors, anchors and cultivates the vibrant health of our roots.
And there are toxins that must be cleansed. Entrenching thought-patterns must be unearthed, cut out at the very root, and restructured back to the inherent foundational wisdom of the roots.
And this occurs daily, a moment-to-moment practice of harnessing the truth of my feeling and then speaking, sinking out of my “should” and hyper-focused on self mind and into my feet, into my breath, into the guidance of my heart and then deciding. The discomfort stings. The challenge creates the friction fueling what-is and what-is-destined to be an automatic shift into heart-aligned, spirit-guided higher thinking.
If I do this work now, in quarantine, I’m setting into motion inevitable change in situations and relationships that currently don’t resonate.
If I practice living in this grounded truth, that I am safe to be me and strength the access channel to my truth and voice my needs, then either my work-place environments and relationships will naturally readjust to this energetic state or fade away. I’ll be internally prepared to notice and receive the next aligned opportunity.
And the impatient creature in me does fantasize about skipping this uncomfortable integration of a lesson and moving away to Amsterdam.
Start from scratch. Hide the scars. Get a little high on European living for awhile.
Revelations tantalize in crimson, the fire to torch it all and sweep away the ashes to start somewhere new.
But my issues travel in my tissues. The external reflects the internal, and even if I hopped to Amsterdam, I’d end up biking around those lively city streets fuming and struggling with the exact same things.
I’d prefer to entertain that Amsterdam daydream with a vision of future me whose well-versed in the soul-work and thrives in a sacred-secured confidence bolstered by radically truthful living.
The revelations wink now in crimson. The red light district of Amsterdam floods into memory. I wore gold ballet shoes that precariously flopped off my heel when I cycled through traffic but I felt so exuberant and safe in sharing and being passionate and joyful and curiously myself.
So there’s a flicker of light at the end of this quarantine. The woman who’ll emerge will be more like my twenty-one-year-old self. She’s already here, in an Austin that is quiet and green and bursting in spring.
Let’s take a hint from spring and rejuvenate our aliveness.
Here’s to nurturing our roots, of diving deep and doing the great spirited gardening, so we can rise, radiate, and respond to whatever unfolds from a replenished foundation that flourishes in enlightened honesty, and with that, live in truths that heal and elevate our collective humanity.