"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves..."
Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"
I am documenting a journey I am going through, in desperate search to find inner resources to deal with a particularly intense Bipolar II episode. A manic depression where the sky is suffused with negative greys and blacks, with temporary respites of anxious panicked heightened states of striving and looking for something to erase this sky. Needless to say they come to naught. Using medication has always been an ingredient, but through mindfulness practice and self reflection I have noticed that my own inner "defence mechanisms" have woken up, loudly, and forcefully to resist and attack the endless mood shifts with frantic action, or criticisms around what I should be doing. To stave off the huge storm system of my moods, to keep me safe.
I have spent time getting to know this part of myself. This "striving" part. Scared, anxious, determined and lost. Appreciating her strength, determination and endless resourcefulness. Her forceful will with which she yearns to pull me slumped and overcome over some concocted finish line. "If you only become a better mother, cook, patient, it will be OK." "If you only please this additional person, do their bidding you will accumulate sufficient social capital to wear out the storm when the illness lays you low".
It employs seductive and sometimes convincing arguments, but ones which sting when you are at your lowest ebb. You are not doing enough.
She is really trying her best, to make everything better. Trying too hard. And yet behind her sits a self more aware of the natural ebbs and flows of life, of you, of this disease. I have spoken of her as well. And am taking the time to dig deeper to her- as something to comfort me, but also to embrace this frantic part of me which is driving me to do something, quickly, urgently to prevent the pain. Which is inevitable, significant but ultimately temporary. I look to this "aware self" to pull the striving self down below deck as the ship is thrashed by the storm, convince her that building elaborate sails, or constructing shelter will not halt the storm. Will not even damped its ferocity. But simply exhaust me.
But how? And then in trying to find the aware, kind, loving, knowing self I remembered Mary Oliver's enchanting words: " the soft animal of your body". This innate deep place, which is wordless, which does not have to argue with itself, reason, weight up. Strive. Try. None of it. It just has to be- the animal- the life -that sits below. Which innately knows. Perhaps this part is tied to the "wu wei" concept of non-striving which relies on an inner intuition, a flowing sinewy stream of life which is allowed to just be. Naked on the deck of my weather-beaten ship and needing what it needs, loving what it loves. Unapologetic, and thus free to weather the storm.
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