I'll be 59 in a few months. The public me laughs at that. There must be a math mistake I say because I'm sure I'm just 26. But the inside me sees the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years of my life slipping away. So much wasted time. So many promises to change, but the change always starts tomorrow. Well, I'm running out of tomorrows.
I've always lived in my head. The idea of the Animus is in my head, the idea that I'll finally make a change and have a meaningful life is in my head. I knew that God exists like I know that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. It's a fact to me. It's not in my heart. I don't feel it in my heart. Oh, but wait, I'm feeling something now because I just started to cry. It feels like the crying that happens when I expose myself, when I let down my walls and let my little pink unprotected heart out into the light. That crying only happens here, meaning at my keyboard, and when I'm in a session with Marc. If I exposed my heart more often would it get stronger, or will I have to be crying like this all the time?
Lately I'm so aware of the demon. I had thought I could beat him, then I thought I must not want to because if I really wanted to, I would. So, does it follow that if I arm-wrestled Arnold Schwartzeneger and I lost, would it be because I just didn't want to win enough? Or if I thought I couldn't make a change or really start to live, or get to the Animus until I beat Arnold, would I be setting myself up to stay stuck in the same place forever? There's a familiar feeling here. Am I so afraid of making a change, that I've given the demon the muscle power to keep me in my place? Am I really struggling to beat the demon or am I struggling to stay away from the Animus? So here's what I feel like I'm hearing from the Animus, "I'm not a reward for doing everything right. You don't have to scale Everest or beat Arnold to get to me. But you do have to surrender. I'm like oxygen. I'm all around, breathe me in. Just let go, surrender to me, breathe, breathe deep. The demon is real, but some of his power is coming from you."
Am I just making this up because it makes a good story? I don't know. It feels right, and, of course, I'm crying, always a good sign for me. Dare I hear words from God and write them down? I was at a Japanese lantern festival this evening. The Japanese believe that if you float a lantern in a river, it will carry the soul of your loved one out to the sea, then to the sky where it becomes a star. There were hundreds of paper lanterns with candles in them floating on a clear calm lake under a moonlit sky. I felt so close to spirit that night and a friend of mine said "This is the world I want to live in." Me, too. And it all seemed so possible by the lake, and it all seems so possible here when I'm here writing. Will it be so possible tomorrow in the light of day? How much more of my life will I let slip away until I live the life I can only write about now? So I'm going to give myself a homework assignment. I'm going to carry my quotation from God, my message from the Animus around with me, and I'm going to read it as often as possible, when I'm slipping into automatic pilot, and especially when the demon is strongest, late at night. And I'll breathe. And I'll breathe.