Waiting For Us (written 1/29/07)

Anything is possible you great people. Tell yourself what you most want to hear and let yourself feel glad to hear it.
This week I've been thinking about my rubber tree plant, freedom, and change. Let's get it all going!

Back in the spring of 2006, I was working to complete the drawings for Violet Bing. It was taking longer than I'd anticipated; I was anxious about how I would do and getting them in on time. Every day was a challenge. I even had a CD on affirmations/spiritual self-help that I played daily as I sat down to work. It took a monumental effort, at that time, to calm my nerves, to believe that I could do it, to push aside the doubt and the pain from the doubt, and simply allow myself to work. But I did - and it gradually got easier. I told Bill that I didn't want to "white knuckle" through; I wanted to remain connected to how much I wanted this work, willing, and grateful for the opportunity. I wanted to grow through the experience not just make it through. I'd gotten myself used to being terribly afraid of challenges, and then forcing myself to face them. But when I white knuckle through, I've found, there is a high likely hood that the fear simply returns and more importantly my concerns about my not being able to handle those fearful feelings return. And I'm no freer nor confident in the end.

I remember being in the kitchen at that time and looking over at my rubber tree plant. It had only two leaves at the top of a long stem. Its' soil was dry; everything about it looked held in a state of perpetual almost- dying. And for some reason, that day, I decided that I was truly going to care for it. I was going to pay attention and make a point of tending it. I realize that this seems much more logical than not caring for it but I have a long history of neglecting my plants in which I forget to water them for long periods of time. Only when I finally see them at death's door, do I finally give them the nourishment they need - returning quickly to the same pattern of neglect. I'd come to think of myself as a kind of negative life force that unintentionally tortures plants. I had tried to accept this about myself by periodically throwing out near to dead plants and vowing never to buy another, but there was something about this position that never seemed to stick and I often found myself back with one or two plants in need of attention.

And so, on that fateful day, I began watering my rubber tree- but this time it was different because I wasn't just watering it to prolong its misery, I was watering to nurture and with the intention of continuing . And I did continue. Over the next month things changed. Immediately, the bud that had been there frozen in time for years, instantly opened and bloomed into a new leaf. I was quite gratified and praised and complimented the plant (part of my new loving relationship to it). Then, week after week, more and more buds appeared and more and more leaves. It was as though all of this growth and new life had been there all along, just WAITING for me. And every time I saw a new leaf, I felt a sense of validation of my work on my book and my own (saved up) growth I was allowing to bloom.

Bill just left his job (as I wrote about the other week) and the other day we realized that all those years he was waiting for freedom to come to him, for something outside to set him free (from a job he didn't really want) he was really wanting to know he could change things and set HIMSELF free.

The plant wasn't locked in a state of non-growth. Bill wasn't locked in a place of non-growth. I wasn't locked out of growing and never could be (although that was my fear). Regardless of what we do or the apparent state of of things, we are all STORING our growth within us. The danger is that I might wait so long for the plant to PROVE TO ME THAT IT WILL THRIVE BEFORE I'M WILLING TO CARE FOR IT that I actually might weaken it. I think, sometimes we wait for life to show us we're able and free but life is actually WAITING FOR US . Our new lives, our new selves, our expanded selves are WAITING for us. And when we give that potential attention and care, we bloom. Free at last, always having, in fact, been free.

"You are so free you can create bondage."
- Abraham-Hicks

All is Well.
Lots of love,
Jen