No Man’s Land risk, change, growth

Jessica Magnin, GatherYoga Emissary and founder and co-director of O2yoga, shares her perspective on taking a leap into the unknown.

The last tiny bit of perceivable solid ground fades into the horizon as I loosen my grip. Suddenly my line of tether disappears. Night falls quickly. The wind dances the waves as they crash relentlessly against the fragile sides of my only sense of security. I am carried farther and farther out into uncharted waters. I look back in hopes of securing my need for something tangible, something to hold on to. There is no life jacket aboard. I am totally alone. I have severed all ties with Point A, the past 27 years of my married life, what I have known, to humbly take my first steps toward a very unfamiliar destination.

I feel my heart breathing a mixture of fear and loss. Tears of black mascara run down my cheeks. My mind slips into the foreground and takes control. I stoically wipe my tears away. ‘’There must be a map hidden somewhere on this tiny vessel!”  My heart sinks in hopelessness. In all my busyness of planning my departure, I carelessly forgot that one important item — the map that would offer me a ‘’what’s next?’’ plan and guide me safely to another shore.

With no map or game plan at hand, I find myself here, with me, right here, right now, with nowhere to go but being thrown about in the waters of raw uncomfortability. It is raw, because there is no knowing of what, where, when, and how. I am dead center in no man’s land, and it is a seriously vulnerable place to be. Change and risk have always been easy for me to embrace. Just between you and me, I can courageously jump because I ultimately always know where I am landing. This gives me a sense of security, maybe false, but a comfy sense of courage. Though, this time is different. I don’t want to return to Point A even at the risk of never encountering Point B.

I have crawled to the brink ladened with fear and doubt and jumped off the cliff, eyes wide open, and nothing lies below. I am in mid-air; everything appears to be in slow motion. I watch. I feel. My senses are alive. I feel alive. Being in midair is being in transition and transition is always present, always happening, we just don’t realize it. If we look closer, we notice that not only is there always a beginning, a middle and an end to everything, we are always between two things, whether it be two holidays, two jobs, numerous relationships, or something as simple as the inhale and exhale of our breath.

It is painful to cut ties with the past when we can’t secure the future. This is transition. This is life. This is living authentically. Things come and go, and yet we as humans have a painfully difficult time accepting the truth of Inicca, the Buddhist philosophy of impermanence. Our refuge in pleasure makes us grasp that much harder as if to make the experience, taste, relationship a solid thing. We erroneously believe that solid equals permanence. This is the mind’s way of scrambling for security. But take a deeper look and wake up, to the unprocessed fact that everything is in perpetual movement; our relationships evolve, sometimes dissolve; food perishes; plants wilt; and no matter how many pictures we take to capture pleasurable moments, those too will fade into memory, and memory will soon fade into loss.

Ironically, knowing might offer us a (false) sense of security, but it also offers us a boxed-in, limited viewpoint with one possibility. Being nakedly available to the unfolding of not knowing seems scary for the mind, but op

ens an ocean of endless possibilities for the heart and soul.

The golden sun peaks above the hazy horizon like a lotus flower surfacing from its muddy past. This new chapter of an untold story brings butterflies of excitement and endless new beginnings to my belly.

Photo by calsidyrose, used with Creative Commons license.