Dive! Dive! Dive!

A few days ago, my husband and I watched a submarine movie. I realized how the submarine, with its inevitable dive to the bottom, is a perfect metaphor for some of the energy we’ve been experiencing lately.

For some time, many of us have felt compelled to dive deep into ourselves and our lives in order to grow. It’s always a choice, but sometimes we get a nudge (or a firm shove) from life or our nonphysical teams. We often need to dive because it’s easy to skim along on the surface and focus only on the shiny spiritual feelings we want to experience. We think we’re making progress, but the true, full and lasting spiritual expansion we want can’t happen if we’re still holding tight to the anchors weighing us down. And the deep dives help us release those anchors once and for all.

It’s not surprising that we sometimes resist the deep dives. Think about the submarine movies you’ve seen. If you’re like me, when you watch the submarine dive (or fall) deeper and deeper, at some point you realize you’re holding your breath. You swear you feel the pressure that’s causing the sub’s gauges to crack and its hull to shudder and squeal. We often think of diving deep as something uncomfortable. But it doesn’t need to be.

And there’s treasure down there. Incredible treasure.

In one of my last blog posts, I talked about touching down lightly and then moving on. It’s been a surprise to me to experience how we can do this AND dive deeply in ways that benefit us. It shouldn’t be a surprise, however, because when we live and play multidimensionally, the sense of the time-based linear falls away.

Diving into beliefs
A few days ago, I was called to play with beliefs around my physical body and its health. An area that’s been challenging for me. I’ve had strange and serious physical conditions show up periodically since I was five years old. Most recently I had surgery to debulk a brain tumor pressing on my brainstem, surgery my body is still recovering from now, five years later. (In an interesting aside, I’m just now seeing those two number fives adding together to become a one, the new beginning. Thank you Spirit!)

My aside aside, over the past few months I’ve needed to dance with the possibility that the tumor has regrown and invaded my middle ear. Different doctors, radiologists and tests. Different opinions. This situation left me with the choice, yet again, to choose the path of fear or the path of knowing and trust. I chose the latter. I left behind a doctor who talks the language of fear. But I also needed to come face to face with a heavy, lingering belief that there’s always something going wrong with my body.

I took a deep dive.

I went into meditation and was met by a fierce and feisty badger. He raced back and forth around a low corral filled with fluffy baby ducks. The ducklings represented the cells of my body, especially the newly created ones that are constantly being born. The badger believed it was his job to monitor and control these ducklings, to watch for the next physical problem to appear. He didn’t realize, however, that his constant pacing and tense hypervigilance, were stressing out the ducklings, creating chaotic, discordant energy, and even causing some of the problems he was so determined to prevent. This badger, this belief that I MUST keep this close a watch on my body, was the one that had to go.

Then I realized that this badger didn’t belong to me, to the spirit/soul me. The badger and the belief belonged to my body. My body joined me in the meditation and quickly invited the badger to help her in a positive way, as part of her conscious, healthy discernment system. Which was perfect. The badger’s gifts of persistence and dedication will now contribute in a constructive rather than harmful way.

Since this meditation, with the belief released and the badger off enjoying his new job, I can’t tell you how much lighter I feel. That’s where a deep dive can take you.

Are there any badgers/beliefs hanging around in your field? Are you, the soul, carrying a belief that belongs to your body? Try a deep dive and find out!

Deep Honesty
Deep dives require deep honesty, especially honesty with ourselves. We often lie to ourselves by overlooking our true motivations or our unhealthy beliefs and behaviors. It’s easier to blame someone else, shrug off a situation, or distract ourselves by getting caught up in someone else’s life or the drama of the daily news. To go deep, we must be willing to be deeply, lovingly and completely honest with ourselves. Let me give you an example.

This week I finish a term of jury duty. So many people try to get out of jury duty, and some found it strange that I didn’t try. I got out of jury duty once before, years ago, at a time I could barely walk or sit without blinding pain caused by an autoimmune condition. At that point, serving wasn’t possible.

This new jury summons, however, was an opportunity for honesty and choice. I knew I could choose to be deeply honest with myself and not use bad health as an excuse (reinforcing an old pattern of belief that I’m not healthy enough to do what “normal” people do). I felt the temptation…use the excuse, avoid giving up lots of my time, avoid having to hire someone to stay with my dogs on hot summer afternoons, etc.

The deeper honesty, however, was that I felt good and was perfectly capable of serving. I had to then act on that truth even though it made things inconvenient. Honestly, I was happy to be healthy enough to serve. I chose to be a positive presence in the courthouse. I chose to make the most of this time in a world very different than the one I usually spend time in. The feeling of making these strong, honest choices is the precious pearl I’ve brought back up from this deep dive.

Jury duty is an easy example. Some situations are less obvious, and these require even deeper, purer honesty. Though we don’t want to admit it, we often recognize when we’ve skidded into judgment, when we’ve dipped into victim mode, when we’re acting passive aggressive or manipulative, etc. We see it, we know better, but we do it anyway. In the past, maybe we could ignore those situations or not take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, actions or inactions. In these times and energies, that’s no longer the case.

Spiritual teacher and blogger Lisa Gawlas recently said that we used to have 10 minutes to be human, to have our hissy fits and vent our complaints before we started creating from that vibration. She said we’re down to 5 minutes of buffer time now, and even that is going away rapidly. Which means that what we have not been honest about can start manifesting left and right, showing itself in bigger and more significant ways.

That’s one reason to embrace deep honesty. A far more positive one is that deep, pure honesty and the empowerment it brings feel sooooooo much better than stressful denial and avoidance. Who doesn’t want to feel good in a genuine, powerful and lasting way?

Deep Creativity
So far it might sound like the deep dives are all work and no play. Not so! The more expansive call I’ve been experiencing is to play with Deep Creativity, the pure energy of creation itself. My creative work is exploding in exciting ways. I’ve been writing poetry compulsively. I’ve been playing my ukulele. I’ve got more ideas flowing than I know what to do with. I don’t have a clue where it’s going. All I know at this point is that I need to dive, dive deeper, and then dive again.

This exploration is also showing me a new dimension to the touching down lightly/diving deep experience. When we touch down lightly, I also see us diving deep into uncharted waters and bringing up new raw energy and materials, the seemingly ordinary and the treasures, that we will use to build the new at the surface level of our lives. The elements of new creation MUST come from the uncharted waters, from the deep unknown, because anything that’s old and familiar is now also old and outdated.

There’s an excitement to all of this that I’ve never felt before. I can’t wait to see what comes up. I can’t wait to see what I’ll be creating. I can’t wait to see what all of YOU will create.

As I write this now, I see a giant clam shell opening, and within it, a pearl that’s brighter, shinier, more beautiful, more precious than anything we’ve seen or imagined before. It feels like there’s a pearl (or two or 10,000) waiting for each of us.

They’re worth diving for. Again and again. Deeper and deeper each time. Diving into the realm of rich possibility where we’ve never needed submarines, kick fins or tanks of air.

Happy diving!

Barbara