a glimpse of the summit – quiet

I am getting nearer.

I have been through the exhilation of glimpsing arrival, ferocious discipline, the last reserves of patience, and now a quiet has fallen into me.

There is still quite a long list, but I can only work my way through it steadily. Some things might not get done. None may assume the right to cause panic.

Yesterday my disintegration met a friends disappointments. It was painful. I needing a bolstering of hope and instead I felt dropped. Forgive, forgive. This work is tiring to one’s friends; all summits bring up unresolved desolations. Continuing on with love is how we touch them with grace, how we heal each other.

If I work gently and steadily, I will arrive.

a glimpse of the summit – patience

Despite trying to take care of this week moving towards the summit, yesterday I stumbled repeatedly, finding myself tripped by other people’s frailties and my own.

It was so wearying.

The patience of last few steps towards the summit is gossamer thing. Already vast reserves of it have been used up. It has been stretched beyond capacity, grown, stretched and grown many times. The spiritual force that all patience requires has been used, replenished, used, replenished.

The wearing away of reserves reveals the last hard edges of being, that are to be smoothed with the difficulties of triumph. It is a marathon runner in the last yards, it is a woman in the final pushes of birth, it is a rare glimpse of real, piercing through all the clutter of modern being.

Today discipline was not enough, disintegration was needed. Somewhere beneath the known there was more to be found, and tears were needed to find it. It is such a mystery how discipline intermingles with humility, the controlled with the surrender. Both are needed towards the summit, but only in the surrender is there grace – and patience.

I feel more fragile but I’m stronger than yesterday.

I’m being born/e.

a glimpse of the summit – discipline

I’ve glimpsed the summit, and yet I’ve not reached the summit. This is a moment where discipline seems somewhat unwelcome, yet it is essential.

Who wants to be disciplined when one can see dreams unfolding ahead, just beyond the summit in the realms of now-a-possibility?

Yet if the energy needed for the summit completion is dispersed into illusions, then the very possibility of the summit comes under threat.

It’s a work of wonder to hold steady with focus, diligence and discipline when under the surface thrills of delight are shivering too and fro in the inner waters.

It is strange that even this bit has its own difficulties and temptations, when so much hope and joy is present. But it does. You have not reached the summit until you have reached the summit.

Yesterday: lists. Today: chores, communications, work.

a glimpse of the summit

I will make it.

I’m not there yet, I’m not nearly there, but something has arrived within me, ahead.

Certainty.

It’s hard to put the feeling of it into words, but it is deep, a plunging power of thrill, resolution, satisfaction and desire.

Yesterday evening as I wrote to a friend I recalled a theory from my research; in a moment, I could see exactly where I was, and exactly where I was about to be.

In the writing of one of my favourite mountaineers, there are sometimes climbs where this sudden advance knowledge arrives. It’s mysterious as it does not always occur. But when it does, it contains a thrill of power and hope which cannot be concocted. Even more mysteriously, sometimes it is this very power and hope which actually enable the achievement; without that vital last shot of energy, it might never have been reached.

It is also something to take care of. The thrill of certainty carries its own risk of intoxication by euphoria. The very relief can make one careless. The precious substance of conviction needs itself to be channeled into ways both focused and diligent, to enable it to fulfil its own promise.

Today: lists.

defiance

Things are getting more intense…

Sometimes it’s hard to know if the feeling of intensity are merely the effect of personal failings: Is it really circumstances that are so difficult or it is my own immature refusal to accept things as they are?

I’ve had another day of frustrations. Some things have been good but it’s wearying to find that in yet another day my places of replenishment have somehow been turbulenced and tangled.

I’m squiggling around wondering whether to give up on my beautiful hopes, if my relentless insistence on believing in the beautiful, the good, in the unfolding in certain places of something different to what has gone before, is itself the problem.

Or am I squiggling with that or just with the part of myself that is severely reluctant and unable to be dissolved by chaos? It is so utterly astonishing to me what people talk themselves into settling for.

Or am I meant to surrender? An act of humility?

The things is this: I am not seemingly called to make up abstract theories and self-hypnotising stories about why this or that has not happened, will never happen. I’m called to persevere into things that have not been seen before. And that in this world, things are needed that no-one has seen before. Or perhaps things that have been seen before, but that need to be resurrected for the current age.

I’m getting nearer to a point of breakthrough, a rip in the fabric of existence (my own at least, and since my life is part of existence, I call it ‘existence’ plain and simple). This, I’m afraid to say, almost always coincides with situations becoming more impossible. Why is this? I don’t know, but I’ve seen it before. In such circumstances, persistence in itself becomes miraculous long before whatever is being sought arrives.

A note to myself: don’t fall into self-pity. This bit is always rife with traps. Your lovely friends let you down; they didn’t realise that they were being sucked into the maelström that precedes the new. Forgive, forgive, forgive, keep going.

Something stronger, somehow than perseverance: Defiance. Dis-trust of the visible in the pursuit of the unseen. Not relying on that in which security is commonly sought.

Believing in another reality, trusting that, letting it take the weight of risk, believing.

A week to go until the daring act. Stay with it; focus.

These are the things I tell myself.