Dying To Get To the Space of You?

"The Tunnel" by Bettina Madini

I've been wondering all day, while flying around in the universe and creating amazing threads of intertwining possibilities, what 'story' can I share that would be a contribution to the challenge? So, here we go. It's about challenge and death and infinite space of joy.

I died several times in this lifetime. Yes, I literally felt like 'dying', had intense physical symptoms like heart racing, weakness, incredibly tired. These moments came 'out of the blue'. I created them with my choice to be more of me. This is what I can say now! Then, I was sort of 'blond' and tapping into it 'unknowingly'. (really? what did I actually know???) 

The first one was in 2003. Just having quit my 'life-as-I-knew-it', I was at Heathrow airport waiting for my next flight to Newark. I was just excited, and my flight from Luxembourg to London had been joyful and fast. At landing, though, I had started 'feeling strange'. Oh, well, I thought, this was a lot of change. Of course, I must be stressed! (really?) I had just left my entire comfort zone behind, had quit a 'safe' job, I had left behind friends and 40 years of stuff, from antiquities to gifts to things from travels, all called 'home'. All behind me, yet still there. I had given myself 6 months to decide whether I would stay in the US or go back to Luxembourg. So, was I really stressed? What was that? At the airport got some black tea and crackers and went to my gate. There, I pretty soon had to lay down flat. 

Boarding started, and I chose to wait until the last moment to go on. I had started sweating like never before in my life, my heart racing, water running down my body and vision blurred. The flight attendants suggested some hospital, and I declined. This was NOT how I would start my new life. In a hospital? No way! And, really, there was no doctor at the airport? Weird! I pulled myself together and was escorted onto the airplane by 2 attendants. (still surprised that they even let me on!) 

I felt a lot better and slept for a while. Then, 3 hours into the flight, I got worse again. I called the flight attendant. I was sort of in a tunnel by the time she stood in front of me, my vision was narrowed to this tiny spot with her face far at the end of it. I asked her, with slight ringing in my ears, whether I could lie down flat somewhere. She looked at me and asked me whether I could please speak English. To this day, I have no idea what language I spoke. Everyone around looked at me with compassion, as if I had just lost it. Well, I had! After that, what I remember is being in the large reclined seat in business class where I stayed for the rest of the flight, with a hot water bottle on my tummy. I landed in Newark. I was asking for strength to make it through immigrations. THIS all was like watching some type of a high suspense movie, while at the same time being somehow entangled in the main character. How did I get there from the ease- and joyfilled possibility of creating and art that I had dreamed of and known was there for me? I felt pretty much like shit and looked like a ghost with a hot water bottle. I asked my body to hold off the sick feeling and nausea that crept back up once I was standing, and wait until I would be in a bed at home. I made it through 4 hours of interviews which felt like jumping through fire rings, with people desperately looking for reasons NOT to let me in. My boyfriend picked me up and we got home in a taxi. I spent some short and intense time in the bathroom, lied down in the bed and stayed there for 2 weeks, only getting up for potty, walking on unsolid 'wavy' grounds. Everything around me was unsolid, everything seemed to be moving, pretty much like on a boat.

Similar thing yet another time in 2003, with panic attacks, then again in Buenos Aires in 2008. And this year in January while in Costa Rica. Again, I thought I was on my way out. High fever, heart palpitations, my body so weak and emptying out what I thought was emptied, for 3 weeks. Reset?

Meanwhile, I know that I know, and I have learned so much more with and through this. Now,  I have amazing tools to use in these moments of big change....  It is when we create change that the limited versions of us really and literally die! We loose our reference points, and truly we become less solid, as is the world that we had made solid before. Pretty much like 'de-composing' and coming together in a different way. Like a butterfly. 

So, if any of you find yourself in these places that can be incredibly uncomfortable and demanding everything of you, first I would like to say 'be with it!, I tell you you HAVE what you require!' You are stronger than you think, second: Ask "Is this part of the change I have been asking for?", third: Ask your body 'Hey body, what can we choose that can make this easier? What do you require?' and see what comes up, who comes up, who calls you, what are you aware of? Never give up, never quit! Also, destroy and uncreate resistance to that intensity. Resistance will make it harder on you and your body. 

Once you walk through that, what I can say to you is, .... there is a space that you will have that is so much more of what you could have ever imagined possible, there is the YOU you have been waiting for....so much more that I know now it has been worth every single moment of .... let's call it 'unpleasant-release-of-you-know-what'. 

Please, don't quit! Ask for who can help you! and receive. Receive. RECEIVE. 

R E C E I V E