There are 5 small i’s in invisibility. I was pondering this thought last week and wondering if I was slipping back into my old ways. Then I had a conversation with my friend Kelly and realized that it’s not disappearing that I’m craving so much as solitude. And there is a difference.
Invisibility is about not wanting to be seen. It’s an act of smallness in the hope of avoiding recognition and it is no longer true for me. Each week as I post a new blog, I am validating my wish to be known…my wish to be heard. There is risk in that, and vulnerability and a challenge that I thrive on. When I write about my creative process, I am offering a glimpse into my interior world and that is most certainly not invisibility.
Solitude is about stepping back. About entering into my inner landscape where I feel most at home. About retreat.
I have been working hard to establish financial stability these past few months and it means long days of sustained activity. And plenty of outward movement meeting with clients, conducting phone consultations, and numerous email exchanges. It’s a lot of going and doing. So I find myself wanting to just Be.
This week, I had a very productive day on Wednesday and was able to stop work at 5pm. Suddenly I had the whole empty evening ahead and I didn’t know what to do with it. The spaciousness was unfamiliar. And I knew that if I didn’t get in the habit of planning ahead for that open time, that I was likely to fritter it away. Because Being has become the exception instead of the norm. It is as if the momentum from all of my working doesn’t know how to stop… how to turn… how to change directions. How to breathe.
When I studied with Ira Progroff, he introduced the idea that seven syllable phrases follow the breath. And that repeating thoses phrases will slow the breathing and take me to a place of stillness.
Maybe that’s what meditation is about: practicing stillness. Sitting in silence and listening deeply. If so, I want to learn. I want to be ready for random spaciousness and not fill it up, but drink it in.
Breathing in the solitude
Deep in the heart of silence
Barefoot dancing in the dawn
Heart expanded full of grace
Stella Sunday Afternoons
Stella Sunday Afternoons 
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