But what came up originally were lots of boats. I actually had a visceral reaction to these large ships. They made me feel panicked and repulsed. It was interesting because it took me a minute to realize that yes ships are called vessels as well. This made perfect sense to me once I thought about it as lately I feel as though I am on a voyage and I am making my way through the transition of winding up my degree, trying to tie up loose ends in NY and trying to make a "safe passage" out to California. My entrance into NY was incredibly turbulent and felt like I was using a battering ram to get myself back here and then I spent the first year here feeling battered. Right now changing the karma that had led to these traumatic transitions feels incredibly daunting and I have been feeling quite overwhelmed. So I spent a moment and looked at the vessels and this is the one that spoke to me:
I thought this was really interesting to me because I originally wanted to blog about my Mandala. When I made it, and spoke about it in class, I said that I hated it. So, I left it out in a place in my apartment where I would look at it often and everyday. It turns out that I do not hate it. While it is not as "pretty" as I would like, it ultimately makes me smile. What really bothered me about it at first was its lack of containment. Which is why I find it interesting that I picked a neatly organized container ship when looking at a ship as vessel.
I think that speaks to my desire to have everything in my life neat and manageable. But, when you look at the sheer volume of containers on the ship, I realize how ridiculous that desire is and the weight of the journey that I must feel I am on. This then lead me to the quote in the book for this week that says "One of the fantasies that people have is that life is manageable." This then made me head back to the concept of surrender. I think that if I want to have this next transition happen in a peaceful and non frightening manner I need to surrender to the process and not try to make all of the steps fit into a box or to force them on a schedule. I also think have to leave a lot of things behind here in NY. This made me then think about the fact that for the last three years I have been wanting to relearn how to sail. Maybe that was my Self trying to let my ego self know that I needed to learn how to make my journey from this point look more like this:
I am very much working this time to trust that the universe wants the best for me. That in surrendering to the process and trusting in it, a smooth transition will occur. I believe that after doing some very heavy karmic lifting and confrontation of a lot of loss, hurt and pain. My next step is to begin the process of healing myself back up once I have left NY. I keep having this imagery of stitching up my heart. So I think that I would like to try to dialogue with the container ship and ask that it take away with it some of the hurt, loss and pain to some far away location instead of viewing myself as making the transition on the container ship. I also found it interesting that there was a lot of talk about safe containment spaces in which to do this transformative work. So maybe in my dialogue with the container ship I am creating a space within my ego self to have a dialogue with my Self about what needs to leave on the next container ship out. I will also take this symbolism into my therapy sessions so that I may use that safe contained space to explore this archetype of a hero's journey home. Should I be able to transform the container ship to the sailboat that would be me sailing out of NY infinitely lighter and better off for having done the work. The last picture of a vessel appealed to me as the vessel for my heart. The image that comes to mind is that the vessel below contains the ether of my soul. I would like to place it in there and keep it safe through this next passage and uncork the bottle when I arrive at my new shore.
- The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
- And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
- I heard the first wave of the rising tide
- Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
- A voice out of the silence of the deep,
- A sound mysteriously multiplied
- As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
- Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
- So comes to us at times, from the unknown
- And inaccessible solitudes of being,
- The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
- And inspirations, that we deem our own,
- Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
- Of things beyond our reason or control.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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