There are some things you only truly understand when you are in the middle of it, or in retrospective reflection.
This is where I find myself in the middle of the countryside in South West France with my leg up. I have given myself (or rather it was given to me) the rare opportunity to do what I teach: track my true self.
I have taken one month to travel in France, the first 3 weeks solo before my husband joins me for the last week. I have travelled solo before and enjoyed the freedom to decide, to follow clues and go exactly where I wanted to and see what I wanted to see.
But not when I was almost 60, my youngest has just left for university, my husband holding up various forts, and at a fork in the road between decades of healing trauma work and what will come next. In my life, like so many of you at midlife, I had given so much of my time and attention to tracking and reacting to other people’s needs.
In fact, I didn’t realize it at the time of booking my flight that this is what I was up to. I just thought it would be fun. I work remotely and it was an adventure. I punctuated my month with 2 house sits and framed my travel with a Paris-Provence-Aveyron-Languedoc route. The rest was to be coloured in.
One step at a time, one track at a time, I explored Paris dipping into cafes, churches and museums, keeping my hotel address handy. One moment at a time I rented a car (standard! yikes) in Aix-en-Provence and set off to explore on the busy highway. Just follow this car, then you know it’s not a one way. If you get off track, just find the next exit. What’s the worst that can happen if you don’t find a hotel? Just fill up with gas and keep going until you do.
I did have a plan to generally explore sites along the route of Mary Magdalene which took me to Sainte Baume, Sainte Maximin and Sainte Marie-de-la Mer, with nothing booked along the way.
I was going at my usual pace, covering territory, in and out of churches, climbed to the cave of Mary Magdalene, kept going and landed in Sainte Marie de la Mer. On the second day there I was just about to head off to my next destination and popped back down to the sea one last time to feel the water and smell the sea air where she had landed in France.
I had noticed when I arrived here at the sea, I was feeling more confident. I had mastered the standard gear shift, covered ground, saw so many wonderful sacred sites and felt alive. I was grateful to be here and swear I could feel the energy of Mary Magdalene as she set foot on solid ground over 2000 years ago from a boat out to sea with no oars. I am alive. I get to be here. I get to smell, eat, move, feel, breathe. I had felt a palpable shift in my energy and I wanted to savour it here by the sea, yet I also wanted to push on.
So I walked along the rock wall dividing the water from the land and jumped off. Pop.
I heard a pop in my knee as I buckled with pain that shot up my leg. Uh oh. Oh no. Stand up straight, slowly, slowly. You’re ok. Just breathe. Try weight bearing. Ok, you can hobble. I’m ok. Just go slow, one step at a time.
And so I hobbled myself over to a seat where I could rest and get my bearings. I sat until I felt settled, then slowly hobbled over to a rock near the sea I could sit on. Almost instantly I felt an awareness in the wind that filled my body with knowing. It contained so many downloads that I regretted I didn’t have my journal with me to capture them all. And yet I knew I was just supposed to slow down, sit, savour, stay open and receive. I completely forgot about my knee. I stayed there for at least 2 hours, not because I had to as my knee was feeling better, but because I couldn’t get enough of where I was. I felt like I could stay there forever and I felt sad when I knew it was time to leave. It was like I was saying goodbye.
This is what I jotted down when I finally hobbled back to my car:
What is alive in you when you are not moving?
What you hide is what has been hidden from you.
Merge with yourself, not with others, gurus or saints.
All difficulties in your relationships are shadows waiting to be seen.
All patterns are beautiful and return until they are loved.
You are not a child in search of a mother, you are a mother in search of yourself.
Give up any way of trying to be different than you are. Drop the endless quest to get it right.
As I drove away, knee still in pain when I pressed the clutch, I cried.
I cried out all that I was leaving behind, the old me, my younger self. Old patterns of “trying”, people-pleasing, guilt and obligation. All those things that now were just heavy baggage I was carrying. I knew I was leaving it all back there on the beach to be swept out to sea.
Moving more slowly since then, with the help of Advil, I feel different. I would not have discovered this without hurting my knee. I am sure Mary Magdalene had me slow down just enough so I could listen, or I would have missed it all. I would have seen the sights, smelled the beauty and known the historical and spiritual significance. But I would NOT have known the deeper truths that these doorways were inviting me into. What else have I missed by hurrying through life?
