Soul Trapeze

Oceans

I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.

And nothing

happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves...

Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and we are standing now, quietly in the new life?

(Juan Ramon Jimenez, translated by Robert Bly)

Tibetan Buddhists call it the bardo, a state between death and rebirth; the place of being in-between. It seems I’ve been navigating a soul bardo for many months now. Here I am, still not knowing where my life is meant to open next in the foundational ways of work, home and relationship.

Someone once described it to me as being on a trapeze. Having let go of the bar on which you were swinging, you are left hanging mid-flight and just hoping there is the security of a new bar coming steadily toward you. And with great faith, you trust there is a net to catch you, should you miss and fall.

I can feel afraid in this in-between place; I can feel the excitement of expectation; I can feel grief for that which I am letting go; I can impose a direction, just to have an illusion of control; and I can numb myself in a variety of ways to any sort of feeling at all. In these months, I have felt and done that all.

As I move through the moments of my daily life, feeling and truly living many of them, I wonder if maybe this is it? Maybe this is my new life in which I am quietly standing?

Somehow, while that is true, in the paradox that is God, I also feel a tremendous wonder and curiosity...sensing and having faith in an impending and brilliant light of a new paradigm.