Shades of Gray

I haven't been posting much recently and neither have you. It's been a hard month for all of us I think, but then March always seems to be. Some people call it March Madness. I call it "Wham Bam March" because it leads into what is usually a wonderful "Thank You Mamm, April." Astrologically, we've been finishing up a Mercury Retrograde, which is one of those periods where everything seems to fall to pieces on us, especially anything involving machinery or technology. (Had problems with your car? Computer? Oven blow up and burn your house down? Yeh, I thought so.) We also were faced with finishing up the period of Pisces, which is all about duality, finding balance, a middle ground.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, listing tons of personal examples, balance is the hardest thing in the world for me to achieve. My boyfriend, Mikey, has an inner sense of balance that drives him perfectly and I'm so envious of that quality. He can work all day, but know when his brain is so tired that it's not doing any good to work any further. He can watch a television show and then go back to working more without getting sucked into the tube and sitting in front of it for the rest of the day.

I wasn't happy with the environment in which I grew up. Most of us aren't. I grew up in a very abusive household and I find that so many of the decisions I make today are based on not wanting to become what I saw growing up. I mean, I bolted from Florida the day after I graduated high school and moved to Los Angeles to live on the streets -- that's how bad I wanted my life to change. I was very driven to not let my family's negative traits affect me, so I threw my all into that. I had also grown up being very inspired by the likes of Madonna, Mariah Carey, anyone who worked themselves to near exhaustion really. I felt that was the way you had to get anything accomplished in life because it was the polar opposite of what I saw growing up.

So, I became one of them. Well, sort of. You can't escape where you come from and no matter where you go, there you are.

You see, I have fluxuated for years back and forth between total extremes. Either I have a month where I get four hours of sleep a night and eat perfectly healthy and work out every day and study Kabbalah religiously - or I have a month where I get 12 hours of sleep a day, eat junk food, never work out and never even think about anything beyond the surface of this physical world. Now, the good news is, more often than not, I'm in the head space of choice A. The bad news is, I just recently realized it's no better really than choice B.

One family member, with whom I grew up and am very close to, me called recently for my help in getting out of their physically and emotionally abusive relationship with their spouse and with themselves. I was, of course, thrilled to hear this because I love this person so much and was ready to drop everything, get on a plane and come help my family through it. But it wasn't to be. By the next day, all was forgotten and they asked for me to forget it too and just act as though everything was fine.

It was like I'd been regressed to being a 15 year old again. I was myself as a little boy again, being asked to forget, being asked to block things out, being asked not to tell. That was my life, every day of my life, as a kid. "Pack your bags, we're leaving!" one minute and then "Unpack them, we're staying!" the next. False hopes of something better given and taken away every day.

I called back this person a few days later and I told them, "I am no longer trapped in your cage and I do not have to come along on this roller coaster with you like I did when I was a child. If you're not willing to change your life, I don't want to hear any complaints about it and when you are being abused, I don't want to hear about it until you've taken steps on your own to actually change it."

I thought to myself, perfect! How liberating! But there was a problem I hadn't thought of. For some reason, even after having this talk with this person, I still felt completely depressed. Immersed in depression actually! Maybe more so than before! Why? I kept asking myself why over and over until it finally came to me.

I realized, after much thought and meditation on the matter, that I'd never really left that cage at all. Not since being a kid, really. I may have just told this person that I was not on their "roller coaster" of a life anymore, but the truth is that even though I wasn't physically in their presence, I was still on it in spirit. All I had done was create the reverse lifestyle, the polar opposite of what I saw growing up -- which Mariah and Madonna will tell you, ain't all that healthy either! In fact, it's just as abusive, as anything extreme tends to be.

I had not rid myself of my family's negativity. I had simply eaten it and tried to use it as fuel. I didn't leave the table. I just walked to the other end of it and said, "I'd rather sit here."

Going to the extreme opposite is never an answer because it's destination is still the same, especially when it's rooted and born of negative energy to begin with.

So I resolved to really free myself from the cage and really jump from that roller coaster once and for all this month. And yet, there was still more challenge even after doing that! Then comes the challenge of finding your personal shade of gray. Because it's not enough to just find the gray area. I mean, I was so glad just to finally find gray at all this month that I, more often than not, wallowed in the darker shades of it. I was just so impressed that I could actually eat Taco Bell and go to the gym in the same day, ya know? That it wasn't all or nothing! I was so impressed by this that I kept doing it over and over, but forgot that our purpose is to find as much "light" as possible and make our lives the lightest shade of gray we can make it.

This probably sounds ludicrous to most people, but any extremist out there will feel me. It's the hardest thing in the world for some people to do, finding that gray area and then once you're there, trying to make it as light of a gray as possible.

Interestingly enough, I was pulling runes last night and got this message: "At the end of each journey is the land of balance. The reunion of what is above and below is united in our own consciousness. What a gift to have the ability to be of both worlds. Heaven above you and Earth below you unite within you and support you on your way."

It was raining hard during my meditations last night and I fell into a sort of trance towards Midnight and started just writing in stream of consciousness:

As the times change and the rain falls down, I go into myself to save the world in my own way this Spring. Many images fill my head, one of myself leaning back on springs, waiting to be launched. I've been here so long, when I finally let go... The rain of Spring cleanses me, melting the ice caps surrounding my true self. It washes away the damage inflicted by myself and only myself, for all the fires I asked to walk through, they were mine to burn. And so I'm burning. With my Sagittarian fire I burn all self-consciousness, self-doubt, all self-consumed thoughts and from the ashes of what is burnt I will rise like a phoenix from the flame. The rain douses the flames just in time, making sure I am not burned completely. Just enough. Just enough to be. Now pink and of only muscle, I am but raw nerve. I feel all. I am torn open. I am vulnerable. I am pure. I have begun again. Welcome to Spring. The time of daylight is changing today and with it, so must I.



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JasonCurious.com
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DV8Entertainment.com


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Kabbalah.com
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Have questions? Need advice? Want to share? EMAIL Jason at jason@jasonsechrest.com