Which way are you traveling?

Here are two poems I wrote about my work. The first one is from 3 years ago, the second from a few weeks back.

Opposite ends simultaneously contained,
Chaos suspended into coherence,
Each side a mirror to the other one.
A bridge doesn’t cross itself.

***

Diving for word-pearls in the dream dimension, with tanks of humor and compassion.
Stitching layers of the Self until it is warm enough to carry one forward.
With the gentlest push, a patched quilt becomes wings.
Power is not a sin.

As I was sharing them with my insightful friend @traceekafer , she remarked on how the second one was much clearer and more concrete than the first. That got me thinking about trajectory, and how opposite movements can have the same destination.

I was raised in a semi New Age environment, where the notions of energy, astrology, spirit guides, chakras etc were daily conversations. For years I was very much into that, until I realized that I was in fact avoiding life and myself (hello spiritual bypass). I feel that my work of the last 20 years has been to become more and more human, more and more practical, more and more embodied and to shed the nebulousness I was using to make a buffer between the world and myself.

On the other hand, I'm very much aware that many people travel the other way around: they use materialistic concerns and denial of soul as a way to avoid themselves, until they are awaken to something "more" by burn out, accidents, illnesses, etc...

Whether we are traveling from the material to the spiritual or the spiritual to the material, the destination is the same: compassion for self and others, and connection. So, which way are you traveling? Are you really traveling, or are you avoiding? Do you have resistance to go either direction? That might be interesting to explore...🙂