Share #15: Bread, butter, tea, salad, sliced pink grapefruit & a periscope

At last I shared a meal with Love. She offered weeks ago, but I was too sick to accept. She even offered to drop something off, something healing like soup, but I felt that wouldn't be a true share. I'd miss out on her company and all she has to offer. I begged her off when she wanted my community, but maybe I saved her from getting sick?

Love was on her way into Seattle and said she could meet me on Sunset Hill. What did I need? Nothing. I needed her. The meal was already laid out. It was after noon. I'd missed breakfast again and was hungry. We shared a green salad and warm bread and butter and fruit. I think I talked more than I ate. Since my accident, when I am eating with others I notice how my mouth is no good at the movements necessary to chew big bites of food. I feel a little self-conscious and spend energy focusing on the mechanics of chewing. I don't remember experiencing this alone.

Somewhere during the meal, we got to talking about our feelings about our lives. How are we feeling about where we are, not where are we, but how are we feeling about it,  where we perceive ourselves to be. Are our feelings a true indication of where we are? I think our feelings have less to do with our whereabouts than they do with our perception of our whereabouts.

Love began with the idea that we have eyes because we see and that we have bodies because we need to move in and sense the world. She'd just been with poet Wendy Mulhern and had been investigating this. I agreed, we manifest our world, and maybe even ourselves, in being called to this life, but when did this happen--at birth, at conception, or is it ongoing, with each passing moment?

What do we need to understand ourselves right now, to be whole? Healthy? As we move through life, as we wake up to certain truths, what do we need then to understand? When I say, "I am lost," I am saying I cannot match up my understanding with my experience. How do I know I am lost? Can I not trust myself to know? What am I loving? What am I avoiding? Are these good indicators?

Love offered a series of questions she'd learned from a teacher. I'll substitute my own current crisis for the situation at hand. "Am I in limbo?" "Am I sure I am in limbo?" "How do I feel when I believe I am in limbo?" "Who would I be, how would I feel or react to the same circumstances, without this belief?" Love answered about her own situation with a definitive yes. I answered with an "I don't know." I am not ruling out the idea that I might be misperceiving everything and that a little shift in thought might bring all the clarity I need to dissolve what I see as my problem into my path. It's happened before. The only clear answer I had was to the third question. "I feel powerless."

I believe what is shifting is my understanding, my perspective, not my circumstance, not my world. But then my perspective is my universe, so far as I know. All those same gifts, those same hindrances, are out there, in here. I'm sensing them differently, reacting to them differently now.

It's a good thing about me, for my own sake, that I can always rely on myself to react in body--move away from what is harmful, move towards what is good--even when I cannot understand or react in mind. I have good a flagging system. My body leads, and wisely. And so, I must investigate when my body talks, like now when it is saying, "You've been on the path. There is a whole you on the path. You must find it again. You cannot go on as before. But first, you need a  frame." This feels like a trap. I need the frame to find the path, but cannot find the frame because the frame is the path.

We talked about the use of love in realizing our truths. How we love ourselves, how we let go of our expectations. It is so easy, from my vantage, to see the lovable Love, to see how her on her path, but to see the lovable me, on my path, that is harder.