Unpacking the Subconscious

Eating fire
is your ambition:
to swallow the flame down
take it into your mouth
and shoot it forth, a short or an incandescent
tongue, a word
exploding from you in gold, crimson
unrolling in a brilliant scroll

To be lit up from within
vein by vein

To the sun

- Margaret Atwood


Unpacking the subconscious. There is really no way around it and lately I've had no other choice but to unload. My dreams tell all, with a cast of characters I'm surprised have made an appearance. Sometimes when doing this work it feels like I've taken a million steps backward. An unending cycle. I guess it goes with the nature of what one of my past mentors told me. When we grow and exude more light, it has a tendency to show our dark spots even more clearly. Makes sense. It isn't always pretty but I've been left with no other choice really. With this, memories having been bubbling up to the surface in an aggressive fashion. Things I don't think I have fully processed and the emotional baggage that comes with it. I don't want to be numb to it and at the same time it can be confusing trying to decipher what lays behind it all. In a day and age where everyone has tips and tricks of the trade I state it clearly now, I don't know if I am equipped to handle it in a productive way but at least I'm feeling what I need to feel. I don't have all the answers. I don't know all the whys, but I do my best to show up to it as I lean into the uncomfortable areas, accepting responsibility for where I am now no matter the challenges I've experienced. And who would've thought there were still resentments buried deep beneath the surface.

When I arrived back home from India this year I felt myself yearning for what lacked in my childhood. Strange, I know. I had no idea it was there so deep within my subconscious, because when I was young I knew how to put on the face that all was fine, and essentially I thought is was, never minding the deep sadness that laid beneath the surface. A survival mechanism that held me together in times of need but in the end can weigh heavily if never fully accessing the gravity of what needed to be eventually felt. The defense mechanisms had their purpose and the challenge is to put them away when growth is necessary. This yoga stuff really works. It's not always about bliss and peace of mind, its also about keeping watch over what arises within because what we are really doing is undoing.