Assimilation and Surrender

Hello Dearest Ones,

It’s been a while since I attempted to put words down to share with you. Communication seems to take a bit of effort for me these days. I have experienced this phenomenon before. When it happened before, I had been very accustomed to verbal communication being my gift. All of a sudden, I would get nervous and trip over my tongue a lot when I attempted to speak. My response to that experience, was to turn to the written word to ‘prove’ my ability to think and communicate well. I was in a doctoral program at the time, so it felt important to be able to show my intelligence and communication skills. Turns out, it was a terrific opportunity to fine tune my writing skills. Skills I hold dear.

Back then, my writing skills were already relatively well established, but not as refined as my verbal skills had been, so I determinedly took advantage of the learning that came from having my speaking skills temporarily ‘stifled.’ I say stifled, because it was the environment that I was in that seemed to have tied my tongue. I was anxious and fearful of judgement, which in turn made my thoughts and words chaotic and unpredictable. I had always been more than comfortable expressing my opinions in class, so it was very disorienting to suddenly not feel like I could say what I wanted to say in classroom discussions.

This environment, the collective experience of 2020-2021, and the pandemic, has to some degree ‘stifled’ us all. The collective has felt stuck, and unproductive. Add to that, a lot of fear of financial instability, or maybe the experience of true financial instability, and one becomes very disoriented. We consider ourselves a highly productive society, and for a couple of decades now, have prided ourselves on our busy-ness. So the lack of movement and busy-ness has feel deeply disturbing for many. Of course, there are those of us who have quickly adjusted, and either figured out how to stay busy through the pandemic, or have learned to appreciate and benefit from this different way of engaging with life. Discovering a new pace and rhythm. Many of us, however, will have taken the slower, more circuitous route to learning how to live comfortably with what feels like a very stifling environment.

Wherever we individually fall on the continuum, we are all, by now, moving through the penultimate stages of the process; assimilation, and maybe even surrender. We are finally feeling the effects of integrating our shared and individual experiences of the last year. It is in the assimilation process that we start to integrate new experiences and knowledge into our pre-existing life structure. With assimilation we finally allow this new wisdom to mold us and mold our lives in a new way. We will have gone through different stages of the process: inertia, paralysis, fear, anger, depression, resignation, curiosity and hope; until we finally make it to assimilation. Then, it is in the surrendering that we are able to embrace these shifts, and discover that we actually enjoy the new pace and paradigm. If we are truly blessed, we will come to understand that within this new space, this new way of living life, we have more room to breathe. We have more time to notice, feel and heal.

For me, writing and speaking became challenged in the last year. Our current, collective experience has impacted my voice, because that is one of the central themes in my life. As those things have become less accessible to me, and ultimately less comfortable, what I have turned to is; allowing myself to simply experience things, be with them, witness how they impact me. Did they move me, change me, make me feel heavy or light? Were they ‘additive’ or did they in some way detract from my life? I have been refining my observation and listening skills, since my voice has become somewhat reluctant and stagnant this year.

The communal pandemic experience is likely impacting you in a different way, because you will have a different focus in your learning and evolution for this lifetime. If you haven’t already come face to face with your important life lessons, or you’re having a hard time identifying your central themes, look at what has gotten most stifled or stirred up for you this year. It might give you some really valuable information about what you are trying to accomplish in this lifetime. It could very well hold beautiful hidden wisdom. Wisdom you have been seeking all along, hidden right there in your daily experience of life during a pandemic. How have you reacted/ responded to the shifts in your life? What does that tell you about who you are and what’s truly important to you? These are just a couple of the questions you might be asking yourselves. I would love to hear about your experiences. Please share them with me in the comments.

I love and appreciate you all,
Tawa