Completion of an assignment but not completion of the task...YET!

Self-directed learning assignment

Complete and write it up, to be handed in any time between now and 15 May

Two sides A4 to include the four following reflections: 

1. phases of conceiving what you wanted to experience
2. taking action
3. reviewing the process
4. what you learnt

This is intended to give you a real opening into the confidence to live your life from the position of your higher and self-authorising purpose.

What is this thing? 

What shape does it take? 

How should it feel?

Immediate reaction is to go for the most difficult thing that I definitely do NOT want to do, to wind my soul through the tightest wringer and leave no disturbance unshaken. What is there in my life that I fear doing? AND that I cannot/do not wish to leave undone? It is not to be something that I have already started, nor a repetition of something already done once.

List of possibilities:               Climb Mount Etna or some other very high mountain

                                                Act on Broadway or the West End or…anywhere

                                                Become a bestselling novelist, or poet or essayist

                                    

List of impossibilities:           Write a letter to **** in our village whose behaviour
has left me feeling abused

                                                Stop chewing fingers until they bleed

                                                Get back to highly proficient clarinet-playing

How fascinating! It seems that it feels more likely that I will climb a high mountain (I have done some mountain-climbing and abseiling in the past, have no interest or need to revisit!), act on an international stage (never done anything other than at school and in Young Farmers!), or get published (last writing prize I won was at school), than it would be to tackle the list of seemingly mundane, much more accessible things. I am constantly amazed by the perverted way in which we treat our own selves. All of the above passed through my mind with such ferocity and with such velocity that I was left winded. I kept coming back to that first one in my list of impossible tasks. 

It still sickens me to think about it…so it must be the task I should tackle. Should? Churned up as I record this I feel sick, my head spins. I try to visualise myself writing the letter. I retch. I try to imagine how I might feel on the other side, having completed the task but I get lost in my thoughts and feelings. I can’t describe it further here as I don’t want you to read it. [Even typing this up has left me nauseous and exhausted].

Some weeks later having driven myself to distraction with this task and then with Huna, I discuss it all with Jane and I decide to put this all to one side. Now is not the time, here is not the place. So now what?

I prevaricate forwards and backwards for MONTHS, or so it seems. Beating myself up, discovering the joy of seeking a project that will be joyful as well as challenging, and desiring to find a new way of working and honouring myself. Finally on January 4th I record the following in my blog:

Great, I think! That’s broken the back of it. And I sit and wait for “it” to happen. And sit…and wait… 

Flicking through “Kindred Spirit” one day I come across a competition – “The 2020 Local Legend Spiritual Writing Competition”. Finally I had my focus – a deadline that was meaningful (not that handing in this assignment isn’t meaningful but you know what I mean!) both date-wise (31 August 2020) and style/ethos/subject matter.

I started to map out some ideas and since then they have grown lives of their own as these things do. I love to watch “The Repair Shop” and one week they featured a chair whose back story included being hidden from the Nazis and being bomb-damaged.

Another story began around an abandoned farmhouse near to our home. It is one of my favourite places to visit and holds a beautiful, gentle energy. I started an outline for a story and then Covidia (the pandemic called Corona virus, the disease Covid-19) came closer and started morphing the storyline into something else.

Throughout I have gone through phases of Ah!, Oh!, Hmm!, and Grrr!  

1. I have discovered that:
2.  I need to be accountable to others who I trust;
3.  I need to state out loud and in handwriting what it is I am planning to do;
4.  I need something concrete to work towards;
5. my muse do expect me to put some effort in!
6. I am quicker to take action on something that I KNOW is achievable rather than something that I might not complete, or might fail at.

This journey continues of course and perhaps one day you might hear about me having had something published!