This is a stormy sea

I imagine I am in a little wooden boat being thrashed about in the waves. I keep dreaming of the sea. There are moments when the storm breaks and the sea is still and calm, but it isn’t long before the waves start building again.

We are living in extraordinary times. We are being twisted, shaped and moulded by how we choose to be in response to the changing landscape we are facing because of Corona.

I’ve been finding that I am oscillating between a part of me that has been shaped by this time that we live in. A part that wants to be productive, wants to accomplish, wants to act, mobilise and jump into doing, to feel useful. A part of me that is addicted to a screen, that can only ever think about productivity and that feels guilty if it were to ever stop. A part that has been fed and watered by a system that has long since been dying and so it seems to grasp on tighter.

And yet there is another more tender part of me that is trying to emerge, that is gently pulling everything down. It asks to try and not make sense of things just yet, it changes shape depending on what is needed moment to moment. It sings a lullaby to sooth me and lets me dance between movement, reading and prayer. It offers stillness in the chaos, a safe harbour that welcomes complexity, collaboration and the unknown.

This part of me recognises that we are collectively grieving for so much. There are many who have already died and will die in isolation away from their families. The massive inequality that has defined everything that is wrong with our system has become so glaringly obvious. What about the sense of our reality that we are leaving behind through each day we spend in isolation. There is so much to sit with. So this part of me is quiet, resting, patient and awaiting to see what emerges from the ashes of all this.

I feel this tension between these parts of myself as an example of the wider context, a tussle between control and the unknown as Charles Eisenstein explores in his recent article The Coronation. Control being the dominate system we have lived within and tenderness with the unknown which has yet to come.

It feels so clear that there is so much we don’t know, so much which is beyond our understanding. These times require new levels of listening and discernment as the eery undertones are subtle and easily drowned out by our panic and fear.

Initiation means “the action of beginning something” and is described as “rites, ceremonies, ordeals, or instructions.” As someone who is familiar with ritual, this feels like something bigger and more mysterious then just a virus. Just like theatre, it asks us to suspend our disbelief and open up to the endless possibilities of what a chair can create when we allow our imaginations free. I wonder if we can create the space to carefully listen and lean into the not knowing and what freedom we may find there.

But back to the waves…

I wake up some days with the echoes of the ocean in my ears. Last night I saw humans transform into whales in my dreams. And so as I let myself float to the bottom of the ocean, even in the face of my addiction to doing. I let myself feel and listen to the undercurrents of what is being asked and offered.

(Alana is a facilitator, artist and activist. You can check out her Patreon here)