I had a felt sense that it is this state of being and feeling alive that state is, in fact, the goal, not trying to reach some future destination. This is now my compass.
I am seeing, sensing, tasting and noticing so much more.
I am tracking my aliveness.
I am savouring the silence on my first house sit as I sit, walk the dog slowly and feed the goats. I gaze at the stars at night and the flowers by day. I eat scrumptious chocolate croissants for breakfast (so much for my high protein). I taste a glass of red wine with cheese that is out of this world at dinner. It is not something I am consciously trying to do as in so much of my mindfulness practices. It is something I am.
I can feel this in my bones: “Nature doesn’t hurry, yet everything gets done.” Lao Tzu
When I feel impatient I pause and breathe, aware that I am working against time. I track my next step like I am on a wilderness expedition in this moment. Only this step will take me exactly where I am going.
One of my favourite books keeps coming to mind and so I listen to it again:
“We have forgotten that life holds a unique story for us all. A thread made up of faint signs that lead to the manifestation of something unique. What the native people call “your medicine way.” Something that only you can give to the world.”
― Boyd Varty, The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life
I start tracking more alertly, more acutely, partly out of necessity as I have to tread gingerly on the earth and be efficient with my energy. I notice a richness all around me and on my evening walks I can sense the energy of Mother Earth that has been present all along, in every single moment of my life. Alive, pulsating, thick with life forms, movement, sound and scents.
This. This is what I came here for. It was right under my nose and I almost missed it. I want to track my life so completely like a lioness following her instincts in every move. A lioness has never, ever listened to a should. She has never thought “I must be productive or I am not worthy.” or “What will the other lionesses think of me if I say this or go this way?” And yet, her purpose is fulfilled.
For now, this is where I am, until I am not.
I don’t dread returning to the busyness of life. Rather, I am curious how I will track my wild self there. She is always here right beside me, guiding me back on track. Right here inside me. (repetition for emphasis to myself). And now I follow her gaze to the miracle of a butterfly…..
The silence speaks loudly, and yet I miss my husband’s louder, decisive, get-it-done energy. I love both. I miss him. And I love being alone. This is the journey of life, an ever-pendulating expression between expansion and contraction, doing and being, aliveness in everything. We get to be here. We get to be alive. I wonder how I will bring aliveness to my doing, weaving my being-ness into my work. I think that is what we call creativity.
My sensitivities to everything is amplified and what used to be overwhelm now becomes focus. I sense the flowers colour. I see the magpies flight. I hear the touch of the wind. Soon enough it will be people’s voices, music and exchanges of energy.
Everything is a first track. Then another one. Then tracks overlap and become a third, new track. Will you hear the call of your wild self (or a goat) leading you forward to your next track?
As I allow my true, wild self to lead, I become so much more aware of the layers of conditioning of culture that cover up wild tracks and keeps us contained and misaligned, just a short distance away from the true track that is yours and yours alone to follow. It takes courage to keep tracking yourself within the society we live in, but I am convinced it is possible.
Track your inner life as you move through and experience your outer life. Everywhere there are signposts, stop signs and green lights that shout GO. Take yourself out of your head and into your body, your sensations and your heart.
Notice when you feel tight, breathe into it, either making it a track, or noticing it is not aligned and course-correct. Retrospect is valuable insight as well. Soon enough the fear-based patterns you learned in order to cope through trauma or conformity will drop away. This is healing at it’s best.
Become the tracker of your own true self. This is my purpose now. To discover my aliveness through following the track of my own life, right here and how.
How do you know if you are on the track? You are in it, you become the track.
Become the predator of your aliveness. Sniff, smell, taste, see, feel your way through the jungle of vines, traps and obstacles that trip you up and you will soon reach a clearing where you can rest in your own aliveness. You don’t need to travel to France and meet Mary Magdalene to do it. It is right here, right now.
What is your next step? I ask myself now. It is to go outside, breathe and bask in the afternoon sun. After that, I don’t know.
I am planning an online tracking expedition for us in November when I return. Stay tuned. Keep tracking.