The Great Unknown is showing up again.
I'm waking up...again, but in new places.

This might not make much sense in the moment, and my discussion has gotten away from the specifics of art, but it all comes together. Today, I'm more in the therapy side of art.

This is the spiral of life.
Maybe the spiral takes on more of a swaying motion at times.

Back....Forth.
Asleep....Awake.
In....Out.
Pain....Healing.
Dissociation....Presence.
Life...Death
(Therapy...Art?)

Seeing it this way, it's more like a continuum.
The continuum model feels more accurate to my current experience.
In reality, I think it's more than even a continuum...existence is multi-dimensional, but the habit is to break it into pieces.

I'm walking toward middle.
I'm envisioning a Hoberman sphere.
Life is a sphere, and it can transform without being broken.

(Photo reference here)

Some days, when I'm expanded, I get out a piece of writing with all of the elements: The whole package of writing, sketch, song...
Then, there are days where sometimes there is only writing and a song.
And maybe just writing, or a song, or a sketch would be ok.
Whatever is true in the moment, whether contraction or expansion.
Life sways and stays.

Inhaling...Exhaling.

I'm deciding to give myself permission to show up, wherever I am dimensionally, and on whatever continuum I might be walking along within the sphere, during any given moment.

My only mistake is to be rigid. It doesn't work for this journey.
Even a tightrope is not static.
Rigidness impedes movement. A rigid structure throws all its energy into the inevitable fall.

I've fallen a lot, and lived through it, but I'm ready to be made better.

I'm being made.

Being made is is a process because reality is always moving.
Anything moving is in process.

The reality of life is that straight lines do not exist in nature.
I see nature as one of the most absolute truths of existence.
Working against nature causes things to eventually crack and break.
Including, our souls.

Failure isn't always bad.
We learn from failure.
It's not always the end of the world.
It seems some of the most successful people in the world have thrived off of it.
Yes, failure can be overcome...
But when you really look, it's not the failure itself, but the flow after failure that has brought success.

So, why not focus on flowing without the setup to fail?

Hate is rigid.
Love flows.

The failure approach seems very industrial in my mind.
It's motto could be, "Produce more. Care less."
It's even in our western exercise models..."Go to the point of failure" to build a stronger body.
It can, and does, work for a while....sometimes.
Our culture, and many modern inventions, were born out of a cycle of failure.
But there's no real inherent value in failure, other than sometimes we survive, and learn something from it. And, thank god, we do.

But it's like sometimes we approach life as if failure is the goal.

For all that has been born out of it, sometimes failure fails, and the journey calls for something else.
What if the approach to a single life has been wrong for a long time, even if it's still standing.
Even if you've built a longer lasting rigid structure from the losses.

There comes a time for change.
It's where things begin and end.
The Alpha and Omega, of sorts?
Not to get way in over my head...

The experience of unexplainable, untouchable pain of the cracks and breaks in my body often brings me here.

What if...
What if pain was there, and it was your first responder?
What if pain is there, and without it, you'd just keep denying the reality your life?
That every bit of your existence needs love.

***

I've come to see sitting day-in and day-out in chronic pain, like sitting with a koan.
Maybe it is my koan.

My reply now, is to love myself.
But not from the inside out, like I've always believed was the path for me, before.
I'm not saying that pain exists because there is an absence of connection and self-love.
I'm just challenging myself to keep connection and self-love in the presence of pain.

I've done a lot of remodeling on the inside.
My thoughts go the way I would like for them to, much more often.
Overall, I'm a generally positive person. At least, I feel positive.
I am always a work in progress on sifting and refining my character.
Much investment and focus has gone toward these things.

But none of that has helped me to have compassion for my physical self.

The pain my body is in is bringing my inside and outside closer to the middle of the sphere, where my soul lives.
As I heal, I recognize there is more than an inner and outer body.
There is The Great Unknown

All this time I have believed I could become healthy and whole, and live without my body.
There has been no appreciation for it.
I have seen it as the ongoing cause of my problems.
But it turns out, the internal, external and my soul are like a trinity.

***ENTER WORKING WITH CLAY in relation to forming mind/body/soul connection. Discussion for another day.***

For the first time in my life, I am seeing that my physical body is maybe actually a real part of me.
And my body has value.

And now, when I really look...I don't think I've been living with my body since I was 2 or 3.
Because I don't remember ever being in my body. Ever.
I experienced several broken bones as a child, and none carry the memory of physical pain.
I had a long and difficult induced-labor without drugs at the age of 18, no problem.
I ran an entire 26.2 mile marathon with a bum knee when I was 19.

I felt pain, but did not experience it until I was 28 years old, going through schooling to become a massage therapist.

Perhaps there really was no pain in my body until that specific time, or maybe that is when I forced myself into the experience of my body, before I was ready on any conscious plane.

For almost the past decade, it's been an all out war to get closer to the wisdom my body holds, and escape it, all at once.

***

What if my body is here to stay, at least for a while?
Can I accept my brokenness, as it is?
Can I be in it and feel this pain, and still deem it worthy of love and care?

What's more...
Can I accept it not being in pain?
Can I accept feeling good?

These concepts are profoundly terrifying, but in life, maybe there are some necessary horrors.

***

I can't write it out in a trail update, but something so destructive happened to me, on the journey to healing, when I was 26/27 years old....It put me over the edge.

I'm making connections...

I tried to get through this without ever going through it.
I thought it could be killed off, so I could go on.
Maybe the pain is my body regenerating, coming back to save me.
I was crushed at the join of life and death, and left in a limbo that's never resolved.

I still don't know how.
Does my body have answers?

I am both near and far from a place of reconciliation with my body, mind, and soul.
But light is coming through, and I've never been here before.