I have a hard time ending relationships even when I know its time. It isn't easy for me to admit when things are over. I tend to choose the path of least resistance in the hopes that if I just fade away, step back, go into hiding, the problems will resolve themselves. They don't! This strategy always fails miserably. A stalemate usually ensures until someone blinks; either the other person or myself has to muster up the courage to admit that it's done.
I haven't had to end personal relationships per se, though I have had to shift my relationships with a few people. The relationships I have been ending have been with aspects of my life that no longer work for me. It's been a hard thing for me to acknowledge that some beliefs I've held for a long time about this or that, are no longer true for me. A few commitments I use to hold as valuable have felt more constraining than affirming. Old passions have become tiring and blase. The person I am becoming no longer identifies with the person that I have been.
I am grateful that I have had some really supportive people show up in my life that get the changes I am making. I have unintentionally alientated a few that don't get it. It has never been my intention to hurt anyone, but I can't bare the responsibility of another's feelings around the choices I need to make for me. I tend to think of things in terms of vibration. People and situations tend to align as long as they are in vibration. When the vibration shits, either becoming more rapid or slower, some of those same people and situaitons tend to shift out of alignment. My sense is that ach of us eventually aligns with someone or something else. It may be that the journey itself is one long process of continual re-alignment. I don't know.
I have never been exactly an easy go lucky guy. I am a bit complicated, definitely moody, but at heart well meaning. Quite a few friends and family members say I'm weird, but I trust they mean that lovingly. There is a line from the Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson song, Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys with which I resonate: "Them that don't know him won't like him, and them that do won't sometimes know how to take him. He aint wrong, he's just different, but his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right." While not a cowboy by any stretch of the imagination, I am a wanderer of sorts. I am searching for something, i.e. a musical note only I can hear, a particular painting only I can see, but until it reveals itself, I have to keep going. Otherwise, I would feel like I am dying inside.
While uneasy and a little difficult I am in a good place. I am scared because the changes that I am making are leading me in a direction I never thought I would be going. I am grieving because I have given up certain things and backed away from other situations. These changes while not monumental were things with which I indentified. I've been thinking a lot about the archetype of the Hindu goddess, Kali. Out of her great compassion, she is uncompromising in slaying the ego. In spiritual circles, there is a sense where the ego is a bad thing. Closer to the truth, the ego may be those things with which we use to build an identity. I am this because I do or have or belong to that. When those certitudes give way, it can be potentially overwhelming.
Again, using the image of Kali, whatever she takes away, in its place she puts in its place what we really need. At this point, I am working without out net. I am trusting that I won't fall. And if I do, I am trusting that I will get back up. When it comes down to it, despite all the angst, I am rather optimstic about it all.
In other words, I am opting to stay breezy!
